Verizon selling CA, FL, TX Services to Frontier

[bbinnard]

When I read about Verizon agreeing to sell it's "wireline" customers, service, and equipment  in California, Texas, and Florida to Frontier I took that to mean they were selling their copper wire services only.  But apparently this is not the case.  This WSJ article says the sale includes FIOS as well:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-certain-wireline-assets-for-10-billion-1423171649

In today's LA Times Fontier had a full page ad saying they were looking forward to expanding their network by absorbing all Verizon accounts (phone, TV, Internet, FIOS) in these 3 states.

So how is this going to work?  Will Frontier take over the Verizon servers that provide our service?  Will we have to se up all new billing accounts? What about VOD service? The whole thing seems rather mysterious.

There are several postings about bad problems in previous Frontier takeovers:

http://www.courant.com/consumer/bottom-line/hc-bottom-line-frontier-att-takeover-20141204-column.htm...

As of right now I do not have a very good feeling about this.  Fortunately I live in an area where there is an alternative provider (Cox) but I know most people won't have this luxury.

[athenian200]

I really want to know what kind of law they have that allows an agreement I make with one company to bind me to someone I never agreed to do business with, who I may not even trust.

If I sign up to do business with a top-tier national ISP, I don't expect to be legally slammed to some no-name fly-by-night company that I've never heard of before with god-knows-what quality of service and told to suck it up. 

If Verizon doesn't want to provide my services anymore, fine. But that should mean I get to go with any other provider in my area. Instead I get treated like a commodity to be brought and sold against my will to any provider they deign to stick me with, no matter how bad their reputation or how sleazy their business practices are. This is like if I hired one contractor to do a job that was BBB rated and listed on Angie's List, signed a contract, and then had some fly-by-night corporation with one-star reviews come along and tell me that they were going to be doing the work, that somehow or another the other guy had too many contracts and sold off the responsibility to whoever would take it. And then if they break something or injure me in some way, I can't do very much about it. It's like my choice of what company or person I trust enough to do business with is irrelevant, and I'm just expected to accept the service from whoever will provide it on their behalf, no matter how bad they might be, as a substitute. I have to say, this is the last time I sign a two-year agreement... if they can screw me over like this and slam me to some other ISP I may not even trust, then it's not worth the risk. Last year was the first year we ever tried locking the rates in... I regret it already and I'll never lock myself into something like that again. If they don't get the option to hurt you on price, they just pull the rug out from under you in some underhanded way like this.

This is missing the big picture, though. I have a feeling this is pretty much the beginning of the end for wired Internet services. All of the major companies seem to want to divest that part of their business... so pretty soon those expensive data plans will be the only way to get online, as dead-end companies like Frontier let the infrastructure rot and ever more wireless towers are built out to improve that side of things. Fiber probably won't be maintained, we'll get rolled back to DSL speeds after a few years, and then find ourselves begging to download everything on our phones at any price because it's the only decent infrastructure available. I'm pretty disgusted with with the whole situation after reading about it.

[bpeterson2]

Exactly how I feel about it athenian200.  They do currently want to keep the Northeast customers and focus on them, but they will probably toss those customers out too.  This is the lowest of the low and I hope Verizon goes bankrupt.  I am thankful I do not have Verizon Wireless.

[athenian200]

Yeah. To be honest, I don't have Verizon for phone service, either. Still on AT&T for that because I had an old home phone number I didn't want to give up. It certainly explains why they were so mad that I didn't want to bundle my phone service. That's the only way they could have kept me as a customer after today, apparently.

I've actually missed U-Verse. I asked before moving if the Internet here was good, and everyone told me Verizon was the best. But ever since I got here, all I've done is wish I had AT&T back... I tolerated Verizon only because of their reputation and their high speeds, and because Time Warner was often thought of as the same or slightly worse. I hated their customer service and thought they were rude and inconsiderate, so this was a fitting note for them to leave on. Now their service quality here will probably match the attitude of their employees without corporate breathing down their necks.

AT&T is offering some kind of data plan with Dish service or something, might have to look into that... if the wired infrastructure is going to be left to rot, might as well start planning to have all my Internet be on my phone.

[Waambo]

We're all gonna love this part of Frontier: https://frontier.com/docs/docs/fbfairaccesspolicy(adc-revision).pdf

[stanfordc777]

WHY???  I have FiOS here in Texas and have been perfectly happy.  Now they are dumping us to one of the worst Internet providers in the country!  And with very little warning or notice.   Thanks Verizon, you just screwed over a lot of customers.   Now I'll be switching to another provider.  I was perfectly happy, having FiOS with 150/150 speeds and have had no problems. We will see how this goes come April 1st but from what I have read all over the Internet, it doesn't look good. 

[tns2]

Plenty of notice about this in other sources.  And, If you notice. this thread is over a year old.  True only saw info in snail mail about a month ago.

The info about California, Florida and Texas moving their email to AOL earlier than the rest was also a big hint.

[bbinnard]

Very interesting....

I had an online chat with a Frontier rep just now and he explained that the usage caps etc. apply only to Frontier customers who have satellite service. This makes sense becuase Frontier did purchase the old Hughes service back when Hughes was supplying Interent servic e to end users.

So usage caps is one issue we won't have to deal with.

[bbinnard]

https://frontier.com/docs/docs/fbfairaccesspolicy(adc-revision).pdf

 Basically it says Frontier broadband service is limited by usage caps, but it doesn't say what the caps are or if they are at all related to the type of service you have. It is also not clear when this posting was made, if it is still applicable, or what options there may be. 

What it does say is you can buy "get out of jail" tokens that allow you to exceed your caps, but how this actually works is not stated. I did a Google search on "Frontier restore tokens",  but the results were not particularly informative.  Apparently the tokens originiated with Hughes service, which (apparently) Frontier took over.  Most of the postings about this were old. So the whole situation is quite unclear.

I'm going to post a question abotu "Restore Tokens" on the meetfrontier,com website and see what sort of response I get.

Edit: well all that did was get me a list of other unrelated questions. I'll try an online chat tomorrow.

[_dot]

this is further down in that document...have you called it?

Restore Tokens can be purchased and added to your account by calling a Customer

Service Agent at 877-451-1801

[saicam53]

Yeah, I have reservations about this myself. I've been with FIOs for years now, best services I found, next to no outages, speed greater then what I pay for. I've read alot of bad reviews with Frontier. I siged up fro Verizon, not them. I have 3 more months on my contract then it might just be time to move along.

[athenian200]

Frontier sent us an e-mail saying that we're going to be switched over to their services next month, and I've heard nothing good at all about them. I've heard that they have tech support that doesn't even know what Ethernet is, that they sometimes allow outages to go on for months, and that they try to get away with double-billing people every month.

They even claim that we're expected to honor any contract with have with Verizon, even though Verizon won't actually be providing service here anymore. So now I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the ETF just to avoid doing business with Frontier. My only other option is Time Warner, but I've read so many horror stories about Frontier that they actually sound worse than any of the four "legitimate" ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, or Time Warner.

However, they said that the date of the change over is April 1st... so I'm wondering if it's supposed to be an April Fool's joke. Kind of a suspicious date to pick.

I mean, if this is real, then why would I be hearing about it for the first time from Frontier? Why didn't Verizon say anything to us about this?

[smith6612]

Sounds like Verizon's support.

For a while, I used to utilize both Verizon DSL and Frontier DSL. Verizon DSL has generally been the better performer, although that has changed in recent years. Frontier DSL has not always been the best performer, but it was down far less than Verizon DSL was, I had less of an issue with buffer bloat or MTU overhead (thanks to PPPoA), and their tech support was always willing to dispatch a tech / create trouble tickets BEFORE Sending modems if I reported throughput less than half of my rated circuit. The one thing Frontier never fixed, prior to me disconnecting my DSL with them due to non-use, was the night time congestion issue. although it has since been a few years, I'm sure that's fixed.

Overall, though, Frontier treated me well. It sounds like so far the network cutovers have been going fairly smooth, with a few small hiccups. I know areas like California and Miami have been problem areas for Verizon in regards to network congestion, so hopefully Frontier's network changes help for the best.

[itsNate]

Based on my chat with Frontier today, there will not be speed data caps for TX FiOS internet customers.

[Engineerik]

I have had the same experience as many responders on this thread in that I only found out about this switch when I recieved a letter via usps from Frontier welcoming me effective April 1.

I am quite disappointed in lack of direct communication from Verizon.  I also find it laughable to read comments on this forum telling people that there was plenty of warning if they only would have read the forum.

I have never used this forum prior to posting this message and I did not even know this forum existed.  Furthermore since when is a user forum the proper way to notify customers that you just sold your business to someone else and all accounts are moving to a new company?

If not for Frontier contacting me I would still have absolutely no clue that my service was about to change providers in 2 days.

While I have been happy with the reliability of fios, I am extremely disappointed in Verizon regarding absolutely no notification of this change.

[Justin46]

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@Engineerik wrote:

I have had the same experience as many responders on this thread in that I only found out about this switch when I recieved a letter via usps from Frontier welcoming me effective April 1.

I am quite disappointed in lack of direct communication from Verizon.  I also find it laughable to read comments on this forum telling people that there was plenty of warning if they only would have read the forum.

I have never used this forum prior to posting this message and I did not even know this forum existed.  Furthermore since when is a user forum the proper way to notify customers that you just sold your business to someone else and all accounts are moving to a new company?

If not for Frontier contacting me I would still have absolutely no clue that my service was about to change providers in 2 days.

While I have been happy with the reliability of fios, I am extremely disappointed in Verizon regarding absolutely no notification of this change.

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I agree that Verizon really has not done enough to notify customers about this. And I think a very large number of customers are going to be surprised by the change. BUT the reality is, if you pay any attention to the news, be it newspapers, cable and local news, business websites, etc., this sale was announced I believe in Feb. 2015, and has been in and out of the news since then as Verizon and Frontier worked to get regulatory approval, etc. Most people SHOULD be aware of the change (and yes, I know they won't be, but they should). 

We can hope for the best. I really expect to see very little change, if any, at least initially. If you need help, or want to change your service, you will contact Frontier instead of Verizon. Many Verizon employees are included in the sale to Frontier, so the person that comes to your home or business to fix things may very well be the same person that did the original install.

As someone previously said, much of the internet connection stuff has already been changed to Frontier, so that should be in pretty good shape.

For TV, Frontier bought some Verizon services, including FiOS, some years ago in Indiana, Washington, and Oregon, so they do already have experience with that. I think we will be good here also, although this is one area where I am concerned that maybe, in the not too distant future, Frontier might start making changes - channels, monthly rates (after any contract expires), maybe other things.

I am not surprised about this, I knew about it when the sale was announced, but there is really nothing we can do about it, other than either wait and see how it goes (or maybe change providers, to cable or satellite).

One thing about forums: obviously this is Verizon's forum. Frontier apparently does not sponsor any forums, and as far as I know have no plans to (hope I am wrong). But at least there is a Frontier forum at dslreports.com, so that is one place to look for information or help.

Here's hoping all goes well Friday and beyond!

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV: Extreme HD, Internet: 50/50, Digital Voice
VMS Enhanced Service: 1 server, 2 clients
Keller, TX 76248 (VHO 1)
Soon to be a Frontier FiOS customer