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Telephone Call

June 6th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

I'm been having problems every few months with my landline phone service. Usually the problem is something on the exterior of my house with the telephone wiring. The technicians supposedly fix it, then in a few weeks I have the same problem again. The issue is either I don't have a dial tone to make outgoing calls or I can't receive incoming calls. When I try to call in to my phone it connects and turns to a static sound. It doesn't even ring.

Anyway, the beginning of May, I had this exact same problem all over again. Verizon had sent out a service technician to determine if the problem was an external or internal problem. Well they ran a test on the line and it came up that there was a short somewhere. The box outside my house checked out fine, so the technician said he would have to set up an appointment so that I could be home to let him inside so he could check the wiring. Since I don't have an inside maintainence plan on my account (which is $5.99 extra/month), I would be charged $90/hour for them to determine/fix the problem. I did have a Saturday appointment set up for a few weeks ago, and the service technician never showed up. I called the repair center, and apparently someone made an error, since I was told that there are no technicians available in my area code for Saturday appts. Ugh!!

My problem is I didn't want to take off work on a weekday to get this resolved. I guess I really don't have a choice now.

Anyway since emails have gone unanswered, yesterday during lunch I called Verizon again to discuss some of these ongoing issues. When I received my latest bill, there was a charge for the service technician visit for the exterior of $61.50. Now when I scheduled this appt. the technician was fully aware that I would not be home to let him inside, should he need access to the interior wiring. Many times technicians have come out to do work at the outside box and I was never charged a penny. I explained this to the rep and she said, "well, they needed to come inside since they determined the problem was not something on the outside". Anyway, I demanded a refund of the $61.50. So the rep compromised and gave me a credit of $30.75.

She proceeded to tell me that the service technician closed out the repair order and the computer stated that the issue was resolved. WHAT???? If he determined that the problem was in the inside and there is no documentation that an appointment was made to gain access to the house, then I think it is safe to say that the problem with my lack of dial tone/inability to make incoming/outgoing calls is still existent. Within the last week, I decided to add the inside wire maintainence plan to my account, thinking it would pay for itself since this problem is recurring every few months. Since the phone company claims they were not aware I was still having a problem (even though they don't have record of repairing my line), I will not get credit for several weeks of no phone service. In addition, even though I now have this service plan and I report now that I have these same problems, it would not be covered under this plan because it is a pre-existing problem!!!! I asked how it could be pre-existing if the original repair order was closed and stated as resolved by the technician.

Well, needless to say I left the rep know that after Verizon comes out to repair the inside line, I will be shopping around for other phone service. She said, "well I can forward you to a supervisor because we certainly don't want to lose you as a customer". I declined and told her I have had too many issues with them and would most definitely be closing my account with Verizon. I'm just not happy with them and they aren't very accommodating/customer friendly.

So now I'm not sure what company I want to go with. I currently have internet with Verizon which is working perfectly. I was researching doing cable, phone, and internet, but those packages are fairly expensive. Does anyone have any ideas about Vonage for phone service??

2 Responses to “Telephone Call”

  1. crazyliblady Says:
    1212793213

    You should definitely get different phone service, because they are trying to make the lack of good service your problem. You should not have to pay for service to lines outside your home at all, because these lines are sometimes damaged due to things like the weather outside your control anyway. If you do have any further contact with this company, make written documentation of when you called them (date and time), who you spoke to, what was agreed to, and future appointments for service.

  2. fern Says:
    1212801633

    That sounds so much like what goes on here with AT&T. If the problem turns out to be inside the house and you don't have the ongoing $5 maintenance fee, they charge you up the gazoo. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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