Sick of your crap FiOS -- Stop blaming everyone else and fix my **bleep** problem.

[Nisey429]

Every night from 7 to aroun 11 PM while playing Final Fantasy XIV I get absolutely unplayable conditions. A route trace shows the problem is with a connection in NY under Alter.net WHICH EVERYONE KNOWS IS FiOS BUSINNES PEERING, OWNED BY FiOS. So stop trying to claim it's not your equipment.

This is your problem. It is not Square Enix problem. People with other ISPs don't suffer this issue while they are logged on at the same time as us. My neighbor is logged in at the same time and uses COX and does not have the problem. Your customer service reps are about as intelligent as a rock and can never actually resolve an issue or even bother to forward it to a higher level tech support.

Either change the peering on our plan and get us away from this congested and/or malfunctioning node or we are going to Cox.

[Joey-Zaza]

I too experience the exact same problem.  And they will tell you it's not their problem.

Every day.  FFXIV.  Hours at a time.

[somegirl]

This is a peer-to-peer support forum. If you want to get a message to Verizon, you should contact them directly via one of the options on their Contact Us page.

[Kruger1]

Contact Verizon directly? Bwahahaha

Has anyone been successful at that?

[somegirl]

---

@Kruger wrote:

Contact Verizon directly? Bwahahaha

Has anyone been successful at that?

---

I have, anytime I have an issue with my service. I have successfully used both the phone and chat options. Are you unable to contact Verizon for some reason?

[Kruger1]

Not everyone is as lucky as you Somegirl. Yes I have been able to contact Verizon but not before many hours of back and forth, recalling due to a call drop, and trying to get ahold of a tech. Getting a solution to a problem? Not over the phone. I had to come to this forum and fortunately an agent picked my name out of a hat. The solution happened just today. Over a year wasted on phone calls so it is nearly impossible.

The engineering team replaced equipment at their end, checked the fiber optics and actually found a dirty fiber which they cleaned and tested. For the first time since I've had FIOS I'm getting the speeds I pay for.

I'm very pleased with the results however, had they fixed this a year ago, I would be the Verizon FIOS spokesperson. Now I'm hoping I never have to go through this again.

Jeff

[kelstonb]

---

@somegirl wrote:

---

@Kruger wrote:

Contact Verizon directly? Bwahahaha

Has anyone been successful at that?

---

I have, anytime I have an issue with my service. I have successfully used both the phone and chat options. Are you unable to contact Verizon for some reason?

---

That's an interesting wording.

No one has an issue "contacting Verizon". I can load up the chat and I can dial a phone number. The issue is not a physical disability on the part of the end users being unable to load up a chat service or call a tech support number.

The issue is getting Verizon to do something other than give everyone the same rehearsed training script rather than acknowledging there is an issue with Verizon FIOS on the East Coast and this specific application and helping us come up with a solution. Let me run it down for you:

- It must be your computer/router/ONT, you should unplug your router/let me restart your router for you

- But what about all the other people that also have this problem

- It must be the game server that is overloaded

- Then why doesn't Verizon FIOS Dallas have this issue?

- It must be the path you are routed to the server then!

- Then why doesn't Time Warner Cable NY/NJ that follows the exact same path to the server have this problem

- Uh this issue is outside my scope to assist you. Thank you for being a Verizon customer.

This is every chat and phone conversation I have had. I can provide data and traceroutes from other customers and other ISPs. All they will do is make me perform a speedtest and traceroute that they like and pretend they don't see an issue and when presented with any evidence to the contrary, cannot answer any questions.

Further, linking us to the Verizon contact us page doesn't help because these forums is one of the methods listed for contact.

[kelstonb]

So, somegirl, let's make this even more ridiculous.

You asked that I contact Verizon and that I should have no problems getting them to fix our issue so that's what I did.

First I went to chat support and spoke with representative Tiffany and then immediately after, called and spoke with rep Jose.

Both representatives wouldn't even look at any information I submitted to them about our problem including basic network diagnostic reports like WinMRT trace reports because apparently, there is a belief that a program that is opensource is something I am using and submitting a screenshot of through IMGUR is going to be the thing i'm using to hack and bring down Verizon through a user-facing Customer Service Rep.

Further, Jose, who I spoke to starting at 11pm at night opened a repair ticket for me at 12:30am past midnight.

I emphasized to both Jose and Tiffany that this is an issue that OCCURS DURING PRIMETIME. So even being generous, this gives them a 6 hour window from 6pm to midnight to investigate the issue.

Instead, what happens is my ticket is opened at 12:30am and then closed and marked as "fixed" at 10am this morning.

Somehow, a ticket indicating a problem that occurs ONLY DURING PRIMETIME was miraculously investigated and fixed between the hours of 12:30am and 10am. Please, i'd love to know, somegirl. How many primetimes happen between 12:30am early Saturday and 10am that same Saturday? Because if it's more than 0, Verizon technicians have the secret of time travel and fixed my primetime issue in a time frame where it would be temporally impossible for primetime to have occurred.

[Joey-Zaza]

Welp it's official.

When one individual is having a problem and Verizon can't handle it, they ignore it.

When several people band together in the only way they know how on the forums, Verizon STILL ignores it.

Bottom line?  Verizon doesn't care.

I'm done.  I can't play the game anymore and Verizon doesn't care so I'm done with it. 

[kelstonb]

Your only options are to play with a VPN, cancel your FFXIV sub, or cancel your FIOS sub.

Since i'm representing over a hundred users up and down the east coast chosen to attempt to bring this issue to light, I can't, in good faith, ask all of them to pay for a VPN just to play one game. Since no one on these forums or at the direct support on dslreports or at Verizon tech support will recognize the issue, i've gone ahead and recommended that the best course of action is to CANCEL THEIR VERIZON FIOS SUBSCRIPTION.

There is no reason Square Enix should lose your business based on Verizon's continued incompetency.

As Verizon has breached their contract in providing you service and has failed to even attempt to offer a resolution in good faith, it's up to you whether you wish to attempt to fight the early termination fee.

[Nisey429]

I will be leaving FiOS and I will not be paying an early termination fee as they failed to fulfill their end of the contract.

There inept techs now tell me the problem is my router, yet cannot explain how if it was my router, why when I run WinMTR with my VPN running there is zero issue.

FiOS is a joke. Cox, I cannot wait to come back to you.

[JustGotFiOS]

I had my fair share of issues with Verizon, but as inept as they are they are still by miles better than TWC. I gave up on using the chat option because the folks have no clue and / or no means to do anything. I have no idea why Verizon offers chat support when the only thing they are allowed to do is reboot your box. Interestingly, that often fixes issues for a short period of time just to have them back soon. I'm not sure why Verizon even bothers with equipment that costs 20-40$ street except for the fact they if they buy it in bulk they get it for even less and turn a profit on equipment rental fees much quicker. Which I am OK with (after all, they are a business trying to generate revenue, not the Salvation Army) as long as their service works properly.

Phone support is a hit or miss, at times you get a reall sharp person who miraculously is allowed to actually help you and do stuff, plus they tend to be trained for their job (while the chat folks probably follow a script). Also, the chat support folks most likely have five or six sessions going in parallel while the phone support folks obviously cannot do that.

When you cannot make it work through the normal channels I found that using the BBB is a reasonable approach to gain some traction. That worked with Verizon who had someone more official get in touch with me and really tried hard to get a hold of me...just to tell me that they will not honor the price they quoted online. They should have just thanked me for detecting a calculation error on their end and honor the price quoted, which would have made me much happer and would not make me repeat talking about in public.

If that does not work, I had good success writing letter to the CEO. Make sure you get the right name and address and keep it really short and professional. When you go on for three pages your letter will get tossed without further action. I once had a problem with Samsung hard drives and there specifically with the request to pay return shipping for obviously bad product. I got nowhere through any channel until I wrote the US CEO a letter telling him that I find it obnoxious that I have to pay up for Samsung to fix their bad product. A week later I got a nice letter back and it included a prepaid credit card that more than covered any shipping expenses.

See, Verizon, that cost the CEO 25 bucks out of his own pocket (if that), but makes me tell this story about top notch customer service over and over again....although it shouldn't have been that difficult to get it in the first place.

It is fine to run into problems. I can live with the fact that about once or twice a month the connection just dies and I have to restart the modem and router. I can cope with the two or three minutes being offline, but anything beyond that ought to be avoidable or at least fixable. Verizon, your paying customers deserve better.

[ImStillaYankee]

Don't feel bad, I've been going through this with Fios for more than a year and I don't play any games--just crawling Internet speeds in the evening even with their fancy Gateway.  My kids don't get any wifi in their rooms, but their friends can connect to my router across the street.  As a matter of fact, I've been a block away & still connected but just 30' away in the same house we can't connect.  I go through the same problems with Verizon over the phone or through chat.  The script reading & always wanting to reboot my router is childish (and before anyone says it's a good idea to occasionally reboot the router, no kidding.  I do it every time I notice the connection slowing, but it never makes any difference).

Since Verizon and the cable companies act like the monopolies they are, we need to address these concerns with the regulators.  Local officials tend to react when a group of voters inform them of a problem.

[c4103]

I have the same problem.  This is clearly Verizon's fault, but they are not inclined to do anything about it because they have deniability.  The server in Dulles, VA that all traffic to the FFXIV servers goes through is where all traffic to that part of Canada from Verizon is routed.  The company that owns the routing hardware is not Verizon themselves, but a Verizon subsidiary.  The whole thing is total **bleep**, most of us have to use WTFast to make the game playable.  That in itself is evidence that there is a bogus traffic routing problem that isn't being addressed.  Most likely the problem will never be addressed, because Verizon is too big to care and Square can't really just move the datacenter.

[Cfitzy84]

I, too, have this issue usually at night by the time I'm done playing FFXIV for the night I have over 700 packets lost between 8 PM and about 11 PM. THAT IS A LOT OF PACKET LOSS. I'm in Northern VA and it is just obnxious at night thankfully I have WTFast so I can play but no matter how many times I have contacted FIOS it is honestly just a pain so I  have given up. I do wish they would fix the alter.net disaster though. 😞

[Joey-Zaza]

Yep.

It's a HUGE issue across the board with this game.  So many friends of mine are having this same issue.  Verizon will prey on your ignorance and say it's not their problem but they know they have peering issues.  We just need to keep the pressure on them, and make more people AWARE that this is an issue.

Something is going on with their peering to level3, and it's about time theydid something about it.