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.
We upgraded to the FIOS bundle package at the end of December. Overall it seems to be working fine however after it was hooked up we found out that our DVD-R and VCR was not able to record different programs other than the one we were watching. After I called the service tech, he was of no help, and told me to call the customer help for my DVD-R and VCR. I was able to rewire my cable into the DVD-R and then the cable box and can record different programs on my DVD-R but only up to Channel 49. Does anyone know if there is a solution to this other than paying extra to rent a DVR from Verizon?
Ok,
Here in Portland Oregon FIOS TV was release a couple weeks ago. I have had FIOS interent for several months and have liked it. As soon as the TV version was available I called in and spoke to a rep. I spoke with him for an hour to make sure everything was going to right.
Here is what he told me;
I get three free connects. Any more then that and I would have to pay for the connection. Ok, why they would not want me to have the best experience in beyond me. Then I was informed that I need a converter box (I currently do not need one for my coaxial cable) to see the digital signals. So for my main TV I would get the free box but the other 2 TV’s would not need a box and I would only be able to see the first 99 channels. That is fine. So the tech sows up. First he smells to high heaven of cigarette smoke. He then informs me that “no sir, sorry your were misinformed, in order to see any FIOS TV, you need a cable box on EVERY TV.” So this means that my TV in the kitchen that hangs from the wall needs a box, the TV in the bedroom needs a box and of course the TV in the living room needs a box. And of course, all this means that I will need to pay to rent an ugly box to sit on my kitchen counter. I DON”T THINK SO. I did not get the FIOS TV. And as I sit and type this out, I have been on hold with verizon “customer service” for 27.52 minutes. oh, and did I mention their hold commercials are broken? It goes in and out like it is not tunned in.
I had FiOS installed last week and since then I cannot dial out to local numbers such as 410 or 443. Has anyone else experienced this problem? I’m also experiencing a problem where only some of my email messages are coming through.
I signed up for FIOS internet – was one of the first in my area – 3 years ago. Customer service was really good and they seemed to have people who were available for the new FIOS customers. Eventually I got the triple play. A couple of days ago I swiched back to Cablevision – and am even paying a bit more per month – because Verison’s customer service is beyond horrible. If you have a problem you have to endure extraordinarily long wait times and then you can never be sure you will be speaking to anyone who has enough knowledge to help you, I was a big fan in the beginning, but now I tell anyone who will listen not to sign on.
I have had FIOS triple play for 6 months now and have unresolved problems with each service:
TV – Channel changing freezes, on occassion, for 10 to 30 seconds. Most standard functions are prone to freezing. I am still using my old Comcast remotes because they work better. More functionality and the Page Up and Page Down really now work. The only feature I cannot get is widgets which is a stupid add on to a remote that does not work.
Internet – Also freezing occurs.
Home phone – no freezing but they took away an intercom service I paid for because of FIOS.
Service – This is the worst part of Verizon. They do not seem to want to talk to you and when you get through after hours of dead phone time they have no solutions. They do not seem ready for this business.
I do not know how to get my problems resolved without a law suit.
Verizon has the worst customer service on the planet. That being said, my FIOS tv died this afternoon. The guide is displayed on the screen. When you selec a channel…………..nothing. Router and cable box have both been reset . No go. Anyone have any ideas before I subject myself to their customer service department?
We’ve had Fios for about 8 days and at the moment really wished we had stayed with Comcast (which is remarkable because it was wildly intermittent.) The internet and phone seem fine. The issue is the picture quality. On analog stations, the quality is unwatchable…static, snow, shadows, goasting…we have had service reps here 5 out of 8 days and they can’t seem to figure out the issue. They claim that our Fujitsu Plasma, is the issue. Wondering if anyone knows if there are settings, alternative connections or something else that might resolve this issue. It seems to be doing it on all of the 5 sets, but is worst on the best of the panels. The HD channels are OK, but not nearly as clear as Comcast when their service worked. We’re not very knowledgeable about the details of the technology, but are trying to learn. So far we’ve invested an enormous amount of time between trying to get Verizon on the phone, talking to phone reps when we finally have been able to navigate through the myriad of voice response menus, dealing with the service reps and attempting various solutions independently. Any thoughts on how to resolve the fuzziness of the picture would be warmly welcomed. We like the concept of the triple play, but are about ready to throw the whole thing out if we can’t get a watchable picture.
We got FIOS a few days back. Everything was fine until we wanted to watch a video (an actual one). First, it wouldn’t play. Then when we tried to switch to the TV we found that our sound had gone. Then the screen went blank. So, I called for help. After getting bounced through their automated call system for about 10 minutes, I got a recording that said that their 24/7 help line was closed until Monday AM (it was Saturday night). Sounded impossible, so I did it again and had the same result. So, I called the number for Verizon online support. I burned another 20 minutes until I got a person to speak to, but the person I spoke with explained (understandably) that she could not help with FIOS, but would connect me to someone who could. She was as good as her word. Well almost. This time I was entered into a new automated system that put me through what seemed like endless loops of questions until I finally was directed to an agent. Ended up, however, that to speak to a FIOS technical support agent would entail an additional 25 minute wait. I had already burned more than 3/4 of an hour. The recording offered the opportunity to stay on the phone and wait to speak to an agent or to leave my information and receive a call in the same 25 minutes. I opted for the later, but 25 minutes later the call didn’t come in. An hour later it didn’t come either. In fact, it never did.
When we signed up for FIOS it sounded like a good idea, but the impression I have is that there technical support services are a mess and it appears as if we will be needing it. We will probably drop the service rather than endure the endless frustration of dealing with Verizon.
I have recently had FIOS TV installed and it has been a nightmare. I had been getting ‘ghosting’ on the screen and told: “It’s the BX cable in your house being too close to their cables. Moving the BX fixed the TV side on Video 1 and then the problem then migrated to Video 2 (DVD) and 3 (VCR). I was told to disconnect my VCR and DVD. Of course that would eliminate the problem. The next step offered was to get a new TV – my 5th visit is tomorrow. Wish me luck.
I have put countless hours in trying to resolve my Verizon FIOS TV problems. My problem currently is that I cannot call technical support for service because they have it in their system somewhere that my service is disconnected. My Verizon Fios TV, Internet, phone all work fine (mostly). My bill comes every month and I pay on time. I would like to upgrade my DVR but haven’t been able to get it to happen in months. I do want to talk to them about the dvr getting automatically reset periodically… sometimes daily… where it then stops all the recordings. I did reach tech support a while back and they said I had a “ghost dvr”. It does strange things. Tech support said they need to send a code down. They got strange code and could not send the fix down to the box. So, they must put in an order for Video to fix it in 24 hours. Within 24 hours video calls and says my account is “suspended” for non-payment and I need to talk to collections. I talk to Collections the next day and they say nothing is wrong with my account and transfer directly to Tech Support. Tech Support says obviously nothing is wrong with your account because you were transfered from Collections. Tech Support says they can’t fix it. They need to put in an order for Video to fix it with 24 hours and it goes in this loop all over again. Video cannot do anythng they say because the account is suspended but none of the other parts of Verizon see any problems. So, we talked to the Problem Solution Center (his name was Sindey). So two days later they call and say they cannot do anything because the account is suspended again. This goes on and on and on. It’s no one’s problem. You just get passed on and on and on. I saw a verizon guy out in our neighborhood and tried to fix it that way. I got the phone number for his boss. He wasn’t going to put in an “order” but a different way that would get someone out to fix it. He never showed up the next day. I called him again. He appologized… he isn’t going to do anything for me, either.