[The short story] They want me to pay $150 for a tech guy to come to my house and replace $5 of cable just so they can determine the problem isn't my home and still charge me for the visit. CS suggests I call and beg for refund after being billed.
[ Long Story] My FIOS TV and internet wasn't working like it always had. Before the holidays, a Verizon worker knocks on my door during dinner and asked if we had a outage. We told him we just got home and its working. He thanked us and left.
After that, the problems started to show.
We experienced breakups and artifacts while watch our regular and premium channels. They worked better in HD formats but many key channels were messed up.
I called and reported the problem. Followed tech supports steps exactly. They issues a new box. New box arrives, I install it and the problem is still there and now I lost half my HD channels!!
I called again and they did their magic. They told me that I had bad wiring in the house and need to send a tech. (3 year old indoor cables went bad?) That would cost me $150 for the visit and more per hour after. I told them about the outage and the odd man that appeared at my door and it was probably related. They said, I still have to pay the tech to come to my house and when he has determined it wasn't my home he would go look outside.. and still charge me for the visit.... umm what? They suggested I call after getting charged the fee and beg to have it removed. I pay $180 a month for the privilege of begging like I'm asking for free handouts. I don't want them in my house. I want them looking for the problem... outside. I'm not paying for your people to fix your problems.
I pay for HD package, Premium channels which got worse after they sent me the box. They tell me its my fault cause the wiring in the house went bad ( first time I heard that one) and I have to pay $150 just to look at it. So my options were.. pay $150 and beg for a refund even if its outside or continue to pay for channels I can't watch, thanks to them.
I cancelled my HD package and removed my premiums. If the channels don't work and they wont send a tech.. I'm not paying for channels I can't get. I still have problems with my regular channels so it looks like I'm cutting more channels soon.
I don't really watch TV but my girlfriend is disabled and she watches it all day. I already have her setup with a Roku and Chromecast so I can cut more channels.
I remember when the cableguy went to the pole first, not the house. Now greedy Verizon want me to pay their people to make their product work. They wanted me to get the $8-9 a month in-house protection to cover the $5 worth of cable than ran.
Bottom line.. They want the $150 no matter what. Its going to cost them more than that in the end.