Verizon Classic Webmail Migration to Verizon Message Center

[Lorena_VZ]

I wanted to take the opportunity to respond to your concerns regarding Verizon Email.

Migration from Classic Webmail to New Message Center

Verizon introduced Verizon Message Center over 12 months ago to Classic Webmail customers by presenting a “Go to New Email Version” link within Classic Webmail. We wanted to give you the opportunity to check it out and become familiar with it before we began migrating customers to it.  The customer migration will take place over the course of 2011. Once you have been migrated to Message Center, the Classic View link will be removed. We believe that you will ultimately be much happier with Verizon Message Center.

Verizon Message Center is a more feature rich application than Classic Webmail. It offers the following new features:

1. Powerful Calendar
   1. Easily create and manage calendars for each of your family members
   2. Import calendars from friends/family
   3. Share your calendar with friends and family
   4. Subscribe to popular sports, holiday calendars
2. Manage all your email accounts within Message Center
   1. PoP or import your non-verizon.net email into Message Center
   2. Filter and/or manage emails from multiple email accounts in your Message Center inbox
   3. Leverage Verizon’s powerful SPAM filters tools, filters and email blocking features to avoid unnecessary email
   4. Easily setup email distribution lists to send emails to contact groups

   3. Customer can change/adjust all their email settings and never leave Message Center

   1. 1. Vacation Reply
      2. Forwarding
      3. SPAM Detector
      4. Signature

If you uncover issues or bugs, please continue to post them to the Verizon Forum and we will correct them as quickly as possible.

Thank you again for you business!

[Justin46]

Lorena,

I understand that Verizon want to get all of the webmail users migrated to the New interface. But you are really, really making some folks mad by not addressing some of the legitimate issues before forcing them to migrate.

For example, what about the issue of not being able to send plain text messages from the New interface? For some people that is critical, there are sites that just will not, under any circumstances, accept HTML format emails. And it appears to me that some of the other usability issues need to be addressed to before anyone else is forced to migrate (and really, you should re-think the no-return to Classic policy for now until you address some of these issues). There have been plenty of comments and complaints made here in the email forum as well as the Ideas area, so I think you and your staff should have a very good idea of what needs to be done, and done soon.

All of that new functionality may be great, but if we cannot do the basic functions we need to do, your New webmail interface with all of those functions is useless to us (actually worse than useless, because it forces users to try to find some other solution, which I think you would agree is bad for them and bad for Verizon).

Please listen to your customers NOW!

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

[Lorena_VZ]

Justin,

We are enhancing Verizon Message Center in response to all the constructive feedback provided on the Verizon Forum.   We are looking into the feasibility of offering Plain Text  as well. 

We rely on the VZ Forum, Customer Feedback emails and issues raised in the customer support centers to drive enhancements/changes to Message Center.

Please also know that we did conduct Alpha and Beta trials and made Message Center available on a trial basis since March 2010.

We appreciate your feedback and patience as we work to improve the Verizon Message Center experience.

[Justin46]

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@Lorena_VZ wrote:

Justin,

We are enhancing Verizon Message Center in response to all the constructive feedback provided on the Verizon Forum.   We are looking into the feasibility of offering Plain Text  as well. 

We rely on the VZ Forum, Customer Feedback emails and issues raised in the customer support centers to drive enhancements/changes to Message Center.

Please also know that we did conduct Alpha and Beta trials and made Message Center available on a trial basis since March 2010.

We appreciate your feedback and patience as we work to improve the Verizon Message Center experience.

---

Lorena,

Thanks for the reply. I highlighted "constructive feedback" because you surely do get a bunch that is not "constructive," such as all of the ones that just say "it sucks" etc. But there have been some very constructive ones that I think really do deserve some attention on your part.

And honestly, would it really cause that big of an issue for Verizon to offer those who want to go back to Classic that option for a while? I still have Classic available to me, as long as you still offer it to some it seems you could offer the option to all while you enhance the New version to address concerns. Just a thought....

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

[Lorena_VZ]

Dear Justin,

We are working to offer Plain Text. Please expect to see it come out this summer. Thank you for your patience.

[Justin46]

---

@Lorena_VZ wrote:

Dear Justin,

We are working to offer Plain Text. Please expect to see it come out this summer. Thank you for your patience.

---

Lorena,

Thanks much for the update. Very good news!!!!!

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

[Buffy3]

Just wondering if there is any progress on offering plain text?  It is the end of July which is summer here on the east coast of USA or are we waiting for summer down under :0

[yux]

I agree with the girl who wrote the complaint abour your "forcing" improvements for which many people are not ready. Your old system was not exactly perfected. I am trying to speak for the millions of elderly people who want to use email to send and receive "simple" messages, and get lost in the jungle of complexities. I had a simple specific question. Why was there no scroll column on my email? Couldn't get a "specific" answer. Pathetic.

[robertereed]

There was a reason I ignored the requests to change.  I previewed the new system and it sucks!  Then you nicely asked if I wanted to change and I said no and you changed me anyway!  Repeat, the new e-mail interface sucks!

[Christoph2]

I am very upset that Verizon forces it's customers to migrate to a "new message center". The contacts are very user unfriendly and the format is terrible. There has to be a method in place for a customer to remain on the preferred old format. This will be a customer retention issue. If this format can not be moved back to the old format, I have no choice but to go back to Optimum. Christoph 

[stoppopup]

I can't believe Verizon does this - you get a pop up and it doesn't give you a choice to opt out - so you get stuck with a new message center service that you didn't want- I just want to read my emails and not have to go through all your so called enhancements give me a choice to opt out!!!!

[Justin46]

---

@stoppopup wrote:

I can't believe Verizon does this - you get a pop up and it doesn't give you a choice to opt out - so you get stuck with a new message center service that you didn't want- I just want to read my emails and not have to go through all your so called enhancements give me a choice to opt out!!!!

---

How does it make it more difficult to read your emails? I have had both the old and the new, there really isn't that much difference; yes, it looks a little different, and yes, it is missing some of the capabilities of the classic interface (mostly on sending), but to just read emails, I don't see any downside.

So what do you not like? Maybe there is a setting that will address your issue. If you can provide details of what your issues are, someone here might be able to help.

As to why the change, my guess is that Verizon views the new webmail interface as newer, better, etc, and they don't want the expense of supporting a new and an old version. Supporting multiple versions of software is expensive, so most companies do replace older software with new, and discontinue supporting the old. And in this case, Verizon has probably spent at least a year making this transition, so when I was forced to migrate I was not surprised.

One last thing; if you don't want to go through the "message center" thing, you can always just go directly to webmail:

http://webmail.verizon.com/

Just a simple, quick login and you are viewing your email. But yes, once you have been migrated, it will be the "new" webmail interface, not the "classic."

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, Internet, and phone user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9A
Keller, TX 76248

[zvalueman]

Justin,

It may work fine for you with both versions, but I can tell you that with an IPOD touch (or IPhone)  the new version does not work at all because all of the emails are covered by the tabs and toolbars.   You cannot even move these out of the way, shrink or grow them.

When I am on a regular PC brower, no problem.   But the Safari Brower on Iphone does not work.

[Justin46]

---

@zvalueman wrote:

Justin,

It may work fine for you with both versions, but I can tell you that with an IPOD touch (or IPhone)  the new version does not work at all because all of the emails are covered by the tabs and toolbars.   You cannot even move these out of the way, shrink or grow them.

When I am on a regular PC brower, no problem.   But the Safari Brower on Iphone does not work.

---

OK, thanks for the additional information. From your original post I had no idea what your issue was, no clue you were talking about viewing them on a phone, hope you can understand that.

Now, I do not have an "I-anything", so I cannot see or reproduce your problem. Hopefully someone else can. I have just gotten an Android-based phone, my first smart-phone (), and I am just learning, but doesn't the iPhone, etc, have an email app? My Android does, I have never tried using the browser to manage my emails, and really can't see any reason why I would want to.

Hopefully someone else can address your issue. And since lots and lots of people have been migrated to the new webmail interface, I would have thought there would have been lots of complaints here, but I don't remember seeing any (but maybe my memory is getting worse....).

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, Internet, and phone user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9A
Keller, TX 76248

[zvalueman]

Justin,

Here is the reason I use Verizon email web pages:  I receive mail on various devices.   I have a laptop netbook, a desktop and the IPOD touch.    I set all of them to not delete the email autmatically because I don't know which machine I will be using at any particular time.   So, when I have finally read the email, I use the verizon email to select the read emails and delete them.   The IPOD touch mail does not have a delete all button, but Verizon web email does.    So, if I am on the IPOD at the time, I log into the web email, select all messages read and press the delete button to delete them all.

WIth the "new" web email on the IPOD touch, as I said, the messages are not visible.   The developers should try an IPOD touch or IPhone and see that the mails cannot be selected.   So, cannot be read or deleted.

Hope this helps explain the issue.

Kerry

[Justin46]

Kerry,

Yes it does. Unfortunately we need someone with more knowledge of smart-phones to jump in here, but.....

As I said, I have just gotten my first smart-phone and am just starting to learn this stuff, but with the email app on my Android, while not having a true "delete all" button (at least that I can find), I can select whichever emails I want to delete and then delete all of the checked ones at once. The IPOD touch email app doesn't even have that capabilitiy huh?

Next I tried using the browser function on my Android, and tried to go to webmail.verizon.net. Wherever I wound up, it did not look at all like the webmail interface on my PC, it looked more like the Android email app. But wherever or whatever it was, I had no issue with viewing messages there either, no tabs, etc. So obviously I am going to be absolutely no use at all on this, sorry.....

Wish I could help.

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, Internet, and phone user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9A
Keller, TX 76248

[zvalueman]

Fair enough, Justin.

Verizon chose to force this new style of pages and I have explained why it is unacceptable.   I hope that someone can view and fix the problem or give us back the older and totally usable interface.

Congrats on your Android.    Unfortunately, it doesn't help us Apple I-whatever users one bit.

Thanks for your attention.   Hope you can pass the issue along.

Kerry

[richmondhokie1]

---

@Justin wrote:

---

@zvalueman wrote:

Justin,

It may work fine for you with both versions, but I can tell you that with an IPOD touch (or IPhone)  the new version does not work at all because all of the emails are covered by the tabs and toolbars.   You cannot even move these out of the way, shrink or grow them.

When I am on a regular PC brower, no problem.   But the Safari Brower on Iphone does not work.

---

OK, thanks for the additional information. From your original post I had no idea what your issue was, no clue you were talking about viewing them on a phone, hope you can understand that.

Now, I do not have an "I-anything", so I cannot see or reproduce your problem. Hopefully someone else can. I have just gotten an Android-based phone, my first smart-phone (), and I am just learning, but doesn't the iPhone, etc, have an email app? My Android does, I have never tried using the browser to manage my emails, and really can't see any reason why I would want to.

Hopefully someone else can address your issue. And since lots and lots of people have been migrated to the new webmail interface, I would have thought there would have been lots of complaints here, but I don't remember seeing any (but maybe my memory is getting worse....).

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, Internet, and phone user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9A
Keller, TX 76248

---

Well - it sucks royally on a VERIZSCAM Blackberry...........cant read crap.........

[Christoph2]

Lorena, Please take the comments back to your senior management and ask them to have an "option out " feature for those customers who don't like the new format "AT ALL". One example is when you go to forward a message, you now have to go through pages of contacts rather than the abbreviated format before where they would populate a small box which made it very easy to pick out names. Bottom line is the customer today has options to go with the competition if Verizon doesn't act quickly. I'm sure they could give Verizon's customers an option to switch back, It's only software. Remind your senior management team that this is not a monopoly, there are "option out" avenues for customers to go to alternate carriers.

[Lorena_VZ]

Like in Classic Webmail, you can simply start typing the name of the recipient you are forwarding the email to in the TO line or select from the your Contacts.  You can also filter your contacts by the first letter of the last name.

[trailmster]

I am really fed up with the corporate rhetoric that I am reading being spouted about the "Great new features" of verizons message center. Well, since you say you have the exclusive, perpetual right to use any of my ideas, why dont you consider these. 1)RETURN THE OPTION OF NOT HAVING TO USE THE MESSAGE CENTER.

2)REMOVE THE REQUIREMENT TO HAVE TO UPGRADE FIREFOX TO VIEW EMAIL.(you  left me the ability to see how much money i owe you, without the need to upgrade firefox...convenient)

Thank you very little.