Everyone has been asking me how Fios has been since I installed it in July. Here is the 2 month report:

TV:
Crystal clear, TONS of HD (just under 100 channels including the movies package). Cablecards have been solid since install, even after loss of power. There was some minor pixelation occurring on fast action HD channels and this problem is well documented over at TiVoCommunity, but this is more an effect of using TiVo and not Fios itself. I have the line attenuators on hand should the problem come back. I can’t comment on the quality of the Verizon STB’s as I don’t use any. The one box I have is their $4 a month guide-less box which just tunes stations. This is controlled by a Tivo S2. I highly highly recommend Tivo boxes over standard cable provider DVR’s, it’s not even close. That’s a rant for another day.

Internet:
Solid 20/5 connection. Haven’t had a single outage. Haven’t experienced any slowdowns or throttling on Torrents, large downloads or uploading. I have the Verizon router configured as the main DHCP on the network and as primary 802.11B network. Off of this, I have an 802.11N network for the high speed devices. All working well, and I was pleased to see that the Actiontec router allows access to all controls and settings. Plus it was free.

Phone:
This isn’t VOIP and as such it comes with NO additional services that a typical VOIP provider gives you today. No web access to voicemails or call features. No email or sms alert to new voicemails. NOTHING. You get a phone that rings and a voicemail service that you call into. Call quality is fine and my alarm system is working, but if you’re used to Vonage or Optimum Voice you’re in for a rude awakening. I’ve tried services like GotVoice, but they were unable to access the Fios voicemail service. There is a product called IOBI from Verizon that offers some of the features I want, but I am not about to mess with the billing right now. It is a PAY service.

Billing:
Now the nightmare. The billing with Verizon is atrocious. The first 2 months I’ve been overcharged. I’ve been told it will all work itself out as the services synchronize and the discounts kick in. Well, I called them the other day and found that I was inadvertently charged for additional TV installs. I was credited $40 and now I’m actually “averaging” the expected amount per month. After 2 more months pass, i’ll see if I’m still averaging the right price. Reading the actual bill is impossible as there are multiple charged and credits sprawled across many pages. At least I’m paying the right amount in the end. But be warned that billing is a joke and you should be aware of all the promotions you’ve been offered and that they are in fact credited on your bill. So far so good…

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Verizon was happy to port my phone from Cablevision. Not a problem they said, it will port over immediately when your Fios installation is complete. Well, I couldn’t argue with that. And honestly, it did port over once the installer activated the line. There was just one small problem… Don’t try calling me if you use Optimum Voice. A few days after our install everything appeared fine. Verizon’s Fios phone service is very plain-vanilla. There is no online management of call-forwarding, voicemail, etc. Imagine my surprise when I get an email alert that there is a new voicemail on Optimum Voice. How are people leaving me voicemails on Optimum? Maybe it takes them a day or two to clear out their systems. Well, its been ten days, except instead of leaving us voicemails, Optimum Voice users are now getting “The number you have dialed is no longer in service”. Excellent…. I am dreading the upcoming calls to Verizon and Cablevision. I’ve been caught in this game before… I call Verizon first and they confirm my suspicions. They’ve successfully ported the line, if the previous provider hasn’t released it internally, there’s nothing we can do. I agree with them. I call Cablevision who gets very hostile:

“Hi, I’ve recently switched from Optimum Voice to Verizon Fios, but there is a problem with the transfer of my line”
“Sir, I’m showing that your account has been closed, if you are having phone trouble, please contact your current provider”
“No, you don’t understand, they were able to port the line. In fact if you were to try and call me from anywhere in the US or the WORLD I will answer. But if you call me from your phone, right now, it won’t work.” (I assumed Cablevision using Optimum Voice in the call centers, my bluff went uncalled)
“Sir, I’ve never heard of this before, the account was canceled on 7/16 and there is no way we can troubleshoot a line we don’t own.”

At this point, I want to reach through the phone and strangle her.

“Can we please get technical confirmation of the problem as I’m describing it to you?”
“Sure sir, let place you on hold and see if I can get someone on the line”

At this point, a gruff technician takes over the call, we’ll call him Maxwell. Maxwell says “Yeah, I see this all the time, you have to call us to release the line from our switch”. “Great, how long does that take?” “24-48 hours”… “OK, well, start that process now please”.

This all leads back to the obvious bad blood between Verizon and Cablevision. They will due whatever it takes to make things more complicated and costly for each other and the consumer is the one who pays the price. I’ll let you know when my new phone is 100% ported, I’m not holding my breath on the 48 hour estimate…

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I have been putting off writing this post intentionally. You see, I was still basking in the glow of a fantastic install experience. I didn’t want to dredge up, and subsequently address, all the problems that have occurred since the fiber was lit. Over the past week and a half, I have been living the fantasy of being an “ordinary consumer”. The average Fios customer would most certainly use Verizon STB’s, would not be porting their phone line from a Voip provider (silly me!), and would be thrilled that their internet “still worked”. But lets be honest, we all know that I’m anything but ordinary. I seek perfection. I expect things to “work”. I complain. I write letters. I am the equivalent of a technological obsessive compulsive. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the “post-install experience”…

As instructed, I visit the activatemyfios.verizon.net website. What an exciting URL! Let me take a moment to explain what this site actually does. It is a revenue generator for Verizon. Force feeding you data protection plans, antivirus, spam filtering and rustproofing. But I couldn’t even get that far. Before you begin down that journey of “No thanks” and “I’ll install it later” you have to pass the dreaded account setup screen. What happened next infuriated me. The account setup progress is obviously too complex to be handled by a web browser alone. It attempts to install a Firefox extension. OK, I’ll play along. I allow the extension to download only to find out that it is incompatible with Firefox 3.0. Wonderful… Let’s try Safari. Well, not so fast Mr. consumer. We DEMAND that you allow us to ruin your life. It recognizes that I’m on a mac and instructs me to download and run an application! I’m desperate to finish this process, so I actually allow this to happen. The app loads, and freezes. It is at this point where I see just how clever the Verizon development team is. The application apparently has some sort of “reload on quit” setting. Ah, fun! I quit, the icon bounces away and start right up again. Force quit… no luck, it relaunched and haunts me over and over. Shut down and restart the system. “I’m sorry, the system can not be shutdown at this time because the application ‘Verizon Fios Installer’ is still running.” Are you kidding me?
I can’t believe I’m now booting up Vista to do something my Mac couldn’t handle. This is embarrassing and it’s all Verizon’s fault. Now, I know I can just skip the Firefox step, as I’m running the same version here on Vista. I punch in the URL in good ole Internet Explorer. OK, kiddies, can we guess what it wants to do now? The IE warning bar slides down to alert me about an ActiveX Control installation. (Now that I’ve actually completed this ridiculous step, let me point something out. NOTHING that I did required any of these advanced controls and software installations. I created an account, answered a few questions and watched a fancy “Welcome to Verizon Fios” video. This is clearly a case of over-development by Verizon. Even if software needed to be installed, you can provide download links. A simple web guided setup and intro would have been more than enough, and it would have worked right out of the gate, regardless of OS and browser.)

Once that nightmare is over, the first thing you are required to do, is create a verizon.net email address. Now, maybe it’s just me, but do we really still rely on our ISP’s to provide email services? I can remember a day when things like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail were shunned. But in todays internet, webmail providers, whether free or fee, are far superior to the slim offerings of our Cable and DSL providers. Anyway, I proceed to setup the account, thinking this is the only conduit to seeing my account management and billing screen. I find a few more errors along the way but finally… I’m in! I click over to “My Account”. Humm… Nothing really here, just shows that I have internet and no email waiting. There’s various settings for Spam filtering in addition to some widgets about the whether and todays news. How do I check my plan, my upcoming bill, etc? I’m puzzled. I’m on the horn with Verizon the following day.

Me — “I’ve logged into the ActiveMyFios site, but I can’t find my account info”
Verizon Rep — “Oh, billing is not on this site, you have to go to Verizon.com”
Me — “So, what the hell did I just sign up for?”
Verizon Rep — “Thats just the internet home page”

Are you freaking kidding me? The last thing I want is multiple accounts to manage my Fios. I then find my way to Verizon.com (we were on .net before). I do the account setup dance again. Yes, another login id, another password. This site is much cleaner, but still has its own errors. To this day, I can’t see that I have anything installed. An “ecenter” rep told me that I won’t be able to see anything on this site until my first bill generates. I am actually laughing at this point. I’ve been able to sign up for Sprint at the store, and by the time I got home, all my plan details were on the website. I guess Verizon isn’t as advanced?

See the following post for the next exciting chapter - the phone porting issue.

ARGH! Leave me alone!!!

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