Once I was getting fed up with Comcast, so I called Verizon to see if they could give me DSL, how fast it would be, etc. Their response was basically that they had no idea, but they could put in an order and see what happened. They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all.
To be fair, how is the tech really supposed to know?
Serviceability is a complicated question. There's engineering issues (how far from existing plant is the address?); there's legal issues (is servicing the address required under a franchise agreement?); there's logistical issues (is this a subdivision where the HOA won't let us dig up; is it a multi-dwelling unit where the property manager won't let us run wire)?
It's not like houses are built in a structured, systematic manner. In most of the country, property developers just put up subdivisions at random.
You're right though, "we don't know" is the right answer.
I'm not sure I understand your point. How are they supposed to know, outside of taking the appropriate actions that would allow them to know? Well, take those actions.
Sure, it could be a hard question to answer. It's also a question whose answer is part of their core business. If they can't obtain the answer somehow, why do they even exist?
I'd have been fine with "Because of X, Y, or Z, I have to pass this off to department Q and they'll get back to you in a day or two." But that's not what they said.
Edit: I should clarify that the local wiring was all in place. Verizon phone service was available (and I had had it at one point, although not at the time of the call). Nothing needed digging or drilling or any sort of wire running at all.
My point is that the data isn't sitting in a database the phone tech can look up. Putting in a service order is how it gets to the people that can answer the question.
And my point is that if they can't simply answer the question as given (even if it takes work) then the company as a whole is completely and utterly incompetent. If you're saying that they must put in a service order to get an answer to the question, you're merely describing specifics of the incompetence.
Huh? All of the specifics he mentioned above aren't just magically sitting somewhere in a simple database query.
Your question needs to be handed off to someone so they can specifically research your situation and get back to you with the results.
It sounds like specifically in your case, their system allows the techs who take new cable signups to enter your data in the system, and then it will return weather your house is serviceable, not serviceable, and with what type of service options are available if you can in fact sign up. Doesn't sound like a very strenuous process from the customer side.
So why didn't they offer to hand off my question to someone so they can specifically research my situation and get back to me with the results?
They told me the only way to find out was to actually sign up, then maybe it would work or maybe it wouldn't. There was no way to get an answer in advance.
So you prefer waiting for someone to call you back at an unknown time vs. giving them your four lines of home address info, allowing them to punch that into the computer and seeing if your house is serviceable? This is actually what the results will be of your conversation. You can't "sign up" and be billed if you aren't even in a serviceable location in their system.
I don't understand what you're proposing. How would I give them four lines of home address info and have them punch that into the computer to see if my house is serviceable? I mean, that's literally what I tried to do. I called them, I said I live at such-and-such address, what kind of DSL service can I get from you? And their response was, hell if we know.
I guess I don't understand the outrage that not every home address is somehow in their database. I wasn't outraged when I called Comcast to get cable run to my new house I just built. They first had to send a tech out to survey my location and ensure I was even in a serviceable neighborhood which is perfectly understandable.
It's not outrage, just incredulity. And this wasn't some random house in the middle of nowhere, it was in the middle of a major metro area, in a place where Verizon was the incumbent telecom operator, and provided phone service for everybody in a radius of several miles, including my own house (if I had wanted a landline).
I just expect companies to be able to tell me what kind of products they can offer. If it takes some work to get an answer, then I expect them to do that work. I don't think this is at all an unreasonable expectation.
Submit a request for what, exactly? I didn't request installation, as I'm not going to commit to pay for something until I know what it is. No option was given to simply request availability or speeds.
You seem to have an issue with how I handled this situation but I have no idea why. What exactly do you think I should have done here?
You want to know what kind of options you have available to you. They don't know. They need to submit a request to someone else that isn't on the phone to find out and get back to you. You agree and wait for them to get back to you with an answer.
You don't pay and I'm sure they don't expect you to pay (for what exactly? You've stated they don't even know if you are serviceable at this point).
I'm sure if they decided I couldn't have the service, I wouldn't have to pay. But what if they decided I could, but it was, say, 256kbps? I'd still be on the hook for that, and with no way to find out ahead of time.
Again, the two options I was presented with were: 1) stop and be left with a "I don't know" answer 2) start the process to install service. You seem to either think there must have been a 3) start the process to find out what kind of service I could get, or that 2 is a good enough equivalent to 3. Neither is true.
So, how does one exactly start the process of signing up for a service, and yet force to be billed for some "unknown" tier of service which you never commit to? They just pick and decide what to bill you over the phone against your wishes?
Sounds like this is being over complicated just to complain about how terrible ISP's are.
From a billing standpoint I'd just be signing up for a 3Mbps plan, or whatever it was they were offering. What the equipment actually allowed me to achieve is a separate thing.
