Maryland Grills Verizon Over repair delays and complaint spikes... Tipped by ThrowDemsOut 
Maryland is applying the heat to Verizon after complaints exceeded the state standard for missed service appointments for five months running. Complaints have spiked by some 50%, and some users have waited weeks for telephone repair. [Verizon VP and counsel Leigh A. Hyer] could not identify the reason for the delays and missed appointments but minimized the problems as "rare exceptions" to an otherwise good service record in Maryland. "We don't believe there is a service-quality crisis," she said. State regulators are holding another hearing and are demanding internal documentation from Verizon showing how many workers are assigned to landline repairs and what their support processes are. Verizon is fighting the release of that data. The Washington Post misses the bigger story and the likely cause: allegations have surfaced in recent months from union workers, former executives and Virginia's PSC accusing Verizon of neglecting their copper infrastructure in order to focus manpower and finances on FiOS.
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 jammmin
join:2000-12-14
Upper Marlboro, MD | Disgusting Within the past year, I had two telephone disruptions.
The first one took Verizon a week to fix(no phone service for over a week). This was a neighborhood problem.
The second disruption lasted for over two week with no phone.service(inside problem). Took two weeks to finally get it fixed.
Disgusting to say the least | |
|  | | | Re: Disgusting LOL.... so much for land lines being more reliable than VOIP. 4 years of using voip the only disruption that I had was a day when SR went out of business. It last me a day because as soon as rumors started I switch to vonage. | |
| | |  FiLPremium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD | Re: Disgusting Your situation is one out of a million... | |
| | | |  SlidetboneMazin GoPremium
join:2002-11-10
Land O Lakes, FL | Re: Disgusting DITTO! | |
| | | | | | Make that two out of a million. And the states' public service commissions may know of a few others.
My copper landline was out of service for nearly four weeks here in Brooklyn, NY. It's old copper plant in Park Slope's rear yards, and much of my neighborhood's plant dates from about 1947. So any rainfall has caused failures and outages these last fifteen years. (I've had my landline service now for a quarter century.)
Verizon has so reduced manpower for copper repair that it took them 26 days to finally access and repair their own equipment running through rear yards in a neighborhood of townhouses. The manpower that used to do such basic things as *make* *telephone* *calls* to arrange access to Verizon equipment located on private lands has been decimated by the FIOS rollout. You bet I complained to the NYS PSC, but only after a week of repeated failures to restore my service. And this Brooklynite is lucky: the technicians are terrific, capable, smart people. This is a managerial decision by Verizon to "dis-invest" in copper infrastructure maintenance and repairs. | |
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 elbm
join:2000-08-03
Reisterstown, MD | Not going to spend the money This spring I was at a symposium that Verizon put on for it's field forces where an upper level Verizon exec spoke. In a nut shell he said that regardless of customer satisfaction Verizon looses just as many customers to cable/voip/others in areas where customers satisfaction levels are high as where the levels are low. And to this he said VZ was not going to invest any more than a minimum in copper maintenance from here on out because VZ will not reap any benefit from those monies spent.
This is not a huge change in the mind set of the past few years. Verizon for years has only been interested in clearing repair tickets from the system versus actually repairing anything. Cable maintenance is a joke, no maintenance is being done. Techs are only swapping/cutting away/wiring around/ect as opposed to fixing the issues in the cable. This is because all VZ is interested in is jobs per day no matter how they get done. Which has lead to the chronic deterioration of the copper plant. Like it or not copper is going to be around for a long time, fios or no fios, and copper customers pay their bills too. It is about time the PSC pays attention to what is going on. The average repair time have been steadily increasing-- some customers are waiting weeks to get their phones repaired. Verizon's answer to this is to have automated test systems delete repair orders as soon as the line "looks" normal to the computer with out a tech visit out verify. Many troubles are "swinging" trouble that come and go, others are "wet" troubles that dry up and other are not able to be seen by the auto test systems.
Verizon says that "OH, it is only a couple hundred complaints compared to our millions of lines...." That is true, but most people are not aware of the PSC nor are they aware they can complain. I would imagine after the report in the Sun the PSC should see a large spike in reports about Verizon. | |
| | Whome
join:2005-10-10
Newbury Park, CA | Re: Not going to spend the money Just in case someone is thinking that the post is from a union person trying to score points. They are correct, I was also at that meeting and I am not "Craft" (Union). | |
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1 edit | Re: Not going to spend the money said by Whome:Just in case someone is thinking that the post is from a union person trying to score points. They are correct, I was also at that meeting and I am not "Craft" (Union). If he is just looking to score points, then why is The State of Maryland grilling VZ? Could it be that they have a mountain of complaints from VZ customers, one that just grows with no sign of abatement? Could it be that these problems have started to negatively affect vital services?
I know that VZ's lack of interest in meeting agreements on upgrades and SLA's are an issue up here with the county emergency center. It's causing real problems, too.
Could it be that VZ has gone a bridge too far in its machinations to extract profits and pump up stock prices.
Could it be that you were at the same meeting, representing management who is making these decisions?
On edit: Why are the insights and expert opinions of the people who work with the infrastructure, every day, and intimately know the cause of the problems worthy of being discounted, because they are union workers? Would a random wino, from the street, have more credibility in your humble estimation? | |
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approval from:
hambone42
| Re: Not going to spend the money said by TScheisskopf:said by Whome:Just in case someone is thinking that the post is from a union person trying to score points. They are correct, I was also at that meeting and I am not "Craft" (Union). If he is just looking to score points, then why is The State of Maryland grilling VZ? Could it be that they have a mountain of complaints from VZ customers, one that just grows with no sign of abatement? Could it be that these problems have started to negatively affect vital services? I know that VZ's lack of interest in meeting agreements on upgrades and SLA's are an issue up here with the county emergency center. It's causing real problems, too. Could it be that VZ has gone a bridge too far in its machinations to extract profits and pump up stock prices. Could it be that you were at the same meeting, representing management who is making these decisions? On edit: Why are the insights and expert opinions of the people who work with the infrastructure, every day, and intimately know the cause of the problems worthy of being discounted, because they are union workers? Would a random wino, from the street, have more credibility in your humble estimation? 
What I believe the person to whom you replied was trying to say:
Just in case you think that the person making the above post is simply a CWA shill: I can confirm that what he stated is correct, as I was also present at the meeting.
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Granted, the usage by that poster was incorrect, there is a reason people have critical reading skills. Perhaps you should sharpen yours? | |
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| | | "Verizon's answer to this is to have automated test systems delete repair orders as soon as the line "looks" normal to the computer with out a tech visit out verify."
I had this exact problem happen here in northern VA. Phone and DSL would go in and out of service. I was pretty sure that it was due to a squirel's nest on the pole. I knew for sure that it wasn't an interior problem and could be verified at the NID.
But, so while I took a day off of work, Verizon decided to cancel the tech without telling me. Oh, in case you didn't know, Verizon is really cute by not giving a 4 hour window. You get the day they're coming and that's it. I was on the phone that evening explaining to a Tier II that I was royally annoyed that the service guy didn't show up and why the heck, when I called earlier in the day to verify that dispatch was indeed sending someone out, wasn't I told that the ticket was cancelled? She suggested that I submit another ticket and start over. I asked her how, by doing this, I wouldn't have the same thing happen again. She was stumped by this. On to Tier III.
So the infrastructure historically payed for by the taxpayer is being neglected. I have fled to cable internet, voip, and cell phone. | |
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| | Problem solved Lobbyist to regulatory committee, here's a nice lump sum cash donation to your "campaign". Committee, what was the problem we were suppose to solve again? Can't think of it. Solution found. | |
| | | Five straight months of bad service?!?!? Yeah, I think Verizon is trying to tell us something.
Maryland's PSC is weak after the BGE fiasco in which they did nothing. Nothing will come of this. | |
| Reviews:
 ·Stelera Wireless
| about time... About time a state applied the pliers to VZ's balls. I love to see those execs squirm and whimper while their spin doctors whirl away like a ballerina in front of a shotgun.
I'd like to see Texas put the squeeze on at&t here locally. They are dropping the ball on DSL coverage, not to mention some QOS issues. | |
| | | | Re: about time... said by NightHawke:About time a state applied the pliers to VZ's balls. I love to see those execs squirm and whimper while their spin doctors whirl away like a ballerina in front of a shotgun. I'd like to see Texas put the squeeze on at&t here locally. They are dropping the ball on DSL coverage, not to mention some QOS issues. At least AT&T in its U-Verse deployment isn't ignoring its existing infrastructure. U-Verse may be neutered, but the technology is irrelevant-- You cannot deploy a new technology, be it FTTH or FTTC, and ignore the more prolific existing infrastructure. If you have to ignore the existing infrastructure to focus on the new deployment, you should probably re-evaluate deployment options so you don't screw your loyal EXISTING customers.
Let's be honest, Verizon has the resources to balance its fios deployment and existing plant maintenance. The simple fact that the executives are throughly imbibed with greed and see maintaining existing infrastructure as throwing money away. God bless their customers on copper who don't have fios as an option to replace it  | |
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makazePremium
join:2004-02-23
USA | bad service We had an issue where a verizon line got pulled down from the pole because when they installed a subscribers FIOS they didn't pull the slack, and it hung to low.
It blocked our road for over 48 hours and people had to drive over it risking damage to their cars, until we called and threatend to hook it up to a truck and yank until it came down, bringing everything else with it. Even the police called them telling them it was blocking the road, and they didn't come out that day.
10 minutes later a tech showed up and cut them down. | |
| | | | Re: bad service LOL. That's outrageous...and almost hilarious! Talk about audacity!
Look, Verizon has to deal (at least this is how the rumor on the street goes) with investor displeasure over FIOS deployment costs and the slow recouping of the investment in the new plant. It's not shocking that they'd try to reduce their investment into the old plant.
It seems likely that at some point FIOS deployment costs will decline to some low multiple of current annual copper maintenance costs--i.e. Verizon will be able to easily calculate how many years (hopefully less than a decade) it will take to recoup their fiber investment based on the lower resulting maintenance alone. Perhaps VZ has already come up with the number and doesn't want to release it for competition reasons.
It's not surprising that in a SUPER DUPER MONSTER-SIZE bureaucracy like Verizon, maintenance turns into a statistical game in which you try to "resolve" the largest amount of repair calls possible without making the actual repair. Maybe FIOS has become the indispensable cost and Verizon feels greater, er, "flexibility" when it comes to maintenance. Maybe the PSC does need to apply some pressure. | |
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