Customer service experience leads to some questions

[inquisitiveman]

I am a long-time FIOS subscriber - internet, phone, tv, and overall I have been very satisfied.

However, my experience on 4/18 has raised a number of questions.

I had purchased a faster router - model G1100 this summer.

On Saturday, we decided to rent a movie on demand. First time in years.

The movie picture was unwatchable - lots of horizontal lines, blocking, etc.

I called customer service, who switched me over to a technical person.. Tony.

Tony told me that we could not watch the movie due to issues with our router.

Mind you, everything internet related has been perfect for quite some time.

He sent a number of tests to my router and my router now displayed red.

He had me reset it, put me on hold for 15 minutes, then called me back after another 15 minutes and told me that a network technician had determined that my less-than-6-month-old router needed to be replaced. Oh, and it was still reading red, meaning no internet. 

Question 1 - does this make sense to anyone? that he could destroy the working of my router and make it unusable for internet purposes? 

Tony said that he would ship me a new router, but it would probably take 2 business days for me to receive, meaning I would have no internet for the rest of Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Thinking quickly, I remembered that there was a Verizon store in my town. I asked Tony if I could get a new router there. I specifically asked him at least 2 times, will this store have a router for me. Tony assured me that if he could generate a number, that meant that the store had a router.

I drove over to the store and the rep there assured me that the store did not have routers and never had routers.

Question 2 - Verizon does not have a system that would let their customer service reps know which stores carry what products? Or have inventory on hand availability?

So, I had to call back to Verizon, and get a new router ordered for me.

This rep was fantastic, and warned me that he would have to charge me for the new router, but that if I then re-called customer service I would be able to have the charge removed from my bill.

Question 3 - Wouldn't it make more sense to have the customer rep be able waive the charges to the customer, so I wouldn't have to have an additional call to Verizon? Who would design such a system?

[gs0b]

---

@inquisitiveman wrote:

Question 3 - Wouldn't it make more sense to have the customer rep be able waive the charges to the customer, so I wouldn't have to have an additional call to Verizon? Who would design such a system?

---

Answer: Verizon.

Good Luck.

[ElizabethS]

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Before the agent can begin assisting you, they will need to collect further information from you.

Please go to your profile page for the forum, and look in the middle, right at the top where you will find an area titled "My Support Cases". You can reach your profile page by clicking on your name beside your post, or at the top left of this page underneath the title of the board.

Under “My Support Cases” you will find a link to the private board where you and the agent may exchange information. This should be checked on a frequent basis as the agent may be waiting for information from you before they can proceed with any actions.

To ensure you know when they have responded to you, at the top of your support case there is a drop down menu for support case options. Open that and choose "subscribe".

Please keep all correspondence regarding your issue in the private support portal.