I've been a long-time customer of Verizon residential service (approaching 20 years), and recently decided it's time to go for one of 'the bundles' - the price looked great. I wanted to ponder over all the options, so I went to the trouble of establishing my account online. When I went to 'upgrade my service' I got a rather non-plus message to call customer service. I assumed that the 'system was busy' and left it at that, deciding to try again later. Several weeks later, I was reminded by a new and improved offer for the 'bundle'. I logged in and tried to upgrade again, and recieved the same message. This time I noticed that my account was several days passed due (I had switched to paperless billing on the previous occasion and didn't heed the email reminder), and so duly paid the $38 to bring my account up-to-date. After the payment posted, I tried agian: still the same message to call 1-800...
I decided to call a real person at Verizon to help me, and after speaking briefly to Customer Service and explaining the 'Please call 1-800-VERIZON' message, I was transferred to the Finance Dept., and of course had to repeat my account details, as apparently you must do, with every transfer, to every department within Verizon. Upon reviewing my account it was stated that everything was in order and that there was no issue with my account. I was then transferred to Customer Service, who, after verifying my account details, politely offered to assist me in ordering the upgraded service. I replied that I would rather review the offers and options online and asked if I would now be able to do so, given that the issue with my restricted access was cleared up. She took some notes and then offered me a number to call to clear up the access issues: it turned out to be the Finance Deptartment. After protesting that I had already spoken with them (and not wishing to impart my account details again) I eventually gave up and resigned myself to give it another try.
Later that day, after serveral fruitless efforts to see if HAL had blinked, I again called the Finance Dept. andI was told there was no reason I should not have access to the upgrade option and stayed on the line while the restriction was lifted. In hindsight, I should have stayed on until I verified that I had access, as I still cannot access the upgrade option, many hours later.
A couple of observations prompted by this process:
1. Throughout each call to Verizon, the staff were very courteous and attempted to help the customer, but the process seems to be to transfer the call rather than attempt to resolve the issue (and in some cases, re-transfer to the orginal entity).
2. Throughout each call to Verizon, the quality of the call was very poor - shockingly poor for a phone company.
3. Verizon doesn't seem too worried by the competion at this point and appears willing to treat long-standing customers with a certain disdain.
4. Many residential customers are also wireless customers, and the wireless space is much more competitive.
