Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Better Business Bureau to the rescue

First of all let me warn you.  You have 30 days to get Verizon Internet working or you are stuck with a $160 disconnect fee even if it does not work.  DO NOT give them another chance - it will cost you $160!  Secondly even if you do call, write and mail everything back to them they will not disconnect you and will keep sending you bills and threaten to destroy your credit if you do not keep paying.

I blogged before about my Verizon problems but here is a quick recap.

I ordered their $50 Internet and phone deal via the Internet.  After a week or two I called and they said the order was lost and they would do it over the phone but I could not get the Internet deal.  I called back another time and was told that I could get the Internet deal so I changed my order.

Well after a few days of terribly slow connection speeds I called up tech support.  The person was very helpful thought a bit hard to understand.  They quickly determined that I had a connection problem.  After about an hour of troubleshooting we removed the Y adapter and the Internet seemed to work. 

The next day the Internet was not working again.  After restarting the box several times over several days, and trying several different telephone jacks I called them again.  This time I was told they could not tell if I had a problem but a 24 hour monitor was possible if I wanted to spend 1/2 an hour on the phone to set it up.  the first problem is that it takes 1/2 an hour to get to a real person.  You have to enter your data over an over again and when you get to a live person they will ask for that information once again.  I did not have the time so I told them to do the 24 hour monitor and hung up.  Of course they did not do it.

The next time I called I was very fed up and the guy begged me to give it one more try.  By this time I had received and paid two bills one for $75 and one for $85.  The tech support guy promised that they would have a guy at my house on Tuesday so I gave in to allowing them just one more try to get it working.  My wife stayed home Tuesday, but no one came.  On Wednesday they called wanting to know where we were.  When I got home the Internet was working, but it only lasted a few hours. 

The next day I got another $75 bill.  I wrote a letter demanding that they disconnect me and stop sending me bills.  I called up demanding that they disconnect me but the lady refused to do it.  After about 1/2 an hour I just started yelling "Disconnect me" over and over into the phone.  I boxed up their Internet modem and mailed it back to them.  It did not work, they still would not disconnect me!

So then I contacted the Better Business Bureau.  They contacted Verizon and a lady from Verizon called me to say they were disconnecting me and refunding me all of my money!  Yea for the BBB!  This whole process took about 4 months.  I still have no Internet but I might try the cable company next.

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