Great Products - Miserable websites

I am a retired Verizon employee (31 years). I love the company's products and use them all - FIOS, phone, internet, TV, wireless. Their network is the best I've ever used. Why then do they consistently put up websites that are horribly designed, very user un-friendly, and simply do not work. I have lost track of the hours spent just rying to pay my bill online. I have the One Bill service, but have to navigate through several different sites until I accidently stumble on the right link (that works) for online payment. Every screen seems to require me to log in yet again, and often requiring different user name and/or password. Links frequently just lead back to the same page. I could go on, but I'm getting frustrated just thinking about it. I am NOT a computer novice, and I am very comfortable and competent with internet usage, but Verizon's sites are simply the worst I've encountered.

Come on boys and girls, get with it and TEST your sites before you put them into service.

Accepted answers

Justin46

@barbshop wrote:
Justin, I find your posts to be among the most useful in the forums. However, when it comes to navigating Verizon websites, I have to tell you that there is no consitancy. Very often a sequence of clicks that works one time (or for one person) may not work the next, or for someone else. From time to time I find myself being taken on an endless circular trip which seems to always arrive at yet another login screen. I can't understand why one is not able to login ONCE and then see all of his Verizon related accounts/equipment. Especially those of us with Quad Play and One Bill accounts.
Still, I'm glad to know that the sites seem to work for you. Perhaps one day, I too will reach that promised land where a click takes you to where it says it will.

Thank you for your comment.

And I generally agree, very poorly structured, very poorly implemented, not at all user friendly. But that is why I pretty much bookmark any Verizon site I successfully reach that does what I need. I have found that by doing that I can mostly avoid the issues you describe. Now as to why they work for me, and maybe only for me, I don't know, but they do.

I hope you can reach that promised land soon..... Smiley Very Happy

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

All comments

Justin46

I agree with you 100%. I maintain a website, I have at least some idea how to structure things, and for some reason Verizon's site(s) just don't have a logical strructure, and web pages are too cluttered with ads, graphics, whatever (although using Firefox and Adblock Plus I have managed to cut the clutter down somewhat).

My solution has been, whenever I eventually find the web page that I want or that works, to bookmark that page, or at least the page I started with. For example, I use the following URLs to go mostly directly to the function I want:

MyVerizon (to pay my bill only😞 https://www22.verizon.com/myverizon/

Remote DVR: https://www36.verizon.com/fiostv/web/

Webmail: http://webmail.verizon.com/

Verizon Call Assistant: https://www22.verizon.com/callassistant/

I have a few other rarely accessed sites bookmarked, such as the codes for TV remotes for various devices, etc. And there may be other Verizon sites I occasionally go to, but very rarely, and then I am always searching, searching, searching, trying to find the right place. Very frustrating....

Someone really needs to do an overall restructuring of the Verizon sites (and yeah, I know that will take time and money, but it sure would make things easier)

Just my $.02 worth Smiley Very Happy

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

barbshop

Justin, thanks. Bookmarking is always a good idea. I think more than restructuring is necessary. Some good old fashioned testing would be in order - I mean user testing, not just the programmer/designer making a site do what he knows it can. One of the biggest problems I had (I was in the IT department at Verizon for many years), was trying to convince programmers that we needed to actually "use" a site the way the end user would, and not with the inside knowledge of tricks to get a program to do what we knew it could. I am convinced that the designers of Verizon's sites simply never try to actually "USE" it.

Justin46

@barbshop wrote:
Justin, thanks. Bookmarking is always a good idea. I think more than restructuring is necessary. Some good old fashioned testing would be in order - I mean user testing, not just the programmer/designer making a site do what he knows it can. One of the biggest problems I had (I was in the IT department at Verizon for many years), was trying to convince programmers that we needed to actually "use" a site the way the end user would, and not with the inside knowledge of tricks to get a program to do what we knew it could. I am convinced that the designers of Verizon's sites simply never try to actually "USE" it.

Oh I agree, I certainly did not mean to imply that "user" testing was not required. I worked for IBM and an IBM Business Partner for 35 years, and spent quite a bit of time testing new software, both in development and a system center. One of my great traits is that I apparently have a bulit-in ability to "play dumb" as a user, even though I may know in detail how something is supposed to work (I am great at hitting the wrong key at the right time, or the right key at the wrong time Smiley Happy ). I really can test as if I am not familiar with a product at all. From my experience relatively few people have that ability, but it worked for me, I think I was the most hated tester in the world for those software developers (but I really think I helped them deliver a better product). And a couple of guys I worked with, who also knew the products well, could not test worth a darn because they did not have that ability to ignore what they knew.

I did participate in a very limited website test for Verizon at the site in Irving, TX a couple of years ago, a part of the new MyVerizon. Spent an hour I think going through a part of the proposed website, they recorded everything I did or said. And I can assure you I was pretty brutal, and I think I gave them some pretty good suggestions. But when the stuff became available, I could not see much if anything changed from what I had seen originally. Was very disappointed, by that is life I guess.....

I made the comments about bookmarking because so many customers appear to just go to MyVerizon and try to find or everything from there and get frustrated. I find that to be a big, big waste of time. So I purposely save addresses to my Favorites every time I find a new part of Verizon that I think I will want to get back to (I probably have 15 or 20 Verizon URLs saved). I just think that if other users did that they would be a lot less frustrated.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

Bluesmoke2

I agree; the websites are so convoluted that their customer service people can't get me to the proper location to put me on an e-mail list to upgrade my Home Media DVR to the latest version. They have also informed me that it must be done online but they can't get the proper web page where one can do this. I have been communicating with customer service over 3 hours by telephone to resolve it to no avail. Frustrating is putting it mildly.

Justin46

@Bluesmoke wrote:
I agree; the websites are so convoluted that their customer service people can't get me to the proper location to put me on an e-mail list to upgrade my Home Media DVR to the latest version. They have also informed me that it must be done online but they can't get the proper web page where one can do this. I have been communicating with customer service over 3 hours by telephone to resolve it to no avail. Frustrating is putting it mildly.

Assuming you mean you want to get the 500GB QIP7232 DVR:

1. Log into MyVerizon

2. Click on the My STB tab.

3. At the bottom of the list of STBs, click on See Full List.

4. To the right of the list of STBs you should see an ad titled "Want more from your FiOS DVR?", click on the Learn More button.

5. You should now see a page where you can enter your info.

That is the way I ordered mine, ordered it one week got it the next. Hope this helps.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

barbshop

Justin, I find your posts to be among the most useful in the forums. However, when it comes to navigating Verizon websites, I have to tell you that there is no consitancy. Very often a sequence of clicks that works one time (or for one person) may not work the next, or for someone else. From time to time I find myself being taken on an endless circular trip which seems to always arrive at yet another login screen. I can't understand why one is not able to login ONCE and then see all of his Verizon related accounts/equipment. Especially those of us with Quad Play and One Bill accounts.

Still, I'm glad to know that the sites seem to work for you. Perhaps one day, I too will reach that promised land where a click takes you to where it says it will.

Justin46

@barbshop wrote:
Justin, I find your posts to be among the most useful in the forums. However, when it comes to navigating Verizon websites, I have to tell you that there is no consitancy. Very often a sequence of clicks that works one time (or for one person) may not work the next, or for someone else. From time to time I find myself being taken on an endless circular trip which seems to always arrive at yet another login screen. I can't understand why one is not able to login ONCE and then see all of his Verizon related accounts/equipment. Especially those of us with Quad Play and One Bill accounts.
Still, I'm glad to know that the sites seem to work for you. Perhaps one day, I too will reach that promised land where a click takes you to where it says it will.

Thank you for your comment.

I hope you can reach that promised land soon..... Smiley Very Happy

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

adhdmom1

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Lodgingman

My wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to smartphones. We picked out our product and tried to place an online order but met with constant frustration. My wife would post her order and then when she tried to place mine, it looped back to the screen where you select how many phones you want to upgrade. Earlier, when I tried to look up accessories, I got looped back to the same place. My wife tried to talk about the problem with the chat person but that was no help.

Apparently, Verizon doesn't want upgraded phone sales and renew contracts.

Hmmm. Before posting this, I ran the spell check. It didn't like the word "smartphones". Really? On a Verizon forum?

oldfashioned

barbshop - That's weird. I was always able to pay directly through the website without going through what you described. I wonder why that is. Hmmm....I don't know if this helps but there are other ways of paying your bill on line. I do it through my bank's online payment manager and that's never a problem for me. I don't know if it's necessarily quicker but it just keeps all of my bill payments organized in one place instead of going to separate websites to pay each particular vendor.

I do agree that sometimes programs are not designed with the user in mind and yes, that can be annoying. I enjoy Verizon very much myself and I can never trade it in for cable. It's a great product for sure. But yes, some of the websites can be confusing. For example, when I was looking under the "upgrade and renewal center", it was telling me first that I could upgrade my existing service for the same exact contract price I have now. Really? That couldn't be and I knew that didn't sound right and sure enough when I added this upgrade to my cart, the price changed to $114 per month, which makes sense. I really doubt this was due to sinister intentions on anyone's part. That has to be a programming error that wasn't tested and/or revised to communicate more clearly to the customer. And I really wasn't sure if I should just upgrade to a more expensive package.

So then I got into an on line chat with a Verizon rep who was very helpful with breaking everything down and who did a fantastic job walking me through all of the websites that she could access so I could see exactly what I was ordering. She explained to me all of my choices and Justin had mentioned to me that he has always renewed his contract. And that's when I learned about renewing my own contract to include upgrades to keep my rates the same and in my particular case, my estimated monthly bill will be lower than what I pay and lower than what I had paid before.

Did the website that I went to before explain any of this? No...and that's when I really needed to talk to someone instead.

I would hazard a guess that this, along with other messages that are communicated poorly (for example, "You are using an unsupport brower which Verizon does not support"), is what often causes a lot of miscommunication and disgruntled customers. Another problem that I sometimes encounter is when I click on a particular link I will get an error message saying that the server could not understand the query sent by my browser. It gets confusing.

Justin46

@Lodgingman wrote:
My wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to smartphones. We picked out our product and tried to place an online order but met with constant frustration. My wife would post her order and then when she tried to place mine, it looped back to the screen where you select how many phones you want to upgrade. Earlier, when I tried to look up accessories, I got looped back to the same place. My wife tried to talk about the problem with the chat person but that was no help.
Apparently, Verizon doesn't want upgraded phone sales and renew contracts.
Hmmm. Before posting this, I ran the spell check. It didn't like the word "smartphones". Really? On a Verizon forum?

Well maybe if you posted to the Verizon Wireless website you might have better results? This site is not for wireless products, not sure how you got here if you were ordering cell phones.

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, 25/25 Internet, and Digital Voice user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9
Keller, TX 76248

oldfashioned

Yep, Verizon is divided into different entities. Verizon Communications is for the landline services provided by the bundle package (TV, phone, and Internet) and Verizon Wireless is for cell phones, smart phones, I-Phones, androids....did I get all of that right? lol

ElizabethS

Hello lodgingman

These forums are dedicated to Residential products and services offered by Verizon.
For discussions on Verizon Wireless issues, please post your topic on the Verizon Wireless Community at http://community.verizonwireless.com/

oldfashioned

barbshop - I just checked out my options on line for paying my bill through Verizon's website. Toward the right side of my screen after I log in, under "my account", I can open "billing and payment" and select "pay bill" without logging in numerous times. That's what comes up after I log into my email account. Or you can click on "view and pay bill" before logging in and that should take you to the same thing.

Perhaps it's your browser? I have verision 11 of Firefox and verision 8 of Internet Explorer as a backup.