 Review by altermatt 
member for 9.3 years, 2335 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 220 days ago
 White Plains,Westchester,NY
 $100 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 30 days "Fast, reliable, great bundle price that they renewed" "Must have landline to get decent bundle; surcharges; MANY billing errors at first; mail service spotty" "Great value; watch your bills."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Can't believe it's taken this long for me to post a review of my FIOS service. Switched from Verizon DSL two years ago. MAJOR billing issues for the first few month---a story that MANY users echoed at the time. But they seem to have gotten their act together about this, and I was lucky enough to "know someone who knows someone" and finally got things worked out. So much so that when my "introductory pricing" was up, a gentle nudge (and the fact that cable was offering a deal) got me a continuation of the pricing via a monthly discount.
The install went smoothly, with a fairly savvy installer who accommodated requests. The ONT was the new smaller size and went in a closet space and was done neatly. Quickly got my promised 20/5 (19.7/5.20) with little tweaking and no need to install any of their software. Service has been quite reliable. A recent email outage, though, repeated the old negative experience with Verizon tech support refusing to acknowledge an outage that is widely reported by users for quite a while.
The promised free trial of the DVR took three months of arguing to get; when I did, I was sure I'd return it after the free trial but loved it too much to give it up! The $150 gift card promotion took a while to receive, but did come in as promised and was most welcome.
The big caveat for new users is to WATCH YOUR BILLS. When I signed up, many users reported serious billing problems, and I was no exception, with discounts not applied, offers not fulfilled, extra erroneous charges showing up. Neighbors who have more recently gotten FIOS are reporting much less problem with this.
I wish I could get, instead of my Triple Play, a Double Play of TV and Internet without phone at the same discounted per-service price I'm paying now (comes out to about $34/each service) so I could just go to an unlimited wireless phone plan, but that isn't offered here AFAIK---only Internet and Phone, which seems counter-intuitive.
My other big gripe is the many surcharges and fees that are tacked on to FIOS bills that aren't on cable bills. VZ says they are charged gov't. fees as a telco that cable companies aren't charged, but to my mind, that's a cost of doing business and should be reflected in the advertised price.
Other than those nits, I love my FIOS service (as I loved my DSL service), am thrilled to avoid cable altogether, and would recommend it highly to others.
20/5 triple play, $95/mo. plus surcharges, fees and taxes, two STBs plus Home Media DVR (getting a partial rebate each month on that), Freedom Essentials with no extra premium channels, Actiontec RevE router.
LATER EDIT: System just nagged me to update, and reading over my original review, pretty much everything still holds: reliable service (fairly consistent 25/5, which was my tier when I signed up---for a while got "fluff" close to 30 but it's gone), billing issues now all resolved (fingers crossed), tech support still wanting, and with some of my promotional pricing expiring again, I'm concerned that if my "contact" is no longer around, I might be paying quite a bit more soon. I mentioned that I had a major hassle getting the free DVR trial, and that despite my doubts, I ended up hooked and paying for it at a good discount, which is expiring. I don't know how I lived without it  ; it's addictive. They have recently nuked some channels; so far nothing critical to me (on the Extreme TV tier). And my annoyance with the surcharges and fees continues unabated---latest bill has a note that the notorious FUSF fee is undergoing changes and to watch for them---my guess is that ain't good news.
So all my kudos and caveats still pretty much apply. I'd still highly recommend FIOS over cable barring some incredible deal from cable.
UPDATE 10/2012: The last month or so has seen a serious decrease in mail performance, to the point of unusability, with little response until last night, when it seemed to get back to normal---time will tell. Also unhappy with price raises and channel changes, and both caller ID and caller ID on TV occasionally not working. But overall, still think this is a fabulous value compared to competition and continue to recommend FIOS to friends and family.
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