Complaint Review: Verizon

Verizon seemed like the best option when I first signed on for FIOS nearly two years ago, in 11/09. A few months into the contract, a customer service rep talked me into switching from regular FIOS telephone service to the digital voice service, with the promise of saving money, plus adding a few more channels to my TV lineup.  Digital voice had such a horrible echo on the line, I couldn't even use my phone. The  third repairman to show up at my house finally admitted they didn't know how to fix the well-known problem, so I went back to regular phone service, but kept the TV/Internet service and the whole package was kept intact, with a $52 credit to be permanently applied since I switched the phone service back to its original state and lost the few channels I had gained.

Now, one year later, my bill suddenly went from $118 to $171 and the reason I was given was that the "permanent change credit" expired! It was allegedly a permanent reduction - when I called them to question it, I literally got six different responses from six different people, including what the termination fee would be if I left Verizon - I was given amounts of anywhere from $90 to $345! I also asked if there were any other discounts currently available for current customers and was told $10/month by two people, $0 by another two, and found out today that two of my neighbors just inquired and received $20/month discounts within the last two days!  The internet was slow and I even purchased additional memory from Dell and had them totally strip my hard drive and start over totally fresh, thinking this may  help - it didn't (but my computer is essentially new again!).

About half an hour ago, I switched everything back to (((competitotr's name redacted))) and will be saving $67/month the first year and $47/month the second, plus a $300 credit to be used toward my first few bills, and I'll have the exact same services I had with FIOS, using the same wiring in my house, to boot.  I'm not a  (((redacted))) fan, but they've come a long way due to the competition and it's the lesser of two evils for the time being. Verizon blows big ones - their customer service sucks. FIOS has been a total letdown.  Hope this saves at least one person from making the same mistake of going that route. 5/14/11

 sorry, allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company, ..plus, if you post a competitors name more than likely they will show up on search engines as a Rip-off! - - your comments on this policy are welcome. CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report. In this case we removed an alleged competitors name