Be careful when bringing over phone number to Verizon, they mess up and blame you!

[Fustrated1]

It has taken me several hours just to calm down enough to write this. I switched our service from Time Warner to Verizon Fios, I signed up over the internet and there were not issue. Everything appeared to be working well. I recieved my confirmation and my installer was here as promised. All of the services worked. He even called the phone and it rang and we were able to dial out. So he gave me all my time warner stuff and I returned it to time Warner and they disconnected my service.

Well then I start getting calls from family, friends and work telling me that they can not get through to my home phone, it says it is out of service.

So I make one of several calls to support. At frst they were very helpful, switched me to 3 different area's and left me to wait 3 times in ques which is poor customer service.  However they were nice and the last women tried calling and seem to get through OK. Well phone still was not getting internal calls to my old number. So I called back again. This time when I got the "Orders Department she informed me that I was given a new number. I explained to her that this is unacceptable. I had that old number for 20 years and all family, friends, businees and work associates know it and call me at that number. She told me that when I signed up on the internet it should not have allowed me to continue when I clicked keep you old number and told me to contact a REP. She also told me since the service was now disconnected she could not call back the old number and I would have to call Time Warner and get them to activate my service so they could call the number back to fix it. I told her this was unacceptable and I wanted to talk to a supervisor. She came back and told me that the supervisor was busy on another phone and there was nothing they can do. It was my fault for signing up on line and I could talk to the internet people, but that would not help in getting it back. I was very angry at this point and told her that they should not let you sign up on the internet if they can't honor and fulfill the orders properly. She again told me that I would have to call Time Warner to see if they could activate, if they could to call them back and they would try to call my number back and assign it. She then said they would waive the fee (nice of you since you made the mistake- who is going to pay for the days I had to entend my time warner service or time from work to take care of this? In no way did she to calm down the situation, she just kept making me feel like it was my fault first for ordering a transfer of phone number on line when I signed up for FIOS and second for

cancelling my Time Warner service so quickly. I was so angry with her, and I never get angry like that. I told her she was of no help to me and I wanted a supervisor to call me back, NEVER HAPPENED!

In any case I called Time Warner and waited on hold for 20 minutes to beg them to turn it back on so Verizon could grab the number. They did but told me I would have to pay for the service until the number is pulled back and I cancel again.  I then called back and the support person wanted to send me to billing until I insisted that it was "Orders" I was talking to (you staff just does not get it, all they do is transfer - good customer service is to make this seemless to the customer). So I finally got back to customer service and the women I ended up with was very nice. She put in a work order and told me I should have my former number by THURSDAY (3 days away), So for the next few day my wife and I must deal with it. The other shocking thing is they could not waive the fee via the work order to call and set u p the number, so she said one I get the bill I would have to call them back to tell them it was waived and to deduct it from the bill (more poor customer service). I also found it amazing that during all of this they never stopped trying to push other product, they seemed more into selling other products and service then assisting me.

Another thing that amazes me is that no one from Verizon ever called to apologize or even try to offer me something to show how sorry they were for my inconvenience. I am not looking for a hand out but offering a little something can go a long way to improve a relationship especially this early. I am also think it is amazing that nowhere on your website is there a way to e-mail the CEO or someone higher up to keep them informed. We are you customers, you should be listening to us. Already today I have had 3 people that asked me how I liked my FIOS services and I have told them just how it has gone so far.

I wish someone higher up at Verizon would read this and get in touch with me just to be a little empathetic and help to make sure this get corrected to my satisfaction. I was not wrong here, what happened to the old words "the customer is always right". I have been in customer service for 20 years of my life and I can teach your company a great deal.

I will try this then I will write the CEO if I get nowhere.