Oye. My Verizon installer and his backup crew finally left a little after 9pm. We’re still noti n business yet. They have to replace a 1000-foot underground fiber optic cable, and after trying in the dark, finally gave up.
A different work crew with that experience will return tomorrow, my presence is not required. After I get back from work tomorrow (sometime around 6pm), my installer will meet me at the house to finish the job, if everything goes okay in the afternoon.
Although Verizon didn’t complete the install, I’m somewhat intrigued by them. Granted, I think this was certainly their problem, and think they could have identified this flooded box issue more timely. Although the installer showed up a bit later than expected, he never left the area from 1pm to 9pm, except for a late lunch. Verizon brought out additional people in the late evening to try to resolve this issue for both myself and my neighbor sharing that junction box.
The dynamic in play here is that Verizon is trying to make a good impression on new customers. My neighbor has the service for a week, and now he has an outage. I can’t get my new service installed. Verizon is making a big push to supplant Comcast cable in this area. If we, as new cuatomers, got fed up with Verizon, we would switch back to the warm arms of cable with no chance of returning to Verizon again. Bad word of mouth would certainly take place.
Based on past experiences, unfortunately, Comcast would not have done the same level of effort if I was a regular customer. They would have sent out crew after crew for days, fixing one piece at a time. Then again, once I’m a regularly-paying Verizon customer, and this kind of outage happens again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon behaves likes the cable company too. It’s the nature for companies to get lackadaisical about their customers. Only now at the end of my tenure with them has Comcast unfortunately shown any interest in offering me any deals to save me money, even when I called months ago to inquire.
I hope my Verizon service is up and running tomorrow night. For now, my wife is watching cable tv, and I’m online using my cable internet.