Misc. Ramblings

Generally speaking, I've had very good DSL service from Verizon, as compared to (hawk, spit) Time/Warner Oceanic Cable (see my last post about Verizon here).

Recently, Verizon offered an increased speed to 3.0mbs down / 768kps up for $10 more than I've been paying per month. While it isn't the 15 mps that I've been hoping for via fiber, it is a doubling of speed so I decided to sign up.

This is where it gets difficult. Verizon is apparently divided up into at least three different divisions. They have one each for telephone, Internet, and wireless. While you would think, being one company, their sales people would be able to provide seamless service across all divisions (or at least be able to transfer me to the next division, as needed). But, you would be wrong.

Perhaps I assume too much, in this world of instant access, that communications across divisions shouldn't be an obstacle. But in my case, it seems to be.

I called the local Verizon sales office to sign-up for the higher speed DSL and to also enroll in a special "package" deal that includes long-distance. Said package would give me the speed increase but actually cost me $2 less, in total per month, than I am paying now.

After answering all kinds of questions about the package I was told I would need to call another number to sign-up for the DSL but that she could do the package sale. So we go through that process, which included my switching from another long-distance carrier to Verizon. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line the Verizon sales person got the wrong telephone number to switch over.

I didn't know about the wrong number until I tried to switch carriers (which required going through a third-party verification service) and they wanted to confirm the number I was changing service on. Of course, the number they gave me was wrong so I was told the transfer would not go through and I had to call Verizon back again.

So, I did. Of course, I didn't get the same sales representative that I talked to earlier so I had to re-explain what I wanted to do. The new sales person said he needed to let the original sales person know about the problem and that she would need to call me back in five minutes.

I waited an hour and then decided to call the Internet division so I could at least get the DSL speed increase set-up. That was done in less than five minutes so Verizon's Internet side seems to be running just fine.

As of four hours later, with no call back from the telephone division I decided to call them and explain, for a third time, what I wanted to do. This time, the person taking the call had no problem is setting up the long-distance transfer.

I hope, all is now well. I can see the speed increase already and tested it at dslreports.com (one of many places to test transfer speed). Although I'm only averaging a little over 2.0mbs it's still pretty fast. But I guess I'll have to wait until the bills come to check to make sure everything requested was done.