Review by sullim4 
UPDATED: 262 days ago
member for 6.5 years, 590 visits, last login: 87 days ago
 Redmond,King,WA
 $50 per month (12 month contract)
 about 9 days
 "Consistently fast speed, rock-solid connection, room to upgrade"
 "Transitioning from dry-loop DSL is unclear"
 "A pain to get installed, but worth it."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Had a fiber drop installed in my apartment in September of 2008. Ordering wasn't available until February 2009 because it took awhile for the contractors to get the infrastructure in place. I placed my order on February 10th, and had an installation scheduled for February 18.
I leave work early on the 18th and come home to a voicemail from Verizon stating that there's a problem with my order. It turns out that the system placed my order under my dry loop phone number (At the time, I was a DSL customer). Given that I was just ordering data service, they had to cancel this order, and issue a new one. After playing phone tag for about two hours, they punted my install to the next day. This had the unfortunate consequence of leaving me without internet service, as they pulled my DSL circuit the night before around midnight. While I was very pleased that the service center actually did call me back when they promised to, I was displeased that I lost out on the promo that I signed up online under (1 free month + no activation). I got them to waive activation, but they refused to give me my first month for free. I wasn't going to argue given the fact that they moved my install time up, though in retrospect I probably should have.
Fast forward to the next day, and the tech did not arrive within the promised install window (1-3 PM). I call the same people I dealt with the day before, and they say the tech is on the way. He arrives at 4:30pm and gets to work. Very knowledgeable guy and knows his stuff. We use the existing cat5e cabling that was previously used as phone line throughout the house. I installed a cat5e jack where I wanted the router. Install finishes up in about 2.5 hours, most of which was spent mounting and installing the ONT.
The service itself is great. I ordered 10/2 and that's exactly what I get, regardless of the time of day. I've only had the service for a couple of weeks, but it's as rock solid as the DSL I had. Almost boring to talk about - nothing really interesting happens, everything just works. I did replace the Westell router they provided with my Buffalo one flashed with dd-wrt. This was way more difficult than it needed to be. Verizon's dhcp server didn't want to release my old IP, so I had to call them to get my Buffalo to pull a new IP. There's also plenty of room to grow in terms of speed. I figured I'd try out 10/2 to see if it was sufficient for my needs, and it's fine.
Given Verizon's billing issues, I waited to post this review until I got my first bill, to verify that everything was OK. Surprisingly, no issues. Other than the ordering experience, I'm very pleased with FiOS. I wish I could drop DirecTV so that I could jump on the TV bandwagon. Alas, Sunday Ticket prevents me from doing so.
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