10 Complaints About Verizon’s FiOS

When this bundled home communications service was introduced people were excited about the fiber-optics to home operating network. Verizon had the first broadband internet access to use this technology and offered more HD channels than anybody else. However, bundling internet, telephone and television is never without problems and Verizon FiOS has had its share.

1. Billing problems – The best way to get people hopping mad is to mess up their monthly statement. People were quoted one price for all their services and then were being billed separately, which of course was more expensive.
2. Poor customer service – Besides the standard complaints of being put on hold forever, call transfers dropped, and bad customer service hours. Many also complain of having to call back several times to resolve the same problem.
3. Terrible technical support – Other complaints are about the poor service from the technical support. Most are hard to understand on the phone and don’t have good listening skills.
4. Lack of communication – Because there are so many different areas to coordinate between the television, telephone and internet service, plus the billing and customer service, often the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. This inevitably ends up causing headaches for the consumer.
5. Deceptive marketing – People were enticed to switch all their communication services to Verizon for one low price and were disappointed with the results. Instead of making their lives simpler, they had some services that didn’t work properly, if at all, and plenty of frustration trying to get it all straightened out.
6. DVR recording – Most customers were happy with the DVR feature of their television at first, but then started to notice problems. There are reports of programs being recorded randomly and mysterious programming changes.
7. Poor internet – Complaints in this area range from problems with email to router troubles. The wireless internet router doesn’t work well at all and defective equipment was installed.
8. HD problems – The HD television was the main selling point for Verizon, but that’s also come under scrutiny lately. Customers were promised full HD service only to find out more HD channels were added later for an extra charge. Some found out too late that some of the HD channels were not available in their area.
9. Phone numbers – There seems to be a recurring problem for people to retain their home phone numbers when switching to the FiOS service. The technicians will hook up a second line with a new number instead of keeping the existing one and the customer gets stuck with the bill for another line.
10. Some features not available – The lack of franchise agreements in some areas limits the features available to some customers. This could be the underlying cause of many of these problems, and the customer service and tech support may be unaware of it.

People loved the promise of the latest technology combined with the convenience of bundled services, only to be disappointed with the end result. It’s probably more prudent to wait until the kinks have been worked out before signing on to an all-in-one communications system that’s just come on the market. Let someone else work the bugs out first.