VOD_153

Anyone know what error VOD_153 actually indicates? Tech support has refreshed, rebooted, reinitialized and reset every piece of equipment in my house, but I still have no VOD. I'm a new customer, and everything worked fine (including VOD) for the first day. On the second day, I changed my home number (my old number from a VoIP service was ported over) and renamed the STB from a string of random letters and digits to LIVING ROOM. This is the only STB in the house that has VOD on it.

I'm now a couple of days in to this error. Tech support called back this afternoon to say the trouble should be cleared, but it's not. Spent another hour chatting with tech support tonight - fortunately, no one asked me to repeat the hour's worth of troubleshooting on my end ("Now, unplug the router, wait 30 seconds, jump up and down on one foot and sing God Save the Queen before plugging it back in.").

OK - I'm exaggerating a bit, but this is frustrating...brand new service. The only thing I can find when I Google this error code are rants from people screaming that they want out of their FiOS contracts.

I can cancel within 15 days of install, right? Assuming the problem isn't fixed in the next couple of days, I may be going back to RCN.

Any thoughts?

Accepted answers

mm112

It is an outage. The reason why there is a virginia ticket opened is because the verizon video network team is in virginia. That means that they are working on it and the virginia ticket is an internal ticket that is for the eyes of their top network people in virginia only. There is also one in texas but the one in virginia is the one that handles all the major issues that exist with the service such as outages. One thing they may have tried already with you and if they have you can disregard this is that you can take a pen and insert it into the red reset button at the back of the router while holding it down for 30 seconds then letting it go and then wait for the green lights to go back on. The reason for that is the router is responsible for your tv guide, widgets and your on demand. By doing this you force the router to create and seek out a new ip address that will help with connectivity issues. Another step you can try is to press menu on the remote then scroll down to customer support then go right to fix fios tv issues then press ok and follow the steps that are on the screen. It will refresh your box and seek to resolve any issues that exist. It may not do the trick because i believe it is an outage in the area you are in. Like someone else on here from your area said the help desk is useless because after you have called tech support a few times about something they tell you that they do not want to hear from you again even though something is still an issue. They have 30 days to prove themselves so make sure you have it circled on a calendar.

All comments

mm112

Actually you can cancel within 30 days. That is the policy but they do not want people to know that because the assumption is that once you have something installed in your home that the customer will not have the guts to cancel after something has been set up at that home. I believe this is an outage issue that is not just specific to your home so it is probably not just you. One thing you can do is to say where it is that you are located at so if there are other people in your area who are on here they too can check to see if they are getting that same message. The vod 153 error message happens often with verizon and sometimes the message can be due to a lack of credits but it is most likely an outage that is occurring that verizon is not aware of. If more people from where you are at post on here that it is a real issue that needs to be fixed right now verizon's people will get to work on it. To call technical support is often pointless because they go through the same basic troubleshooting steps with everyone since that is all they are trained to do and if you really want some progress with this issue then keep posting about it on here. At the end of the day it behooves verizon to fix this issue because if they do not then they will lose out on any money that could be made from on demand purchases.

DC_Resident

I am having the same problem with service 10 days old. Calling the help desk is useless.

ss-dc

MM1 - I live in downtown DC, a few blocks north of Logan Circle.

Still no VOD service this morning - same error code. It looks as if my trouble ticket has been escalated again, as the "resolve by" time has been updated to 9 p.m. tonight.

Appreciate the info on the 30-day window.

ss-dc

Tech Support said my trouble should be cleared by 5 p.m. this evening. When the problem was still occuring after work (around 6 p.m.), I went to verizon.com/repair to make sure the ticket was still open, and it turns out the ticket was gone -- "We found no open tickets for this account." I called 800-VERIZON to make sure they knew the ticket should not have been closed, and the rep couldn't find any record of a ticket for my account. I had to give her the ticket number, and after several attempts to find it, she reported that it was, in fact, open. Magically, the ticket reappeared at verizon.com/repair. She gave me an 8 p.m. clearance time.

At 9 p.m., I checked and the ticket was gone again, and the problem still existed. I had a chat session with a rep, who tried to get me to do another 45 minute's worth of troubleshooting. I told him I wasn't interested in repeating all of the steps, and that I just wanted to get the status on my ticket. He told me my ticket was closed, but that another ticket had been opened -- a ticket that starts VA, not DC.

Does this sound right? To close an individual customer's ticket and instead add a notation that points to a ticket for another state? Does this mean that no one in Washington, DC has VOD?

I'm sharing these details because my "new customer" experience is going south, and quickly. I've had FiOS for a week, and have now spent half of that time without one of its primary services. Yes, everything else is working, but what exactly gives?

Any advice? At this point, no one will even tell me directly that it's an outage...instead, they keep sending a reset signal to my STB. The tech agent tonight wanted me to once again list the movie titles that I ordered but that won't play. I'm inclined to call tomorrow, to ask for a straight answer, and to make it clear that I've now spent half my time with FiOS without VOD.

Suddenly, RCN is looking like a reliable service provider. Good thing I haven't taken their equipment back yet.

mm112

ss-dc

Thanks, MM. Your insight is appreciated.

Twenty years ago, I managed network tech support in a regional call center for one of the "big 3" carriers. Tickets for issues that caused loss of service for residential customers were never closed until the trouble was resolved and the customer was satisified.

Sunday, Nov. 10 is circled on my calendar. Thank you.