andychrist
devil's plaything
Having received a promotional offer in the mail two Saturdays ago, I ordered Verizon's $29.95/month "twice as fast" 3.0 Mbps DSL service online. Not the smoothest process in the world perhaps using my Mac, but eventually Safari made it through all the required fields. My order was confirmed, though Verizon was unable to provide me with a ready-date. A little anxious here, as my cable connection is due to terminate soon, but hey, I can sweat it, dig? Then all this past weekend I'm mysteriously without phone service as Verizon's little elves tinker with my land line. Go online to contact repair service and presto!, first thing Monday morning Verizon Repair calls to say my line was being set up for DSL but they don't know if it has been activated yet. A couple of Verizon workers in the neighborhood give me a call later and tell me my service should be working, I can do the self-install and said they'd come over later and check things out. Well, the set up CD cannot locate my connection although the DSL indicator on the modem/router is lit. Verizon guys arrive, verify my connection, but don't know how to set up the DSL themselves. Tell me to call Customer service next morning (by now it is late); fine.
Well first thing this morning James Earl Jones calls me to formally announce that the DSL has been activated on my telephone line and instructs me to run the install CD which now, Yay!, finds my connection and recognizes the modem and gets me to the penultimate step and then Blamo!, Authorization Failed 401. Call Customer Service, they actually have Mac Help, the rep is very nice, admits yeah, self-install CD isn't really made for Mac (although it says Mac on the disk), guides me through set-up, giving me the passwords and stuff that I need, blah blah blah. Only he really didn't know anything about the Mac platform himself, and probably had never even set up an account for a Mac user before. Told me to set up the router using Internet Explorer because "Safari has security issues." (Of course IE couldn't communicate with the router at all, I go let's try Firefox, he asks oh, isn't that a mail program?; ended up using Safari.) Anyway, we finally get the connection established, despite a message at the very end saying Error: Failed to Connect. So then we test the connection speed and lo and behold, it is only 1.5 Mbps, not the 3.0 advertised. Connects me with Billing rep, who says, of course you know that the 3 Mbps service is $10 extra per month? I correct her on that, she gets back to me and says, oh yours was a special promotion, I can either cancel your service and order a new 3 Mb account for you [Nooooo!], or you can wait one week until your account is activated [Huh?] as only then can it be fixed without having to be set up all over again.
Sigh.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Verizon's over-all quality: their DSL is now a real bargain and their employees are courteous and competent. But perhaps if they tested their products before bringing them to market, they could save both their customers and their employees a whole lot of time and aggravation.
And in this day and age, for them not to fully support the Mac is just plain inexcusable.
Thanks for hearing me out.
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Addendum: No sooner do I retire for the evening than the phone rings and some guy from Verizon's marketing department calls for a repair quality survey. I groggily try to explain to him that I already responded online and that his questions completely failed to address the matter at hand. He assured me that Verizon would be calling again and of this I have little doubt. ::sleepy:: ::sleepy:: ::sleepy::
Well first thing this morning James Earl Jones calls me to formally announce that the DSL has been activated on my telephone line and instructs me to run the install CD which now, Yay!, finds my connection and recognizes the modem and gets me to the penultimate step and then Blamo!, Authorization Failed 401. Call Customer Service, they actually have Mac Help, the rep is very nice, admits yeah, self-install CD isn't really made for Mac (although it says Mac on the disk), guides me through set-up, giving me the passwords and stuff that I need, blah blah blah. Only he really didn't know anything about the Mac platform himself, and probably had never even set up an account for a Mac user before. Told me to set up the router using Internet Explorer because "Safari has security issues." (Of course IE couldn't communicate with the router at all, I go let's try Firefox, he asks oh, isn't that a mail program?; ended up using Safari.) Anyway, we finally get the connection established, despite a message at the very end saying Error: Failed to Connect. So then we test the connection speed and lo and behold, it is only 1.5 Mbps, not the 3.0 advertised. Connects me with Billing rep, who says, of course you know that the 3 Mbps service is $10 extra per month? I correct her on that, she gets back to me and says, oh yours was a special promotion, I can either cancel your service and order a new 3 Mb account for you [Nooooo!], or you can wait one week until your account is activated [Huh?] as only then can it be fixed without having to be set up all over again.
Sigh.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Verizon's over-all quality: their DSL is now a real bargain and their employees are courteous and competent. But perhaps if they tested their products before bringing them to market, they could save both their customers and their employees a whole lot of time and aggravation.
And in this day and age, for them not to fully support the Mac is just plain inexcusable.
Thanks for hearing me out.
***********************************************
Addendum: No sooner do I retire for the evening than the phone rings and some guy from Verizon's marketing department calls for a repair quality survey. I groggily try to explain to him that I already responded online and that his questions completely failed to address the matter at hand. He assured me that Verizon would be calling again and of this I have little doubt. ::sleepy:: ::sleepy:: ::sleepy::
