Comments on: Review: Verizon FiOS

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:09:53 +0000

I live in PA and we had Verizon FIOS it rocked! But we made the stupid mistake of switching back to Comcast, because a salesman came out and told us they had upgraded thier service and were randomly checking with people to see if they would switch services. We did and BOY was that a big dumb ass mistake!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because we had to go down to comcasts office and tell them we didn’t have internet service and told them the installer told us we could go there and they would give us the router we needed free. Well the people there said you have to go online to get it.

It was like HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOO we don’t have internet anymore How the hell do you expect us to do that!!!!!!!

Someone from thier company ordered it and it took a week to get it. And it works OK until the modem acts up and screws up the phoneline internet service and all. then if you have a cell phone you have to use it to call them to fix the problem and you use several of your cell phone minutes that you didn’t intend to use and get billed for them.

In Short if you have Verizon FIOS , Internet, Phone, and TV, when someone from Comcast comes and tries to get you to switch to them.

Take it from me and DON’T DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You will be very pissed off and think why the hell did I do such a stupid thing?
The best thing to do is stay with Verizon and those charges on thier bill that are negative ones for a long time, when they start to charge for those just cancel those, but keep everthing else.

By: b-rad

b-rad — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:43:46 +0000

I recently got in a battle which included the Better Business Bureau over a disconnect fee. Fios became available to my building, so I was excited to get rid of Comcast and try out Fios. It was about the same quality (problems like muting for hours at a time after rewinding DVR, etc). BUT, Fios was then not able to provide service to my building, for a reason that they could not explain. I was 6 months into my contract, and even though they weren’t providing me service, they still said I only had two options: keep the non-existent service and pay full monthly charges for the remainder of the 6 months (around $900) or pay $120 disconnect fee. After trying to convince them of their stupidity in requiring any kind of fees, I told them to bring a tech out to check it, and IFit was their fault and couldn’t be fixed, to cancel my service and take the STB’s back with them. INSTEAD I receive several boxes stating that I needed to return equipment to FedEx store – I checked, and my credit card was charged $120. I immediately contacted BBB and did not send in the boxes yet because that would be admitting that I asked them to cancel. Of course I got a call from a collection agency asking for the STB’s back and I found out Verizon had been charging me FULL price for a service that had been cancelled. Let me repeat – when all I should have been charged with was the DVR rentals (and I don’t think even that while my issue was being handled by BBB), they charged me for my entire service package. The service package that I could not receive even before I had talked with them, and now they had literally been charging for something they even knew they weren’t giving me.

Bottom line is they were horrible at 1. providing data service 2. fixing service 3. customer service 4. functionality of DVRs 5. money management 6. altogether, customer satisfaction. F-

By: Adam H

Adam H — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:49:54 +0000

I don’t know what reprogramming your talking about.

Also… anyone that complains about the speed has to realize that its not always going to be super fast connected to a single server. Remember that you have a huge ceiling of bandwidth above. You can DL/UL many files at once to hit your peak cap. Cable certainly cannot touch this speeds you get with Fios.

By: mel

mel — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:38:36 +0000

fios is great… until an upgrade/downgrade in bandwidth triggers a technician to manually reprogram the ONT

kiss low latency goodbye

no resolution

By: Adam H

Adam H — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:25:46 +0000

I just had my Fios installed today. 25/25mbps. It has been running for several hours and I have since uploaded 15gigs and downloaded 6gigs. The TV service is great too. I am very pleased!

By: SpeedDemon « Reluctant Geisha

SpeedDemon « Reluctant Geisha — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:19:42 +0000

[...] reading about Fiber from many different places, I have seen basically the same ending to every blog and review – if the [...]

By: FiOS Consumer Reports and Reviews

FiOS Consumer Reports and Reviews — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:58:13 +0000

[...] Paul Stamatious Reviews FiOS Paul does a quick review of FiOS while staying at a Cousin’s house. He ends the review with “Verdict: When is FiOS coming to my neighborhood?” This seems to be a underlying theme of people who don’t yet have Fiber in their area! [...]

By: sean

sean — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:48:33 +0000

PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU INSTALL FIOS. THEY SAY NO TERMINATION CHARGES WHEN YOU MOVE RESIDENCE TO NEW AREA WIHTOUT FIOS. BUT WHEN YOU GO TO CANCEL , THEY CHARGE YOU TERMINATION FEES AND TRY TO PUSH THEIR HOME PHONE SERVICE DOWN YOUR THROAT.. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE CAREFUL BEFORE YOU INSTALL OR SAY GOOD BYE TO 179USD WHEN YOU TERMINATE EARLY

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:53:11 +0000

Fios is coming to my area in Jersey and I can’t wait … Crapcast has pretty much owned our tv rights for as long as we’ve been in the area (15 yrs)…

By: raymond

raymond — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:00:11 +0000

well i am a verizon tech support agent base in san diego and i must say that the verizon services they re not really good some times depents on the area the cx are or the leght from the c.o. (cental office) to the house
must of the times the sales department just sale the services with out checking with us the loop lenghts and whe the cx call upset becusae the service is slow or not even have sync with the server (in cases of a adsl connection) and we check out the cx distance from the c.o to the house is more than 20.000 feet and that when the funny part came because we scalate the problem to the centyral office in the cx area then they supoust to call the cx an tell em what is the problem and what is the action to need to be taken but they dont these guys just close the tickets and put on the notes tested pass ok refer to tech support for follow up and after that the same cycle of going around start all over again so PLEASE DONT GET VERIZON FIOZ OR DSL IS REALLY BAD

By: me

me — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:39:59 +0000

sucky upload

By: Deana

Deana — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:59:48 +0000

If you think that fios is that great you are sorely mistaken. First they tried to tell me that I did not pay my bill and cut off my services when I explained to them that the bill had been paid and faxed them a copy of my bank statement showing proof that wasn’t good enough for them. Afterwards I went for over two weeks and lots of time and money to get nowhere. I still had to pay for services that I was not receiving and when I called about this I was told too bad, I was also told that if I didn’t like it then I could have the equipment taken out of my home for a substancial charge. So I warn you if you want fios DON’T DO IT all they will do is take your money and give no service. I am currently looking for a replacement for fios no matter what it cost! Don’t waste your time or money on this company in the end you will be the one getting burned!!!!!

By: Cliff Maddox

Cliff Maddox — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:25:00 +0000

You are not limited to Verizon’s router simply because they do not supply ethernet to the router. Go ahead and use their box as the modem and attach the router of your choice to the Verizon box. Turn off the Verizon radio and clone the ip. You should be up and running on your system. I am using an Airport Extreme from Apple and have had little problem! For some reason I have had the radio turned back on for the Verizon box several times. I thought it might have occurred when Verizon pushed down an update, but have no proof of that. I did also change my DNS server and that made a huge difference in overall performance! I switched from Comcast about 6 months ago and have had no complaints!

By: no name

no name — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:01:18 +0000

im haveing the same problem can anyone help me i cant get this dum ass fiios to work with my ps2 to go onliine i should just fucking switch to IO cable this is bull shit man im fuckin pissed off if anyone know how to get it to work please email me at ADR152005@yahoo.com please

By: leesh

leesh — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:38:41 +0000

I live in Pennsylvania and have had verizon fios for only about 3.5 months now. It is absolutely horrible!!! I switched from comcast thinking i would get a better deal and better customer service. First, i was ripped off by verizon because they told me I signed a 2 year contract. I dont remember signing or seeing anything that spoke of a contract, otherwise i would have told verizon to take a hike then. Second, their phone service is awful, and full of static, connection to the internet is ok, but the faster the service, the more money you pay. comcast isnt like that. Not to mention, my email has never worked since day one. And lastly, omg, on demand movies -you cant even hear when you watch them, it skips every other word and we have to turn the tv volume up to full blast and still cant hear anything.BUYER BEWARE!!! in short, I HATE YOU VERIZON , TAKE YOUR FIOS AND SHOVE IT!!!! IM CONTACTING MY LAWYER ABOUT YOUR STUPID CONTRACT AND VERY POOR SERVICE.
ps. the hardware connection to dumb fios looks like a 911 dispatch unit in my bedroom closet!! lights lit up all over the darn place!!!! have to pull the covers over our head just so we can sleep!!! try selling your house with that junk in there.

By: PDM

PDM — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:46:24 +0000

Regarding the reliability of FIOS, it stinks.

I’ve had Verizon FIOS for over a year. It’s not noticeably faster than cable and their customer service is truly awful. Recently I didn’t receive email for four days because one of their servers was down. Attempting to contact anyone about it was a nightmare, and when I did get through, I was repeatedly given information that was flat out wrong. Verizon wasn’t even trying to fix the problem themselves, they’d hired an outside contractor to try to do it–an outside contractor that Verizon’s own tech support didn’t have much contact with. One of the things Verizon tech support told me was that when they got the server working again, my missing emails would come through. Nope, another lie. The truth was that four days of my personal and work emails disappeared into the ether. Beware of Verizon FIOS.

By: Justin Cumncok

Justin Cumncok — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:17:59 +0000

Comcast is the devil. I recently got FIOS Internet and TV with 250 regular channels and 90 HD Channels and an Internet download rate of 20mbps and upload rate of 5mbps. When I tested my comcast speed at testmyspeed.com it ran at 645mbps download! FIOS is 3 times the speed of comcast. Also, my comcast bill is 225/mth and with FIOS I am getting better service, more channels, faster internet, all movie channels, internet security software, etc. for 150/mth. I am saving 70 dollars with Verizon and for the best product out there. What a deal!!

By: Fran Stanczyk

Fran Stanczyk — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:25:07 +0000

We’ve just installed Verizon Fios and the TV picture is great, the internet speed ok- we have the lowest level, but our phone system is terrible. We have a radio station in the background playing on our phone lines. And…the Verizon technical support is horrific. They say they are keeping call notes but then when you call back they are not in the system. We’ve scheduled 3 days when Tech’s were supposed to be here and the first time the schedule never made it into the system…the second time it made it into the system but the operator didn’t click the right button to dispatch the call. The third time the operator told me the tech would be here between 8:00 and 12:00 p.m. and now after my third call they’ve told me no it was between 8:00 and 5:00. What a disappointment

By: Justin McWhirter

Justin McWhirter — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:18:35 +0000

Verizon gave me $3500 and it was the worst customer service experience of my life.

By: Russ

Russ — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:34:50 +0000

I have been using Comcast for quite awhile, and though it seems fine, I am waiting for Verizon Fios to come into my area so I can have super-breakthrough speed.

I believe Verizon Fios will change the internet world and cable will have to up the ante if they want to stay in the game… Just my take, but we will see…

By: John B

John B — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:29:01 +0000

I’ve had Verizon FIOS for about 8 months and am very pleased. I just paid this month’s bill of $119 which covers Internet, TV, and VOIP with international dialing. I have 3 computers and a NAS disk hooked up by wire to their router, and a laptop with wireless. Everything works great – very few problems since the installation and good response from techs (all friendly, knowledgeable, and English is their native language!).

The installer knew his stuff great for TV and phone, mostly OK for internet though I had to help out a bit. My previous setup (RCN) had the cable modem in the basement and Cat-5 running up to my router in the den upstairs where the computers are. I had thought the Verizon would replace the cable modem and I would keep my router in place. Nyet! The Verizon is a router as well so I had two routers fighting for control of the network, assigning IP addresses, etc. Configuring the old router to “act as switch only” – the installer’s suggestion – did not cure it. Solution – run out to Staples and replace the old router with a $20 switch. All fixed .
I mentioned my old service was RCN – boy, the worst of the worst. TV fuzzy, pixillating, freezing, saying “off air” for major channels, and support from women in the Philippines with little clue…internet down at random intervals – When I returned my gear to the RCN office I was one among many! Someone in line commented on the much sharper TV picture, which I also noticed right off. RCN called and tried to get me to re-sign with a price slightly lower than Verizon – I wouldn’t go back if they paid me!

By: michelle

michelle — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:32:54 +0000

I have verizon FIOS. the speed of the internet is amazing as long as you don’t have to deal with the customer service. This is the worst customer service a human can ever get. Their customer service is the test for your patient and the way you handle anger and frustration. if you have short temper like me, don’t even try it. You have to wait for 40-50 minutes to get the real person to talk to you. That is not it, in the middle of the conversation, the phone got cut off. Don’t even dream about that the representative will call you back.You have to start it over again. after I was on the phone for over 2 hours, no issue was solved. no matter how fast the internet is, it is not worth you to raise your blood pressure for it.

By: James

James — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:14:00 +0000

I called Verizon FIOS to order phone, internet, and cable prior to my move in. My Consumer Order Summary was dated 3-28-08, and the scheduled installation date was 4-7-08. I reviewed the e-mail and all looked well. I move into my new house and install date comes. They setup an 8 AM-noon window. I already had the Optical Network Terminal unit (ONT) in my house, so I figured this would be cake for them. I am a Sys Admin at an ISP, so the internet stuff I could do myself with ease.

On install day, no one showed, no one called. I had my mobile with me at ALL times. So around 1:30 PM I called Verizon to see what was going on. If something came up, I had a week off to move in and if they needed to come by in a day or two, I was totally cool with that. After about an hour on hold I got in touch with a “state level” dispatcher. That said that there were “no facilities available for my order” and I was called. Nope, I wasn’t called; they did have my cell (which I had with me all of the time) in their records. I wanted them to come out later in the week if possible since I was home. They said that their next available time for me was 4-12-08, which was a day where I was going to a wedding. The next available time after that was at the end of the month, on a work day for me.

Basically because they did not show up, or even notify me with a reason, they put me at the back of the line. I was trying to escalate my request and the support only gave me unreasonable dates and that “no facilities available for my order” BS. I later wanted to get my copper line put back so I could at least get phone service, and after a long wait in hold they gave me the end of the month as a date. Basically I was being run around in circles and being shoved to the end of the line because Verizon screwed up my installation. I was told the only way I could get it sooner is if I “knew an installer who’d do me a favor,” and I was pretty much screwed with the window of time I had to get the service installed. The salesperson fed me a load of bull and the installer didn’t even call me with a reason. I tried to figure out what “no facilities available for my order” meant, and why this was such a problem since I already had the ONT in my house. Half of their work was already done.

The same day, I called a local cable company who installed my phone, internet, and cable the next day. They showed up on time and did the normal pre and post appointment verification. I unplugged the ONT in my house and let the battery go out. Verizon gave me such a lousy customer experience I swore I would never do business with them, and be sure to let other people know about their awful customer service and commitments they setup and do not honor. Verizon screwed up prior when they bought Bell Atlantic, and screwed up our perfectly find DSL service I had around 98/99. My money is going to a competitor, and Verizon won’t see it because they have abysmal customer service. I am certainly interested in fiber optic lines connected to my house, but so long as Verizon is the only provider, I will happily do without.

Herndon, VA

By: Peter G

Peter G — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:09:53 +0000

I just had my Fios Internet and phone installed. The tech was a good guy to work with. The only drawback I had was that he came right at the end of the two hour window period. However, I was happy to see my cable go away. Fortunately, I was able to do a speed test with my cable modem and my newly installed FIOS Internet as I had not shut off my cable modem service with Charter. Wow! What a surprise blazing speed with my hard wired computer at close to the promised 15/2 speed which I ordered. Tests ranged from 14/2 to 15/2. As for the wireless, speed was still good but not as my hard wired computer. I guess it also depends on how old your computer is. My brotherâ€™s laptop got at least 13/2 speed and my old Compaq ranged from 4/2 to 9/2.

The sales rep was great. She offered me the various options and whenever I had a question just to test her, she was very courteous and answered my questions with no b.s. answers. I guess it just depends on what FIOS office you get. When I called the general FIOS number listed on my bill, they couldnâ€™t really help me with pricing and didnâ€™t have access to the special price packaging. Funny thing is that they had to refer to my local FIOS service number (local as in State). So glad I got connected to my local FIOS customer service/sales center in Ca. I spent at least 45 minutes with the sales rep on the phone discussing various packages and in the end was happy with my deal. Iâ€™m saving at least an extra $20 a month on my phone/internet bill. Glad I switched even though I was a bit apprehensive with having to have a power supply to make my system work. Oh well, we deal more with Earthquakes in California. NOt that many to worry about.

â€œI have seen the light with Verizon Fiosâ€

By: Unknown

Unknown — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:23:07 +0000

I have comcast. I live on an Island and the owner of comcast lives here as well. The comcast triple play was first released in my area as a trial, comcast spend 6 months rewireing the hole island with fiber optics and have drop boxes all around the island, the cable modem i receltly got never goes below around 22mbps for upload and 8mbps for download. insanely fast. compared to my verizon dsl going at 768kbps