Verizon Fios support - Outsourced to Larry Moe and Curley Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk

• Updated Sat 8 2 (See Bottom of Post for updates)
• Updated Mon 8/4/08
• Updated Mon night 8/4/08
• Updated Tues Morning 8/5/08 - Call Forwarding SUCCESS - after 25 agents and 18 hours of calling

About 2 months ago, we switched our internet and one phone to Verizon Fios. That went fairly well with some minor glitches (ie, they gave us a 'dying on arrival' modem that resulted in more down time in one week than I had in the past 7 years with my previous DSL provider)

About a week ago, our other phone line, which was still on copper, went dead. We called MCI, which I understand has merged with Verizon. We called MCI support and they said that someone will be out on Saturday. I waited all morning on Saturday. No one showed up. We called MCI and they said that they couldn't make it so they would be out on Tuesday.

We decided to get rid of MCI and move the other line from copper to the Fios on Verizon. We called that day and they set up the move.... supposedly. ... We went through the third party verification process. Verizon said that they would be out Thursday between 9 and 11. So, I took another day off. Guess what, .... yep.. Another no show.

I called support and the message said "We are experiencing a heavy call volume, do you want us to call back"... That was after listening to the 'press whatever for espanol' garbage. Like an idiot, I opted for the call back. They problem with their call back system is that if you don't grab the call immediately, it assumes you aren't there and hangs up on you, even if you are screaming "I"M FREAKING ON THE FREAKING LINE YOU FREAKING MORON"..

I decided to call and wait for an agent. It takes a couple of minutes till you can get to the part where you can ask for an agent. Agent #1 couldn't help, he passed me to Agent #2. Agent #2 had to pass me to Agent #3. Agent #3 didn't have the authority, brains or whatever to deal with the problem so they passed me to Agent #4. At this point, I'm starting to get hungry and need to use the facilities.. It's only been about a 45 minutes to this point. So, Agent #4 can't help either and needs to pass me to Agent #5. OK, pass me. Agent #5 can't help either. At this point, I'm beginning to think I've got a really good chance of meeting Agent 86 and Agent 99.

Agent #5 can't help either So Agent #5 dutifully passes me to Agent #6. I'm really getting excited about the possibility of getting to Maxwell Smart at this point. Agent # 6.... guesss what.... Can't help either so they transfer me to Agent #7.... AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH... Agent #7 is obviously challenged in the use of a device as complex as a telephone.... and my call is disconnected. .... An hour and a half of my life goes down the crapper. Of course, Verizon won't call you back to resolve the issue.

So, I call again. I'm beginning to find out that no one seems to have a record of the order we placed to convert the phone number from MCI to Verizon. As I start the process again, Agent #8 passes me to Agent #9. Agent takes some info and puts me on hold with some horrendous elevator music. I mean stuff that even John Bolton wouldn't use on Osama bin Laden. After 36 minutes and 17 seconds on this phone call, we have accomplished precisely...... nothing.. Nada, Zilch, Zippo... At this point I'm wondering if the batteries on my cordless will last long enough to get the issue resolved.

After an hour Agent #7 finally got back on the line. She was a little, shall we say snotty. Yes, I might not be the most cheerful customer at this point but, at this point, I had spent about 5 hours TRYING TO GET ONE FREAKING ANSWER.. According to the illustrious Agent #7, the transfer was not going through because there was a "Local Freeze" on the phone number and there was nothing MCI could do until we got MCI to release the phone. OK, another hour of my life down the crapper.

I called MCI and they said "There is no freeze or block on that line"

OK, Now I'm back with Verizon Agent #10, Daniel. I explained to Daniel that I've been trying to resolve this for over 5 hours counting the time I waited for the service call that was never coming. I'm beginning to hope that perhaps the agent number has a positive correlation with IQ and I'm getting closer to a resolution.


Some progress is happening at 15 minutes into the call, I'm speaking with a supervisor who is 'going to check with the department that handles portability".. Wow, by the time this gets resolved I'll qualify for a senior citizen discount.

Well, we are now 45 minutes into this call with agent #12 (i'll count the interim supervisor as an agent just for giggles). I'm dealing with more agents than existed in the CIA and KGB.. I'm still listening to hideous elevator music.. My mind is getting numb, Hunger is happening.


At about 75 minutes into this call, it seems we might have a resolution. According to #12, the problem was that the 3rd party verification didn't go through. She set up an appointment for a week from now for a Fios technician and put me back into the 3rd party verification autonoman.

So, where are we to this point.


I'll post again when/if this is resolved. In the meantime, don't call me, email me because our phones are foobar.

UPDATE - Sat Aug 2 2008. After the hour long call on Friday, I was promised that a "supervisor will call you on Saturday between 8am and noon to resolve this". I waited all morning unable to do anything productive and, you guessed it folks, I never got a call.

I then called from my Verizon Cell phone so I would not miss the incoming call and got to meet agent #15. Agent #15 said that the phone had migrated from the MCI platform to Verizon on Aug 1 (Friday). All I need now is for Verizon to put a call forward on that number so that we don't miss any more calls until they finally mosey around to actually connecting the number.

After 45 minutes with Agent #15, we established that we could not do call forwarding until Monday. However, he did come up with a possible alternative which was to send someone out to reconnect the copper service which should give us service.

That didn't work either. Apparently one of the largest companies in the country runs a skeleton Staff on the weekends. So, we went through another 2 days with no phone service and calls going into our other

Update Monday Aug 4 2008 - I'm starting to put the year on the update dates because I'm beginning to think we might not get see service until 2009 or later. I'm on the phone with Agent #17. Apparently the line is on Verizon but there is some other glitch. He's checking things out. At about 20 minutes into the call, the line went dead... HOWEVER, he promptly called back to re-establish contact.

Agent 17 passed me to a tech person, Agent 18. Agent 18 seemed to really care. However, it appears that once again, the order was input incorrectly, That means that they can't do anything. Agent 18 passed me to Agent 19. Agent 19 was saying the the number was still on the MCI platform. Ok, almost 16 hours of effort and we have accomplished ZERO. I think I'll move to Havana Cuba. Fidel's decrepit 1950's telco system run by commie apparatchicks would have to be better than what I'm getting from Verizon. So, Agent 19, passes me to Agent 20 who is supposedly setting up a repair order for the copper so we can get dialtone. Supposedly they are going to call me back

Mini Update - I just found out that the "International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers" which represents a whole bunch of the verizon workers is threatening a strike for "Job Security" and "No outsourcing".. Yeah, it takes a union mentality to take what should be a simple 1 hour job and turn it into a nightmare that takes about 20 hours and 20 people to accomplish nothing. How many IBEW union workers does it take to get a phone line installed properly... ? "Twenty, Tirty, Forty.. Wadever... You gotta problem wit dat?" Hey, Union folks, do you think that you might want to try to get your workers to be competent?? Maybe then they will be a little more efficient and the company won't want to outsource overseas.

U pdate Monday night 8/4/08 - OK, once again the promised call to me never occurred. It's monday night and I am now trying to get a hold of Agent 21. The voice prompt system really stinks and tends to get you into a loop. I'm calling using my fios number, the one that is working, as the reference number. I seem to get a little faster service that way (HA HA HA HA HA HA )

OK, after 64 minutes on the call, Agent 21 assured me that a ticket had been created and that we should have the call forwarding in place "within 23 hours".. We'll wait and see....

Update Tuesday Morning 8/5/08 - Well it is tuesday morning and we still don't have the line working nor do we have call forwarding. We almost missed an important call from a doctor who is caring for a relative. Fortunately, after getting an unanswered ring on the one number, the doctor was smart enough to look us up and found the other number. This isn't funny any more. I'm now on the phone with Agent #22 trying to determine the status of the trouble ticket. Agent #22 passed me to the copper folks - Agent #23. Agent 23 was in billing and couldn't help. Agent #23 dutifully passed me to to repair... IN FLORIDA... duh, I'm in Pennsylvania So Agent #24 in Florida passed me to Pennsylvania's Voice prompting (not counting that as an agent.) I'm speaking with Agent #25.

Call forwarding success - Finally, after 25 agents and 18 hours of effort, we finally got call forwarding established so that we are no longer missing calls. Now, the repair guy is supposed to be out on Monday some time between 8 and 8.

Running total of time wasted
1 hour - Saturday to place the order
3 hours - Thursday waiting for a tech visit that never happened
1.5 hours - Thursday - Call 1 for agents 1-9
1 hour - Thursday - Wife called agent 16
1.25 hours - Thursday - Call 2 with agents 10-12
1 hour - Friday Night - Call 1 with agents 13-14
4 hours saturday - Waiting for a promised 'call from a supervisor' Never received
1 hour with agent 15
2.5 Hours on Monday with Agents 17, 18, 19 and 20
1 hour on Monday Night with Agent 21
.75 hour on Tues Morning with agents 22, 23, 24 and 25
----------------------------------------
18.00 hours investing in trying to get one steenking line moved to verizon and still no service on that line...

Belkin Network USB hub - Hardware Review

We are nursing a tired old desktop that is due for replacement. The problem is that backups have become a pain due to only having USB 1.0. I know we can slap in a USB 2.0 card but I prefer not to disturb the system unless absolutely necessary.

We found a Belkin Network USB Hub for about a hundred bucks at Staples. The device plugs into your ethernet network and allows you to share USB devices including printers, scanners and drives. It won't do some high speed devices such as certain webcams.

Once you install it, you need to install the software on each machine you want to have accessing the USB devices. We tried several times to install the version 1.5 software and it kept hanging. We found the 1.4 version on the Belkin support site and that installed fine on our XP Home machine.

We plugged in our MYBook 500 USB hard drive and it connected easily. The advantage of this lashup is that USB 1.x supposedly maxes at about 12mbs. Theoretically, USB 2.x is somewhere around 450mbs but the wired network is limited to 100mbs. Either way, it should be faster than USB 1.1.

Another point to consider when putting hard drives on the network USB hub is that it appears that you only one machine can 'own' the drive at one time. In other words, if my desktop is connected to the drive, then you cannot connect simultaneously with your laptop. You could get around this by sharing the drive from the desktop. (We haven't tested this yet). The problem is that you would end up chewing up some of your network bandwidth that way for larger files.


It does look handy for sharing things such as a photo printer where only one machine at a time is accessing the printer. It can also be useful in helping to physically organize your devices in your office. If you want more flexibility in data storage, then you might want to look into one of the network addressable storage options. There are some boxes you can put on the network that will allow you attach one or two hard drives to the device and make them available as network drives.

Active windows not showing in the XP Taskbar and Kelly's Korner

I had a situation on my wife's XP machine where, for some unknown reason, it would not show the active windows on the taskbar. I played around with it for a bit and just couldn't get them to show.

I did some research and found a site where an MVP has a bunch of scripts up that will fix a whole bunch of problems. I'm a bit leery about running VBS and REG files from a site but it seemed to check out fine. (You will have to use at your own risk). The one that was referenced in other resources as the one to fix the problem was #240 at http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm It was a VBS script. I ran it and it instantly fixed the problem.

The main site is at http://www.kellys-korner.com/

Anyway, it is a great resource. The main trick is to be able to find the correct tweak. You might have to eyeball the tweaks listed or try searches that will match your problem and also reference Kelly's site.

Find old versions of some apps such as AOL.

I had a client who, for various reasons, is still using AOL. He got a new machine and we loaded AOL 9 on it. He had some issues with 9 and wanted to go back to AOL 8. The problem is that, on the AOL site, the only version offered were AOL 9 and AOL Desktop 10.

I did some searching around and found a site called www.oldversion.com. There you can find old versions of various communications programs such as AOL, Eudora and more as well as graphics and multimedia applications such as quicktime.

It is a handy resource for those times when someone just has to have AOL 8.

Is your site down or are you not seeing it?

I wasn't able to ftp to one of my domains. I also noticed it was down as far as http. I checked other sites I had hosted with them and they appeared down as well. When I called tech support, they said the site was up and running.

The support rep suggested www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com The site is basically a limited function proxy server that allows you to put in a domain name. If you can't see the domain but it is functioning, you will see that reported.

The tech mentioned that the problem was once of the backbone carriers between me (on verizon) and them (the host) was down. That essentially shut me out of most of my sites. I didn't try it yet but I suppose that if I used my aircard, I might be able to get a connection if they use a different path to the hosting company.

Ebay Hell - Breathing life into an old account

Dang, All I wanted to do was put up a tractor that might bring in 100 bucks if I'm lucky. I started working with my old ebay account that I haven't used since about 2001.

Well, If I had simply done my usual consulting at my usual rates I could have thrown the tractor in the trash and come out 900 bucks ahead.

I realize that ebay has to protect against the legions of dirtball scammers but this is getting insane.

One of the complicating factors was when they bought out half.com back around 2000. The half.com accounts somehow became ebay accounts. I was using an old isp based email for my ebay so I used my primary, business domain based email for the ebay/half account.

Here is what I've done so far and still haven't been able to post my steeenking tractor for sale.

• Tried to change the email for my main ebay account. Problem. I could not change to my business domain based email because there was already an account with that email. (My ebay/half account). I had to do this because I no longer have access to the email that was on file.
• Resurrected the ebay half account with a combo of 'forgot my id', 'forgot my password' confirm, etc.
• Changed the ebay half account main password to another email I have.
• Tried to change my main ebay account to use my business domain email. No luck. Evidentally it still thinks it is being used
• So, I changed the email for my ebay main account to yet another email (gotta hire an accountant to track all this). Went through the confirm etc.
• Then I put the ad together. Oops, ebay now wants .15 per picture. I'm planning on putting a bunch of stuff for the business up. So, what do I do?? I have some underutilized hosting and used the 'host pics on your site' option. However, it took me about 15 minutes to confirm that there was no cost for that.
• Used the 'save this sale' option. However, when I would come back, the paypal email address would revert to the useless paypal address I no longer own and the shipping would keep reverting to USPS.. YEah, I want to send a 500 pound tractor priority mail to denver.. Yep, that's the ticket.
• So, I went on to the next step and it told me I needed to do a phone verification. Not sure which account it was, but I think it was my ebay main. I had to listen to the static hiss a couple of times to get the pin right.
• So, I'm ready to post my sale.. Not yet pardner.. I'm getting a message that I have to verify my bank account. OK, Let's do it.. Hold on there pard. "We're sorry but we cannot perform this action due to technical difficulties". Well, how long will THAT take?
• So, I find the email to support and wade through the various 'don't really send us mail' traps and sneak an email through. Got a "We got your request" email a couple of minutes later.
• OK. Let's see what happens. All I wanted to do was post a steeenking tractor.

Chris

UPDATE 7 20 08 - I found that there is a live chat feature on ebay's home page. I didn't see it because, for some reason, I didn't think to look for it on just the home page. I would have thought that chat would be found on the contact page.. Oh well. - anyway, I contacted customer support on a Sunday and they were able to get me access to my site again. The one bad thing was that I lost my work in progress on my listing but fortunately I had saved that in a seperate file.

Vista Insanity - Not all printers are listed when printing

First of all, I HATE the new gallery instead of the old Picture and Fax viewer.

That being said, I was simply trying to print a couple of JPGs of some documents I scanned. I went to the folder, selected the documents and chose Print.. Should be simple, eh??

Well, Not for the the geniuses from Microsoft... I'm using my laptop and trying to print to an HP laserjet 1012 on a linksys print server. All the XP machines are fine with that. However, when I try to print from my laptop running Vista Home Premium, the printer is not listed. It is listed in the Control Panel under printers, but it does not show up in the Print dialog when you try to print from a folder.

I checked around on the 'net and it seems it is a known problem. HOWEVER, there does not seem to be a solution. One guy mentioned trying to install your networked printer via a USB cable and then change the printer port. I haven't tried this. Also, HP has a universal printer driver that I might try. Right now, I need to get back to being productive

So, this gives me great confidence in VISTA... All of the little details such as printing work seamlessly. ... Oops, no they don't , however, they do have a nify option now of "ordering prints".. I AM JUST TRYING TO PRINT A FREAKING DOCUMENT I SCANNED IN..

AAaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!

Mybook 500 GB, XP and a temporary black screen of death

I almost freaked the other day. Things were really hectic and my weezy old XP machine was running out of hard drive space. I had a couple of gigs of my own video that I could move off to regain some hard drive space.

I purchased a mybook 500GB usb hard drive. It plugged in fine and the drivers installed. I was able to transfer the files with no problem.

The next time I rebooted the machine I ran into a black screen of death. In other words, it would not boot. I tried safe mode and was able to boot that way. I tried to boot normally again (I didn't want to resort to the 'last known good configuration') yet.

Again, the machine hung on boot with a black screen. I thought about it and remembered adding the Mybook hard drive. I unplugged its USB connection and the machine booted.

I haven't had time to play with it yet to figure out how to keep the Mybook drive connected while still allowing the machine to boot.

In all fairness to the Mybook, the problem could be at my end. I have about 10 USB devices plugged into the USB 1.0 ports (Yeah, I know... I'm working on getting a new machine)


I guess the lesson here is that if you get a black screen hang when booting XP, try disconnecting any recently connected USB devices. ... worked for me.