Verizon FiOS → Re: Outage Tampa -- Purposely Crippling Their VR System

I thought about it. Yes, I realize there's a lot of infrastructure to modify! I get it! Now tell me why I can't get to a CSR when I call, or why, given the circumstances, that the VR system can't accommodate a simple message beginning with "Attention Tampa Bay area users ..."

You won't hear me defending Verizon's phone support. It's a nightmare to navigate, and you almost never get to the right person after making very careful menu selections. I do everything I can to avoid calling, because it's an experiment in frustration and futility. Typical call has me bounced around to several people before reaching someone in the right department, in the right region, who can help.

Just plan AWFUL.Because that brush is too broad. You don't want to tell 250,000 subscribers in a region about downtime, when only a tiny percentage will be affected today.

Maintenance windows can be spread over days or weeks, and you don't want a "downtime" message greeting customers for weeks at a time.

If the VR system can retrieve my records based on my phone number and it's between midnight and say 4 AM, I don't think they would be alarming too many customers. If a customer is calling in during that time period, I don't believe he's calling to casually chat to someone. It's not hard to anticipate given the myriad of interconnected Oracle tables that VZ has. Someone at Verizon has got to start thinking like a late night end-user who just lost his streaming video! But streaming video seems to be in direct conflict with FIOS TV, and perhaps this is why VZ has to be broken up.

Now if you want to hear "being concerned" about outages, I have called in the past and talked to a CSR that says to me, "I'm sorry sir, but our computers are down and I can't determine what the problem is. Can you call back later?"

It seems that the only good support left after laying off many experienced employees are the field installers. I guess Verizon is not making enough profit on its investments -- NOT!

Who is going to continually update account records as the upgrade is completed on one router (or group of routers) and the engineer moves on to the next?

And with a customer base as large as Verizon's, do you really think that would happen in realtime-- or close enough to realtime to be useful?

I don't.Yeah, they want rid of their old-school union workers like they want rid of regulated copper.

Is there ever enough "profit" in a public company with shareholders?