tl;dr summary: Verizon makes a billing error, disconnects my internet service. 1 calendar week, 3+ hours on the phone with support, and countless glasses of nerve-calming scotch later and the service is still disconnected, in spite of the fact that everyone I’ve spoken with agrees that it should be active.
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Ever since we moved from our house to our apartment, we have been waiting for an internet bill that never came. Although we had told Verizon that we were moving, and indeed had them set up service at our new address, we did not receive a bill for over a month. Finally one came via forward from our old address including late fees for at least one month of “non-payment”. The due date for this bill was Dec 13, but I sent payment immediately in an effort to avoid disruption of my service.
On the very day that I mailed the check, my internet service was suspended. When I tried to access any website I was redirected to the address http://noaccess.verizon.net. I called support immediately to try to rectify the situation, but it seemed that as long as the check was in the mail there was little I could do. Luckily I was going on vacation for a few days anyhow. I left confident that while I was away my payment would clear and service would be restored. I was woefully naive.
When I returned, I was still greeted with the suspended service page whenever I would attempt to access the web from home. I entered the Tech Support Relay, spending roughly 2 hours on the phone with people in various departments attempting to resolve my situation. It took some time for me to be directed to the Financial Services department, since this seemed to be a billing issue. The Financial Services representative I spoke with told me that my account balance was positive (I somehow had overpayed), and that they would put in the order to restore my service. I was told this could take up to 24 hours.
Just a few comments at this point. First of all, navigating Verizon tech support is remarkably difficult when you don’t have phone service with them. It often took several tries for the representatives I was speaking with to access my account information, and even then the information available to them was widely variable depending on their department. Secondly, during the course of these exchanges it became clear that the bills I was receiving and paying bore little relation to the ones that Verizon had in their system. This is why my service was cut off on December 2 rather than after the due date of the bill I had received. Finally, 24 hours to restore service? I can search the entirety of electronically available knowledge in seconds and do meaningful research on the entire human genome in minutes.
Regardless, 24 hours passed. My service was not restored. Back into the swirling vortex of phone support. Another hour or more on the phone.
This time I was at work during the conversation, but things seemed to go well. I was able to tell tech support that my account had been cleared for restoration of service by the financial people, and was finally transferred to some mysterious operative who apparently re-enabled my account. For the first time since I had been disconnected I was able to access my web-based Verizon email account. Everything seemed to be resolved at last. Once again, I was mistaken.
Upon arriving back at my apartment eager to surf the information superhighway, I was once again greeted by the walled garden denial of service web page. I rebooted my router to make sure that this was not the problem. I did notice one change, however. The DoS page allows you to log in with your account credentials. Prior to this time when I would do this the resulting page would have some boilerplate text about how the account was suspended. Now it said “Your account is already enabled”. I find this interesting; if the account is enabled why am I being sent here?
Return to the never ending cycle of phone support. Another 2 hours on the phone.
Now my problem seemed to be complicated. More and more frequently I’m being placed on hold while an apparently omnipotent “Network Technician” is summoned. Not a lot of progress is being made. I eventually get into a conference call with (I believe) Customer Support and Tech Support reps. They decide amongst themselves that Financial Services did not properly submit the order to restore service, so I need to talk to them. Once again the new Financial rep informs me that I have a positive balance and that he will place the order to restore service.
It’s now about 12 hours since that order was supposedly placed, and I am still without service. I am quite at my wit’s end. I’m certain that I know what the problem is - somewhere there is a flag placed on my account that is hijacking my traffic (perhaps at the DNS level but I believe it’s even more upstream than this) and sending it to this walled garden. It’s simply a matter of removing this flag to completely restore my service. I have spoken with >20 people at Verizon and spent more than 3 hours on the phone, yet I have no confidence that this problem will be solved soon.
I’m quite furious, but I have not outlet for this anger besides this one. I cannot bring myself to be upset with the support representatives I have spoken with - they have uniformly been as helpful as I believe they are able within the confines of this bureaucratic nightmare of a system. If you have any ideas on how to resolve this situation, I’d love to hear them.
::Edit 10 AM on day 4 of trying to get service restored:: It seems that things are moving. The hardest part all along has just been getting the separate departments to speak to one another, and a support rep seems to finally be doing this “for me” - managing the transfer of necessary secret codes between financial & tech support. They still say it will be a couple of hours until everything gets “pushed through the system”, so we’ll see.
::Edit 6:30 PM - Resolution:: I was finally completely fed up with this whole charade. I decided that this would be my last time calling support and that either my service would be restored or I would cancel it entirely. Just as I was connected with a representative and we were going through the now overly familiar information dance, my phone beeps with another incoming call. I dropped the guy I was chatting with and switched over. New guy mumbles something about systems being mixed up and asks me to power cycle my router and give it another shot - blam we are in business.
I’m still incredibly upset with this fiasco of “service”. Although I have paid every bill I received on time and in full, my service was disconnected for 9 days. The last 3 or 4 days required at least 4 hours on the phone with support and innumerable handoffs. The resolution still provided no real explanation for either the initial disconnect or the ensuing troubles.
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