Summary:
After downgrading my internet speed from 1G to 300M, I lost internet access for 2 hours before it was restored. Apparently, this is the length of time it takes for the new order to work its way through the system, after the old service is terminated. No one warned me that this could happen, and customer service/tech support didn’t know it either.
Lesson Learned:
Don’t change Verizon internet speeds if you have something important to do online for the next couple of hours.
Story:
I was making several changes to my account including cutting cable, dropping landline, and downgrading my internet speed. I was just finishing my call with a fairly easy to understand Asian girl, who was working in a very noisy call center, when our call was disconnected. That’s when we realized that our landline disconnection had already gone through. I never got to thank her for all her help. A few minutes later my cell rang from Verizon. It tried to patch me through to an agent, but no one was there. A few minutes after that, it happened again. This time it was her manager making sure everything had been completed before the call dropped. I told her that it was and that I was very happy with her agent’s help, and then hung up; only to discover that something was very wrong. Not only had they already dropped my cable and phone services before the call was over, but they had cut off my internet access as well.
So now I had to call back in to customer service to find out why they had cut me off. I first spoke with a very easy to understand Hispanic girl that took me through level 1 tech troubleshooting. Then I was transferred over to a fairly difficult to understand Indian man to do level 2 tech troubleshooting. Despite telling them both that the connection loss had happened during a change of services, neither of them were aware that this could be the problem. Both said that the services were working on their end, and after extensive troubleshooting on my part, tech #2 was certain it was a router issue. (Yes, my 2-month-old router had gone bad at the very moment that my phone and cable were cut off.)
He was ready to send me a new router, but wanted to get his tech team together on this issue to see if they could solve it before sending one out. Of course, the team would take at least a half-hour to assemble, so I could either wait on hold or they would call me back.
At the two-hour mark, my internet magically started working again. My tech guy called back a few minutes later just to confirm everything was back up. It was and I was grateful. But I still tried to press him on why it had been down. While it was very hard to understand his answer, I got the feeling that it was more likely that my service came back because the order had finally gone through, not because of anything they had solved on their end.
So, after stressing for an hour on the phone changing our services, I was blessed with spending two more hours troubleshooting my internet and stressing about how much longer I would be without it. Not a good experience. Verizon either needs to fix this issue by keeping the old service going till the new service kicks in, or at the very least have their reps warn customers that this could happen before they okay the service change.
