I apologize for unto.net being down for the past week. A few months ago, Verizon started pushing their paperless billing option, and, thinking it was a good idea to save some trees, I accepted it. Unfortunately, there must have been a glitch somewhere along the way, and I never started receiving email bills. As I had recently switched to electronic bill paying for everything else, I forgot all about Verizon and just assumed that I was automatically being billed.
So last Wednesday, as I'm simultaneously slipping in and out of consciousness with a 102 degree fever and trying to arrange for the upcoming move, my Internet connectivity suddenly drops. That happens rarely, so I gave Speakeasy, my DSL provider, a call. They asked me if I could check for a dial-tone. Sure enough, my phone was dead.
This wasn't good -- the relocation company was in the middle of sending me information about the move later that week. I needed to get unto.net back up and running immediately.
I called up Verizon and the customer service representative said she couldn't do anything that night, and I'd need to talk to their billing department, which was currently closed, but would reopen the next day at 8. I wondered if I had missed a payment or something, so I left the apartment for the first time in days (still with a fever) and went to a coffee shop to get online. Sure enough, I had missed a month, so I paid the bill and the late fee. I checked the phone line a few times that night to see if they reconnected it automatically (they didn't).
Around 8:30 the next day I called Verizon's billing department and explained the situation. They said that I had been disconnected, but noted that I was now paid in full. Unfortunately, they said they couldn't just reconnect me, but would instead need to sign up for service again -- if I could just stay on the line while they did all of the credit checks. So after a long sales pitch, including the pitch for Verizon long-distance (which I had explained I didn't need, because I didn't actually use the phone line at all), and a pitch for Verizon DSL (which I had long since ditched because of horrible service, slow speeds, and excessive port-blocking), I finally had signed up for a new local phone service. They were nice enough to waive the reconnect fee, admitting that it was their mistake that I was disconnected in the first place (as they hadn't contacted me beforehand). They said it should be done by noon, and if not, to give a call back.
At 12:30, I called back. (Mind you all of these calls were on daytime cell-phone minutes -- I've used 373 minutes in 7 days now.) They said I would be reconnected by 4:00. At 4:30, I called again -- "definitely by 7:00." Er, at 7:30, "you'll be on by midnight, I promise! There's a problem with Central Office, but they're working on it." Around midnight -- "our office hours are 8:00 am to..."
Friday morning I called Verizon for the 5th time. They told me that they had a guy in Central Office working on the line right then, and I should be up by later that morning. And sure enough, by noon on Friday I was back up. This was brilliant -- all I needed to do was contact Speakeasy and make sure that the DSL line came back up and unto.net would be back online that afternoon. When I talked to Speakeasy, they said they would look into it, and that I could track the open tickets on their site. Since I didn't have internet access at all, I signed up for Earthlink dial-up. (It turns out that Speakeasy also comes with free dial-up -- those guys really rock.)
The open tickets at Speakeasy weren't making a lot of sense to me -- they were trying to reconnect my DSL, but kept finding problems on the line with Verizon. There was a great series of messages left between Speakeasy and Covad (the actual DSL supplier) trying to get to the bottom of things with Verizon. "9:51: ISP called in for MLT run test but it giving me some error that End user line is disconnecting ,assigned to TAC for further assistance, with an update in four business hours." "10:06: Problem: Hard down issue. Assigning to ILEC [Verizon] repair to further investigate." "13:08: TT was sent to ILEC repair 3 hours ago with a promise of an update in 4 hours." "14:46: ISP called in to get an update of the TT. The commit time has passed and there is no update so sending it to ILEC repair on level1 escalation with leads approval to update in 1 business hour." "15:03: No update currently on this with ILEC repair they are past the commit time, contacted Covad and had this escalated to 1st level escalation with ILEC repair, commit is within 1 hour." "17:27: ISP called in to have an update on the ticket. As there was no update on the ticket escalating this issue to ILEC repair for an update in 1 business hour."
At some point along the way I stopped checking every 10 minutes and passed out until Saturday morning. When I woke up, I had hoped to see the solid green light on my DSL modem. No such luck. So I called Speakeasy again (they were really nice about the whole thing), and asked for an update. Guess what -- "Informed the ISP that this ticket is with ILEC repair and ILEC do not work on weekends. We shall have an update on Monday."
Smashing. Verizon didn't get back to Covad at all on Friday, and just left the ticket hanging, even though they weren't going to work on the weekend. Apparently Verizon treats their ISPs and third-party providers no better than their end-users. But meanwhile, all email to unto.net, including the essential information about my move, was bouncing while the DSL line was down. So I upgraded my DNS plan at EasyDNS for an additional $70 and turned on email and domain forwarding. I sent my email to GMail and my web traffic to WSO. Between redirecting my net traffic and a few thousand milligrams of penicillin, I was beginning to get things back in order. In fact, I finally connected with the movers. Unfortunately, by this point they weren't going to be able to move me until July 9th -- more than a week after I was supposed to start my new job.
Fortunately, Speakeasy doesn't take the weekends off, and they continued to try to debug the situation. Updates to the tickets continued all weekend, and I continued to be impressed with their diligence and attention to detail. I fully expected to be up and running first thing on Monday.
First thing Monday -- a call from Speakeasy. They figured out what the problem was. Verizon had completely taken down the DSL cross-connects on my line. (I guess this explains that the tech was doing in the "Central Office" last week.) They couldn't reconnect them, so I would have to order a new DSL service via Speakeasy. This would take 5-7 business days. Speakeasy, being the great chaps that they are, were super apologetic, even though it wasn't their fault at all. They weren't going to charge me the service fees, and they would do their best to put pressure on Verizon to expedite the order. And, just like I remember from the first time I signed up with Speakeasy, they sent out regular and informative updates on the install process via email, and I could follow along via their up-to-date website.
Nothing much happened on Monday. Nothing much happened on Tuesday. But today I saw a message from Covad saying that my address information on file with the phone company was invalid (mind you, this was on a line that I had been using for for over a year), and that I'd need to FAX them a current copy of my Verizon phone bill. Now remember -- the whole problem started because I wasn't getting my phone bill. So called Speakeasy, asked if I could send them an electronic copy, got an email-to-fax gateway number from them, and went to Verizon's website to get an electronic copy of my bill. I entered my user id and password and clicked on "View Bill". Sure enough -- "we are currently experiencing problems. Please try again at a later time or contact Verizon customer service." (I just copied that now from the site -- their electronic billing is still broken, 10 hours later.)
So I called Verizon customer service again. I explained that I needed a copy of my bill so I could reconnect my DSL service after Verizon had disconnected me a week ago. The representative on the other end of the line said she would send me a paper copy -- it should arrive in 3-5 business days. I said that actually, the problem was that I switched to paperless billing, and needed an electronic copy that day, as I had been down for a week already. She said she couldn't help. I said that I really needed the help with this, and asked if she would connect me with a department that could help. So she transfered me...
...to a completely different company. In South Dakota. That had never heard of me. Or my billing records. And had absolutely no idea why I had been transfered there, as they don't even handle Verizon end-user electronic billing.
And about four hours later, a strange thing happened. My phone line went dead. It stayed dead for about an hour. And when it came back up, the little green light on my DSL modem blinked on, blinked off, then stayed on. A few minutes of twiddling with my router and I was back on broadband -- with my original IP addresses. Really, really happy about this I left a comment on the open ticket at Speakeasy thanking them for all their hard work and saying I seemed to be back online. A few minutes later they called -- a little mystified about how I was back on, but promised to proceed cautiously on their end, lest something else go wrong. And, true to form, updated all of the open tickets with clear updates about the ongoing situation, and seem to be actively monitoring the service.
In the end, I learned a few things. First, that I won't be moving to San Francisco on time. Partly because I got sick with a flu-like bug (first time that's happened to me as an adult -- I don't recommend it, so get your rest and drink lots of juice), and partly because I lost all my incoming email for a few days. Second, Speakeasy is, without a doubt, the best customer service available online. Their techs are courteous, conscientious, well-informed, smart, caring, and pro-active. Every time I've worked with them I've been impressed by how far they go above-and-beyond what we've come to expect from our service providers. Besides, their services are incredible too (6mb/s downstream, 768mb/s upstream, multiple static IP addresses, dial-up, no port-blocking, running servers and sharing service is supported, etc., etc.).
But most importantly, I learned again that Verizon doesn't deserve to be in the telecommunications business. They had lost me years ago as a cell-phone customer due to spotty coverage, high prices, and non-existent customer service. They lost me as a DSL customer because of low bandwidth, frequent outages, and non-existent customer service. They never had me as a long-distance customer. And now they won't even keep my business as a local phone customer. They've ridden their telco monopoly roots as far as they can. Now, with every single aspect of their business facing competition, including the physical line into the building (and I'll chose VOIP next time), they won't have a chance at retaining me as a customer. Moreover, since I actually have the opportunity to influence or make telco decisions for the companies I work for, I can effect even their business sales.
Yes, I'm a little frustrated. Verizon cost me a tremendous amount of time and a huge amount of money this week. And, in contrast to a vendor like Speakeasy, Verizon cost themselves an ongoing customer, not because of mistakes (which happened to everyone), but because of customer service that was hard to contact, rude, ignorant, and worse, outright deceitful.
And thanks to the Internet and personal publishing, they may have cost themselves far more because of word-of-mouth.