How to spoil a movie night in one easy step.
Last night, my wife and I decided to watch a movie using Verizon FiOS TV’s video-on-demand (VOD) feature. About an hour into the movie, the audio started breaking up and the video started pixelating. Then this error message appeared:
“Error
A problem has occurred with your request. Please ensure that the wires are securely connected to your set-top box. If you continue to experience problems please contact Verizon at (888)553-1555 and specify code (CL-14).”
Yes, happy Valentine’s Day to you too, Verizon. My wife had fallen asleep on the sofa, so I put on some soft music and used the opportunity to help Verizon debug their problem. I’m such a nice consumer.
Incidentally, in the old days, area codes were optional for local calls, which is why they were put in parenthesis. Most area codes are no longer optional, and toll-free area codes never were, so let’s all agree never ever to put area codes in parenthesis again. Mmm-kay?
I called Verizon and waited 18 minutes on hold before getting to speak to somebody. While on hold, I did what every TV consumer would do in the same situation. (No, not go to the bathroom.) I went to the basement, restarted the broadband router (being sure to leave it off for about 20 seconds), came back upstairs, restarted the cable box (ditto), and tried to access VOD again. No luck, same error message. One variant of the error message simply referred to “Error 14” and didn’t include a phone number.
Guess what the Verizon representative suggested? Yup, restarting the router and cable box. So we did, same results.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
– Albert Einstein
At this point, my romantic Valentine’s Day evening was toast. Maybe the V-Day Blizzard of ’07 had knocked out a Verizon server? Maybe VOD was getting hammered by all the romantic couples in New England? I asked the Verizon rep where he was. California.
I was on the phone with Verizon for 55 minutes and they were not able to solve the problem. We verified that FiOS Internet service worked fine, Verizon TV worked fine, everything worked except VOD. Sounds like a Verizon VOD server issue to me. Or maybe I was just imagining the problem. Could be either.
I had to ask the rep what Verizon was going to do to make this very patient customer whole. (Hint #1: good companies take the initiative to make their customers happy and actually have their own ideas about how to do this. Hint #2: keeping customers on the phone for 55 minutes to debug a 2-hour movie and then offering no compensation isn’t one of those good ideas.) He asked me to call back and check on the trouble ticket. After my prompting, he said that he’d ask his supervisor about giving a week of service credit (whatever that means). I explained that I had invested 55 minutes of my life on this and was not investing any more time. I said that they could email me to close out the matter. The Verizon rep said he had no means to send email to me. (They should try Verizon FiOS Internet service in California.) “Humor me,” I said, “and enter my email address in the file.” He did. I’m not holding my breath.
Verizon is making Apple TV look better every day.
As far as fios tech support reps on the phone go, the majority of the good ones move on to other things like their internal help desk or start supporting field techs with network issues. A vast majority of their reps are former employee’s of call center sweat shops where service level and scripted average handle time is king. Even though verizon preaches customer service in the call center it is all about average handle time. Training gives you a nice over view of the technology and and only some of the back end systems that affect a customers service. Some times you will get reps that seem to know more than others and those reps are usually true geeks that are just interested in technology in general. For example you would figure that a “video trained” rep would know that the hdmi video and audio can be disabled/enabled in the hidden user menu on the hd or dvr stb. But alas that is not mentioned in training or a widely know fact. So you call because you have picture but no sound on your new hd plasma and and wait for the tech on the phone to spend about 10 minutes resetting your stb before determining the box is defective and setting up a dispatch when all you had to do was press power on the front of the stb to turn it off and immediately press menu a couple of times to get the user menu then select hdmi options then enable sound. All of a 3 minute process since you actually have to get up off the couch and go to the stb. Configuring the actiontec’s firewall to allow vpn connections, hosting a game server, or even how to suggest changing the subnet mask on the voip router to not have conflicts on your home network, guess what, you either learn that on your own, punt the call of to actiontec if they are open or just flat out give the official company line “that is not supported”. It is no big deal to send out a field tech if it is warranted, but at $380 a truck roll you will quickly find out if it is really warranted. The you get ahold of the burnt out rep who just doesnt care because they deal with http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff319/m1k3j0n3s/IMG_0004.jpg and because of that number verizon has a special group of employees who we will call phone nazis that their only job is to snitch you out to supervisors if you are on a long call (calls over 10 minutes, yes 10 minutes is a long call) or heaven forbid you have to put a cx on hold for more than 2 minutes to walk across the floor to video room where the equipment customers have actually lives and breathes to actually use what the customers use and to be able to answer the “little” questions that will arise because face it, fios is new and not every one is familiar with every nuance. Ok, yes I ranted. Fios is a great NEW product and is having growing pains and hopefully it will become widespread and common enough even amongst the actual consumers that it will become common knowledge that if you have no dialtone, just like your pots line try a different phone first, then unplug them all, then try one at a time or if more than one service is not working check that back up battery unit first!
I too just signed up for a Fios bundle and am very unhappy. I had Direct before and it was expensive but at least there was something to watch! I was promised more channels and that is totally untrue unless I want to watch VOD and spend $3.99 to watch a movie. I call Verizon and after an hour of trying to speak to customer service and tech support it didn’t solve any problems I’m having excepting spending more money to get the Max channels. I still can’t figure out how to get the closed capturing back on the set as I had before Fios and I can’t figure out how to use my DVD player. It screws up the set anytime I try to use it. They reset my tv and turned it off for about an hour trying to get the cc back but it didn’t help so now I have to call them back. Also my laptop is running alot slower than when I had dsl. They keep assuring me that it should run so much faster and I can’t seem to convince them that it’s not and I too am extremly upset that no one mentioned to me that if I was unhappy with FIOS that once you switch over to them there is no going back!! I will not be recommending Fios to anyone – ever.
Just found this post.
I favor keeping the parenthesis.
Area codes were never optional, except before long distance dialing came into effect. The only thing new is having to dial one for your own area code.
That problem (overlays) could have been dealt with, as Europe did, by adding one digit to phone numbers which would have added nearly 100,000,000 combinations, obviated the need for overlays and even allowed all of NYC to be returned to the 212 area code.
Short of that, there is no need for the “1” before the area codes. Telephone switches are now computers that can easily recognize that the first 3 digits of a 10 digit number are an area code. Cell phones do it. VOIP phones do it. Verizon should be capable.
I use a VOIP provider that allows me to set one area code (my choice and changeable by me online) as only requiring 7 digit dialing.
I recently signed up for FiOS Internet and FiOS TV, and have since canceled Dish Network. I must say that overall the experience has been good and the technology is exciting. However it hasn’t been without hiccups. I had video playback issues, so a tech came out to fix it. That process was satisfactory, but calling in to customer service is a nightmare. Hopefully any service issues will be ironed out soon. I recently wrote an article on my experiences with Verizon FiOS TV, so feel free to check it out.
The internet has been great for me. I canceled phone service from Verizon and use Sunrocket VOIP without any issues.
I apologize for the typo.. I realized it right when I hit the submit button.. What is minusing?? I meant to say adjusting lol
I just recently switched to Verizon from Cablevision. At first everything seemed great.. I was going to save a good deal of money and get some more internet speed. I got installed a little over a month ago. In the first week I experienced a video outage (nothing too terrible) and I let it go.. Not too much later (about 3-4 days) my internet went out. I called tech support and after about 45 minutes of banter I was basically told that I can’t be helped because everything seemed to be working fine from his end. I am still without internet service and my tv’s blitzed a few times. What makes me more upset is I recently found out that my copper lines and my junction box have been completely removed so I can’t even revert back to a landline phone from this point. I asked two different reps at Verizon and they said “Once you have fios you can’t go back to dsl or landline”.. I wish they would have told me WHEN THEY SOLD IT TO ME!!!
Now here’s the biggest rub… I was promised to have all of my services work out to be around $108 a month.. I asked a few people (including a supervisor) and this was verified. I got my bill and it was over $160!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was an activation fee for my computer of $19.95 – ok, I can deal with that… Even trying to make sense of this bill and minusing out prorates this is working out to be $120 a month.. I just called them a few hours ago and they said that $108 wasn’t the amount that I was quoted… ???? !!!! ???? I now wish I had heeded my instinct and not strayed from Cablevision. Let’s see how I do with getting out of this Verizon contract.
VERIZON IS CRAP!!! 23 days and counting w/o TV service!!! I already had Verizon FIOS Internet and Phone. I wanted to get the bundle which also included the TV service. Verizon sent a tech on 6-6-07 the tech showed up, didn’t get the tv working, and said he’d be back the next day, leaving wires hanging out all over. 6-7-07 no tech showed up…second day my wife missed work. 6-9-07 another tech came, called Verizon from my house, and the first solutions person hung up on him, because they said he was lying about a problem. He called back and talked to a supervisor, who said our service would be up and running within a couple of hours. Nothing. 6-10-07 my wife stayed home from work for the fourth time, tech came, but said everything was hooked up correctly and it was someone else’s problem. One more missed Verizon appointment, and another tech came, but said there was no problem.
40-50 hours have been spent on the phone w/ Verizon, trying to get service. They tell us to call 2-3 times per day to see if it is working. They have reset our boxes countless times. They have replaced our order about 15 times. —-IT HAS BEEN 23 DAYS WITH NO TV SERVICE!!!!! —-It is now 6-28-07, and I am doing my routine calls trying to get service, which they keep guaranteeing me. I knew I should have placed an order for another service about 2-1/2 weeks ago. By the way, my wife has lost out on $900.00—yes, $900.00 if you add up the lost wages for the 6 days she has missed work to meet TV techs at our house…three of those days, Verizon people never even showed up!!! This is the worst run company I have ever seen. I can’t even talk to someone who can give me an answer. I’m finished w/ Verizon for good!!!
I tried Verizon Fios for about 3 months. The first 2 months were ok but not really that great with regards to high speed internet. I starterd getting problems on the 3rd month, both video and internet. About 3 in less than 3 weeks. With my old Cable co. I think, I had to call for tech support only about 4-6times in 5 years. Having Vonage (VoIP) for my home phone made matters worst. No internet – no phone. I told tech support about this and he just said there’s nothing he can do about it because I don’t have phone service with Verizon (I think he has not haerd about internet phone). At one time he told me to reset the modem/router when there is no signal coming in including video. He then told me to connect my computer to the modem. I told him I can do that not as my computers connects to the internet via wireless adapters. At the end he told me that they will try to solve the problem with in 24 hrs. — What??? and someone will contact me. About 3 hrs later, nobody has called me to give an update. I tried to call tech support again but had a hard time getting in touch with anybody. Finally, I tried billing and asked how to cancel the service. The lady that I talked to however, transferred my call to somebody from tech support. This time a more knowledgeable guy took my call. He told me that there (after some test that he performed) seems to be a break in the line (?) leading to my house and he is sending somebody to check it. About an hour later somebody came over and determined that a line was disconnected at the main box (as what he told me) and service was back in about 10 minutes. I did not have to reset the modem, etc.
BOTTOM LINE? Verizon Tech Support Stinks. It was easier to cancel my account than to get tech support. I cancelled my account the very next day. I’m back with my old reliable cable company and at half the price.
most of your problems sound like inside wiring issues especially those that involve vod,loose connectors,and yes even those nice twist on super special connectors you bought at radio shack.your problem is ingress.and your alarm should work with fios notify your alarm company that your service is not voip,these people are always under the impression that fios is voip.as far as alarm wiring we are not responcible for alarm systems just delivering dial tone.
We just had FIOS installed. The salesman who came to our house said we needed Windows XP and had to up grade our Windows 98. He said you could get it off the internet free. Wrong!
We have spent $276.00 so far and are not happy.
Our aol email could be kept for free we were told. Well my computer tech. (from Staples) erased all my programs on my computer in order to get enough space to install the XP. Our old aol program as well.
We were told conflicting advise as to whether we needed to have aol installed before we were hooked up with FIOS. We had been dial up previously. Everything was working wonderful.
Now we have FIOS and I can bring up my aol mail page,(using internet explorer) see the messages but cannot open them. Tried calling Verizon and had tech support via the internet. They could not find the problem. We had internet help from Aol and they could not help us. The computer freezes up for 3 minutes when I try to read an email. It does not respond to alt. control delete.
I am so frustrated because of all the time we have wasted on trying to get our computer ready for FIOS, and now cannot look at or send emails.
Any suggestions?