PS - super jealous of your multiple monoblock setup you got there

RedSI, I am saddened (though not surprised) that you've had such trouble with Verizon. If you don't mind telling, what was the straw that did the breaking?

My experience with them has been recent, but also negative. Our house is currently on Time Warner, who consecrated taking over our cable service by upgrading the cable system - and cutting our cable at the street in the process.
We've been fighting speed and service issues, and decided to go with Verizon.

Basicallly, I took advantage of a promo to sign up at the V. Wireless store, which netted me a gift card, at which time I was quoted a price by the manager and told I would get a call. When I got the call from Verizon, they told me that his price was wrong, and quoted me one $25 a month higher. I held off and called them back later, at which point we got another number, still higher but not the same. This made me very wary, I'm currently holding off, which is why I'm curious about your experience.

I'm using a list. Please don't take this as being snippy. I started smoking yesterday after 51 days of being nicotine free, so they really did get the best of me...

1.) Billing was a mess. If you're not a Verizon home phone subscriber, billing goes from being a mess to a total wreck. I was a TV and Internet-only subscriber only (we use cell phoners exclusively (Cingular)); I was billed twice to my Amex. I was being charged $5 more per month from internet than originally quoted, making it the same price (almost) as my Comcast connection and it didn't seem any faster. However, Comcast was already fast, so I'm not whining about the speed per se.

2.) I called billing and customer service to say that the bill online is inaccurace. It didn't have any of the TV charges that I was hit for on my Amex. 5 different phone calls to five different reps, who all promised a supervisor would call me to straighten it out. Never got a call back. I waited for a total of a month.

3.) Phone menu is by far the roughest, most frustrating thing I've ever dealt with. If you have to call to try and straighten a problem out like mine, you'll see. The menu will consistently route you to the wrong personnel.

4.) Once you get to a human, my experience was that about 90% of the time, the people are underinformed, quick to get snippy, and they make promises they don't keep. God as my witness, I was nice on the phone every time. 5 unreturned requests for supervisor call-back. 1 intentional hang up. 1 intentional dumping to the main menu. Blood was boiling by then. This is like something you read about in the Times. Experiencing it was something I can't even relate very well. Truly astounding.

5.) MultiRoom DVR has a lot of bugs. Satellite boxes frequently can't read the hub DVR, causing you to have to reset the box. When you reset a box, you lose all customizations on your box (like channel list edits), and sometimes even your scheduled recording setup.

6.) Internet connection goes down if your PC has a "sleep mode" setup in the Power Setup in Windows, which mine does.

Final straw was getting a second charge on my Amex without ever receiving an accurate bill. That in my mind has to violate some FTC regulation. The fact that I'm paying to terminate my agreement early in light of the fact of all these problems really does highlight one point...well two...$180 to get away from Verizon is cheap. And in my mind, Verizon exploited every loophole in a system that in the end fails to uphold any resemblance of consumer rights.

Now I'm sure there are Verizon-fans on this board who will read this and cannot relate to what I went through. For that, you are lucky and I wish you continued luck. But for the way I was treated, I'll never sign on w/ Verizon for anything ever again, and I advise my friends and family to do the same. I realize that their problems revolve around FiOS being so new, and their infrastructure is struggling to meet the supporability demand, but their overall treatment of customers, and their notoriety for billing issues, will probably not change over time. Google "Verizon Class Action Suit" and you find that their billing practices have been called into question many, many times, over some seemingly very shady practices.

Verizon FiOS TV (the department) can't handle the demand and their representatives are hostile. My advice to all: steer clear unless you're totally fed up with your current provider. I was on the fence. And I jumped. And I really regret it. I may hug the Comcast tech when he's at my house tonight.

No worries, RedSI, that was a great reply. I'm really appalled to hear that kind of garbage going on in such a huge company, but as I said I'm not surprised. Every time I've been on the phone with them I swear I could get better answers from a lobotomized chimpanzee (no offense to the latter).

I was wondering why you said you'd paid to get out of your agreement in your earlier post, instead of demanding free agency for such bad service, but now I get it. Who wants the added hassle after months of neglect?

Thanks for the valuable info - I'm sure a lot of folks here will gladly take your experiences into consideration if they're contemplating a signup.

That's why I posted the whole story. Just looking out for you guys.

That's awful. I called them about FiOS, as your story really bothered me. You aren't kidding about the phone menu. I waited on hold for about 20 minutes, and then the phone hung up. Called again, and the phone seemed to pick-up, but then the line went dead. Sent them an e-mail about this experience, and received a reply that they would forward the story. I was in the market for a different service -- problems with my cable -- but I'm staying away from them.

you'd do yourself a service by doing just that. good luck.

I'm considering contesting the early termination fee w/ them via American Express. But virtue of the fact that I never received an accurate bill, I believe that's grounds to terminate service w/o penalty. Proving that on my end may be tough. But I'm feeling a bit rebellious