Well, I think its finally over.My (very brief, and quite expensive) time with FiOS. I've heard lots of people rave about FiOS and how great it is. I'd like to tell another side to the story.
Over the past several months I've spent over 20 hours on the phone with Verizon - getting the problems I was having not solved.
This is the first post in a series of posts talking about my awful experience with FiOS.
How I ended up with FiOS
Roll back the clock to December 2007. I am a (relatively) happy customer of Comcast, with their Triple-Play (IP Phone, Cable and Internet Service). I pay somewhere around $150 per month for all three services. This includes 2 HD Tivo's - each with 2 CableCards, and a STB for a plain-old TV.
I had been toying with the idea of moving to FiOS, but hadn't taken the bait yet. Then Verizon makes their Free HDTV offer. This sounds pretty good. I have two HDTVs already, but a replacement for the aging 13" TV/VCR I have in the bedroom sounds like a nice thing - if I don't have to pay for it.
So I bite the bullet and call Verizon. I talk to a very nice agent who actually lives in my hometown. Overall this was a nice call. It took quite a bit longer than I had hoped (about 2 hours to get the scheduled appointment), but was pleasant. Verizon would have to wait 2 weeks to come out to my house, because I was porting my phone number from Comcast. No big deal (although this number will come back later).
I asked a couple of very important (to me) questions of the FiOS representitive:
- Can I pay my bill online - the answer was "yes - of course"
- Do you carry the Celtics games in HD - I know they're carried by "Comcast Sports Net" - so I want to make sure I'll get all the HD games - again, the answer was "yes, we carry CSN NE - HD"
- "Faster" internet than I have now
- A free 19" HDTV
- Cheaper than I was paying ($120 vs $150) - Nice!
- A company backing the service that grew up supporting an always-on infrastructure that understood 5 9's of reliability (or so I thought)
