Thursday, September 27, 2007

Verizon DSL Nightmare

Tuesday I was called to install Verizon DSL on a young lady's new computer. I arrived at 10 AM and went to work installing the DSL filters on her 4 phones. Two were wall phones but Verizon did not include wall phone filters. I removed them from the wall and told her to contact Verizon and they would send them to her. I popped in the CD into the drive and started the install. I noticed from the start that the procedure was going very very slow. Others I have installed took about one hour, this one took about one hour forty-five minutes. When finished I went to the Windows mail program for the set-up. I could get mail to send but not to receive. Another half hour passed with no results. I told the lady to call Verizon and ask for the two wall phone filters to be sent and also get them to run a line check on the modem. Later in the day she called to tell me that Verizon does not send wall phone filters out any longer. I ask if they run the line test, she replied no as she could not understand the heavy accent that the lady from Verizon had. I told her I would return and call Verizon for her the next day. I arrived at her home at 1 PM and looked at the mail program again. It was set up correctly as I had looked at the Verizon help page from my home. It still would not receive email. I placed the call to Verizon and waited only a short while when I was connected to a very nice lady with not to bad of an accent. I explained the problem with the slow connection and email. She took control remotely of the computer and began to change settings in the browser. After changing alot of settings she suggested that I install Fire Fox Browser. The computer was downloading slower than dial-up, same as before. She then went to work on the email program. She told me it was configured correctly but would I mind if she put me on hold for five to six minutes? What could I say but yes ! After five minutes went by she returned and ask if she could put me on hold again while she had her supervisor look at the problem, I said OK, what else could I say ! She came back on the phone and said everything was set up correctly and it must be the fault of the Verizon server. She told me to wait three days and if it still was slow and or the email was not working to call back. I told the customer to keep trying it each day and if it was no faster to call me and I would return. I returned home 3 1/2 hours after arriving at the customers home. What a nightmare to say the least. I know of one other computer that is acting the same way. I commented on it in a past Blog entry. It was found that when a known perfect working computer was hooked to the DSL line it performed as slow as the original computer. I do not think that Verizon will fix this problem but I hope I'm wrong for the customer's sake. Both of these people can get cable internet, but at a much higher cost. If you have the same problem after installing Verizon DSL be prepaired to spend about four hours on the phone. You have 30 days to cancel the service, so keep the box and all that came in it. If you have a wall phone get ready to shell out more dollars at Radio Shack for filters. This is not a Vista problem as one has XP for the OS the other is running Vista. I'll post again when I find out the outcome to this problem.