Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
graeme
Newbie

Yet another day of realy poor service- 20 Minutes waiting on phone and I have yet to speak to the right person. All I wanted was to ask was a programme airing time problem. Then it took 22 minutes discussiion to find out that Verizon can't change the programme guide if a channel is sent to Verizon at a time later than when it was due.

What's going on with test, its suposed to be weekly yet it comes on sometimes 4 times in the early hours. Its interupts recordings so I get a film with gaps in it. If we had another major emergency in New York it would be on every news channel anyway and all radio stations so whats the point.

Picture in picture PIP is still not available why? its the button PIP on the remote so it should be available Time Warner Cable has it perhaps I will go back to them.

Would it not be a good idea to employ customer service people who actually had Verizon service themselves, so many don't so how can they possibly understand what a Verizon customer has to experience.

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
ekem015
Specialist - Level 1

I've had FiOS for more than a year and I have never gotten an emergency alert test.

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
Justin46
Legend

@graeme wrote:

Yet another day of realy poor service- 20 Minutes waiting on phone and I have yet to speak to the right person. All I wanted was to ask was a programme airing time problem. Then it took 22 minutes discussiion to find out that Verizon can't change the programme guide if a channel is sent to Verizon at a time later than when it was due.

What's going on with test, its suposed to be weekly yet it comes on sometimes 4 times in the early hours. Its interupts recordings so I get a film with gaps in it. If we had another major emergency in New York it would be on every news channel anyway and all radio stations so whats the point.

Picture in picture PIP is still not available why? its the button PIP on the remote so it should be available Time Warner Cable has it perhaps I will go back to them.

Would it not be a good idea to employ customer service people who actually had Verizon service themselves, so many don't so how can they possibly understand what a Verizon customer has to experience.


To try to address each of your complaints:

1) Program air time/call wait time? Why in the world are you calling about program air times? People calling about insignificant issues like that are what causes the long wait times on the phone.

Here is my understanding of how the TV schedule process works: Verizon gets the TV schedules from a contractor, currently FYI Television of Grand Prairie, TX. FYI sends Verizon the schedules once a day, so no changes will occur after the original data is received. Now there have been plenty of complaints over the last few years about the quality of the schedule data, in my opinion it has improved somewhat lately, but is still not good enough. There are other schedule providers available, for some reason (contractual or whatever) Verizon has not chosen to switch to another provider.

2) Tests? The federal government requires service providers to air alerts, so they are going to happen, whether you like it or not, and whether you might see or hear something somewhere else. As for testing, when I first got FiOS TV service nearly 5 years ago, we were inundated with tests, sometimes 3 or 4 or more a week, at all hours. The reason was that Verizon was actively expanding their FiOS footprint, and as each area was wired for TV, they were required to test the emergency broadcast system. Once the footprint expansion was completed here, the tests dimished greatly, and are usually done in the early morning. I have not seen a test in months, nor have I had a recording interrupted. Since you are in Queens, where Verizon I believe is still expanding the footprint, you are probably going to continue seeing the tests for some time. Just the way it is.

3) PIP? The Motorola STBs that Verizon uses do not support PIP. The remote control is used by different service providers, some of which do offer PIP via different STBs, so the button is there. But there is no support in the STB hardware or software for it (if you press the PIP button on the remote you will see the light on the STB flash, but the command is ignored). Now if your TV itself supports PIP, you could conceptually get two STBs and somehow figure out how to control both of them separately, and then have PIP available.

It is possible that a future Verizon STB might support PIP, but I would not hold my breath.

4) Service reps have FiOS service themselves? And just how would you do that? Do you think you could require someone to have some specific service at their home in order to be employed? I do not think that would ever fly. Plus Verizon does not have service in every area in the country, not in every city in every location, not in every subdivision in any particular city, not even in all parts of every subdivision. Yes, it would be much better if they have FiOS service and thus know firsthand the issues that customers may experience, but that is just unrealistic.

By the way, you could have found discussions here on all of the issues you raised, except maybe  the need for Verizon reps to have actual FiOS experience, if you had just searched the site before posting.

And finally, I have been a FiOS TV customer for almost 5 years now. I have FiOS for the incredible picture quality and the HD channels they have available. While I would like to have enhancements, like even more HD channels (some supposedly coming fairly soon), PIP, more accurate Guide data, large hard drive in the DVR, etc, I for sure will never go back to the abominable cable system I had before. If PIP, or call wait times, or not having EBS test broadcasts is more important to you than the picture quality, etc, then for sure you should go back to your previous provider.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP6416-P1, IMG 1.7.1, Build 09.97
Keller, TX 76248

Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
prisaz
Legend

Funny I can sleep to about any program, but that anoying tone in the middle of the night wakes me up every time. Perhaps you only get the emergency test if you live next to a power plant,  Washington D.C., or New York CitySmiley Very Happy

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

@Prisaz ... the TV has this neat little button labelled "OFF".  Just because they have programming on at all hours, you're not required to keep the TV on.    Smiley Very Happy

@Justin ... I'm with you on all your comments.  The TV listing one is something I frequently lament however because it seems to me that in this day and age of "instant" information, the folks who deliver programming information (or thelocal service providers themselves) could some how develop a way to interact with each programming provider directly to get "instant" updates (or at least deltas) which would address last minute programming changes.   I frequently record programs in the fall on Sundays evening, for instance, and they always end up getting messed up because a football game or something runs long, etc.  (I've taken to padding the recordings in those time slots with upwards of 1.5 hours of extra time on the end to insure I get the whole show -- wastes a lot of HD drive space on the DVR -- which is sparse to begin with).   Someone out there ... invent a solution to this problem (but remember you heard it here first, let know me so I can tell you where to send my royalties).   🙂

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
graeme
Newbie

Hi there I assure you if you are in New York area EVERYONE gets Emergency Test Alerts. They occur around 3am - 5am so as to not disturb too many people The sound screen says 'required' Emergency Test Alert and the sound is a wailing claxon noise its loud and horrible.  They should be weekly or Monthly and can't be recorded. If you record a programme and a test occurs it gives you the recording split into several parts.  Took me ages to understand why I had films in 3 or 4 bits. Cheers Graeme

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
graeme
Newbie

Hi thanks for looking at my post it was a moan out of frustration for after a year of trying FIOS I have to say the picture is great but overall the service and support is not as good as as Time Warner which I had for 6 years which has PIP and they answer the phones in a reasonable time, Verizon never does, and if the service was so brilliant fewer people would be calling with problems. Europe has had high speed internet and cable for over 10 years, New York got high speed internet 2 years ago and  the suburbs here are one of the most backward technology wise ares in the world moreover the USA is I believe around 15th in the world with internet conectivity, which will in due course hopefully change. 

PIP enables you to have 2 channels on screen live at the same time and to switch them., so if you are watching a film with your partner and you also want to keep track on the ball game you can switch during commercials, its been available for years so why doesn't Verizon provide it.?

The issue of programming was very important as I recorded highlights from the box guide of the tour de France but when I viewed it later  the final and most impoertant 15 minutes was missing, that is very annoying. Verizon knew the airing had changed but how was I suposed to know that. Nor are they willing to consider doing anything to fix this I can't be expected tp add extra time to every recording just in case as I would run out of space on the DVR.

If you don't understand about Marketing I appologise, but "Customer feedback" is possibly the most important part of companies success for the future and every call is important.  If a service rep says "oh there's nothing I can do" that's the worst comment they can make. I hope the service does improve.

thanks

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
graeme
Newbie

Hi Justin,

So I am not the only one then, nice to know thanks.

Look out for a new post for Amazin Race, maybe Verizon could be persuaded to make some improvements

cheers G

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
Justin46
Legend

@graeme wrote:

Hi thanks for looking at my post it was a moan out of frustration for after a year of trying FIOS I have to say the picture is great but overall the service and support is not as good as as Time Warner which I had for 6 years which has PIP and they answer the phones in a reasonable time, Verizon never does, and if the service was so brilliant fewer people would be calling with problems. Europe has had high speed internet and cable for over 10 years, New York got high speed internet 2 years ago and  the suburbs here are one of the most backward technology wise ares in the world moreover the USA is I believe around 15th in the world with internet conectivity, which will in due course hopefully change. 

PIP enables you to have 2 channels on screen live at the same time and to switch them., so if you are watching a film with your partner and you also want to keep track on the ball game you can switch during commercials, its been available for years so why doesn't Verizon provide it.?

The issue of programming was very important as I recorded highlights from the box guide of the tour de France but when I viewed it later  the final and most impoertant 15 minutes was missing, that is very annoying. Verizon knew the airing had changed but how was I suposed to know that. Nor are they willing to consider doing anything to fix this I can't be expected tp add extra time to every recording just in case as I would run out of space on the DVR.

If you don't understand about Marketing I appologise, but "Customer feedback" is possibly the most important part of companies success for the future and every call is important.  If a service rep says "oh there's nothing I can do" that's the worst comment they can make. I hope the service does improve.

thanks


Hi Graeme,

I understand your disappointment and frustration. And for some of what you are frustrated about, I assure you I share your frustration. But there is nothing either you or I can do about these issues but try to make Verizon aware of the needs. There actually are several ways you can inform Verizon of what you want:

- Post comments in the Verizon At Home Blog. Here is a link to one thread where a number of us have told Verizon what we think is most important for them to do: http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Verizon-at-Home/FiOS-TV-We-Hear-You/ba-p/153005. The thread was started back in Feb. 2010, unfortunately has not been updated much lately, but you could certainly go there an make your desires known.

- Verizon is on Facebook, it is mostly marketing stuff, but then again telling them what you want can't hurt.

- Verizon is on Twitter, the development people that post there sometimes will give some answers about future plans.

- Posts here on the forum. Even though this is user-to-user, there are Verizon people who follow what is posted here, so what you have done so far hopefully will be picked up by Verizon for at least evaluation. And some of us are designated as Community Leaders and we have a private forum where I assure you we make known what we think Verizon needs to do to improve.

1) Re PIP: I assure you I know what it is. I personally would like to have it, but it is not a big item for me, I just use the Last button on the remote to switch between the channels I am interested in following concurrently. Not as good, but for me at least acceptable. And back to why does Verizon not provide it; as I said before, the STBs that Verizon currently uses do not support it. As I understand it, not in the hardware, or in the Verizon-developed software. You can go to the Motorola site and see the specs for all of the Verizon STBs, including the expected next one with the larger hard drive, and none of them that I see have any mention of PIP. Keep in mind that the cable companies and the satellite companies have years of a head start on Verizon dealing with TV service. I first got cable way back in 1981 I think, Verizon started delivering TV in 2005. I am not trying to make excuses, I am just saying that they had to get their feet wet first, they chose Motorola boxes when maybe there were better options available, I don't know.

2) Program scheduling is a quagmire I think. Yes, it would be great if dynamic schedule updates could be done; does any cable or satellite provider do that? I don't truely don't know whether they do or not, but I think it would depend on the data provider they use, such as Tribune. But Verizon gets the Guide update daily and delivers it to us I think around 4 - 5 am; if they had to do it continuously throughout the day it would be a potential nightware for them I think. Imagine the customer frustration if they sent an update that accidentally changed the schedule for a program when it really didn't change. Your view is apparently that Verizon "knew" of the schedule change; what do you base that on? I doubt very seriously that Verizon did know, at least until it had actually happened  (the Guide data provider may have known in advance of course).

One thing you can do is set those programs that you really care about recording that you think might be delayed or run long to be a series and then pad the beginning and/or end to acount for possible changes. Crude, but will potentially let you get the entire program you are interested in.

3) Re Marketing and Customer Feedback: I think I understand it pretty well. I worked for IBM in the large systems Marketing Division for 25 years and an IBM Business Partner for another 10 years. My job was technical, but I worked extensively with the sales people, and part of my job from 1980 to 2002 was to handle telephone and electronic support for IBM products. So yes, I understand the need for customer feedback, etc, but keep in mind that you were, I think, talking to the Support Center, theoretically technically knowledgeable people, not marketing. For what you want, I think you were communicating with the wrong people (having said that, there are some very good support people there that will listen to you etc, but I think the turnover in those centers must be horrible, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to get, train, and keep people who really like that kind of environment, dealing with mostly very unhappy customers.

Anyway, enough from me; you are dissatisfied, and I don't know how Verizon is going to be able to satisfy you in those areas, at least in the short term. If you can't wait for enhancements to be delivered, I guess going back, or going to another provider that currently delivers the functionality you want, is the only option available to you. But of course I strongly encourage you to stay with Verizon, and I hope we will continue to see you here at the forums!

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP6416-P1, IMG 1.7.1, Build 09.97
Keller, TX 76248

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Re: Fed up with waiting & Emergency Alert test
nemesis6971
Enthusiast - Level 1

Justin  in some ways this helps and in some ways it doesn't.  I know that PiP isn't a big deal for a lot of people but it is for me.  I have two kids in college so I now have two college football teams to follow (three if my alma mater actually gets on tv).  Sometimes it works out so using the last button takes me from play to play to play to play.  And sometimes they both snap the ball at about the same time.  With PiP I can at least see if there is a big play happening in the one game while the other game takes up most of the screen (OMG He could...go...all...the...way!).

The first weekend that the kids schools were playing at the same time I thought I had it covered because there is a PiP button right there on the remote.  I got so frustrated trying to make it work that I actually (gasp) read the user's manual!  When I got all the way to the end and didn't see anything in there about PiP I realized I was out of luck.

I know that this is 20th century technology so it shouldn't be too difficult to make it happen.  Could you please pass it along to The Powers That Be that we would like this to be a part of the service?

While we are at it there is something else that I had when I was with the Dish that I would like.  We had the ability to schedule a show so that the tuner would change the channel to that show just as it began.  I know it doesn't sound like much but it meant that I could have the channel set to my favorite news program every morning when I awoke.  I know; how horrible to have to actually find the remote and manually change the channel myself.  Next I'll be wanting indoor plumbing or something.  But it was nice that the show was on for me when I got up

Thanks for your time

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