Praise Verizon - Landline costs

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Rick Bergeron - CPF

Rick Bergeron - CPF

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Aug 18, 1999
Posts
2,280
Loc
Canistota, SD USA
Business
Lost Cajun Chateaux
It's not often you see a public service utility send Customer Service Reps to the field. Wednesday, a Verizon CSR came into the store and wanted to talk about our phone service. Because we didn't kick him out like most other solicitors, we receive a $50 gift card.

The story goes something like
"We've received so many complaints of Verizon overcharging business customers in the area that 4 CSRs are in the area for 3 days to spot check." They found so many issues that Verizon will probably be opening a temporary CSR office for 8-12 months to straighten them out. All said and done, the final result is that our business service for 2 lines will be lowered 33% as soon as the changed are made.

With that 33% reduction comes,
  • Doubling our DSL provisioning to 7MB
  • Including unlimited Long Distance on both lines
  • Including options that were additional charges
  • Possible rebating some of the overcharges though I'm not holding my breath for this.
 
Wow ...that's unusual!

How many lines do you have Rick and what kind of charges were you looking at. I'd like to see how mine compares.

I have just one line with no long distance carrier (use my cell) and pay about $ 53.00 per month.
 
It doesn’t surprise me, but for me it is too little, too late.

I bailed out of Verizon about three years ago and went with a company out of Vermont – Sovernet. I was able to get my two lines down from ~$115/ month to ~$65.

Although I don’t have unlimited long distance, the rates fairly good. I generally only use long distance for faxing, and since most of them are 800 numbers, that is minimal.

I am nervous about dropping land lines altogether. Wireless is spotty at best around here, and I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to rely on my credit card processing.
 
Are you sure it was really Verizon and not an authorized aggregator? (reseller, licensed to use their name/logo)

Mike
 
Dave,



2 lines w/DSL on one, long distance both, caller ID, voicemail, etal
  • Was $170 / month
  • Now $108 / month
Another business also was reduced about the same.

The cynic in me says there is an underlying motive for this. Maybe to lock people into a plan before the local cable company rolls out a new system. Right now Cable Internet for business here is more than double Verizon DSL

Not having long distance doesn't save anything because you still must pay the Fed Univ Line charge & here it is $10.50/business and $6.50 residential.

Bill,
Dropping landline also gets you dropped from the directory databases.

Mike,
Reasonably certain it was a "Real Verizon employee", though I did think later that it was interesting that he did not have a Verizon badge.

We did recently "Port" our landline home phone to our Verizon Family Cell Plan. Our residential LL was $67/month. The additional cell line is $12.42/month. Also, the XLINK blackbox bluetooths the cellphone back into all our existing LL phones in the house. Actually, it Bluetooths 3 cellphones back into all our landline phones so we don't have to carry the cellphones around the house because we are in a spotty coverage area.

The XLink box works very well & plugs & plays in less than 5 minutes. Takes longer to turn BlueTooth on in the cellphone than to configure the box. The GE box was crappy at best. The Panasonic box was OK but does not function w/existing phones. Only the Panasonic that are included w/box.
 
I had one drop by about an hour ago.

Told him when I opened this location 2 months ago the Verizon guy on the phone told me to go t o comcast for my service because his system could not tell him what kind of service was in my building and to send an engineer would take a while and he had no answers.

When I told the guy that walked in all that he said he understood and wished me well.

Ended his sales speach real fast.

Bob
 
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