jules blog

Oh, Verizon. For a while we were bosom buddies. We got our thang together a few years ago and you tempted me with your naked DSL (or the much more painful sounding “dry pair”). And all was well. You steadfastly schlepped bits across the ether and I gave you about $40 a month. We agreed I wouldn’t see anybody else for the next twelve months. Perfect harmony as Stevie and Paul might say while sitting around the old Joanna one night.

Getting a hookup with Verizon was good old fashioned courtship. In that phone company kind of way as I had to wait for about a week after I ordered. Oh, but the anticipation. Nothing like those holla back cable companies who’ll show up the next day or in some magic cases configure things right over the phone. Sluts.

The advantages of dry pair over regular DSL really comes down to the concept of not needing a POTS line. I haven’t had one for quite some time. I crossed the chasm and signed up for VoIP as soon as I learned about the technology and quickly migrated to Skype and Gizmo as they became seriously useful. Bonus.

But then things started to sour between me and my vzw.

A major issue is random disconnects. This flavor of DSL isn’t based on the MAC address or location authentication because it’s good old PPP. The ‘modem’ as they quaintly and incorrectly call it (for there is no analog modulation or demodulation anymore) has to have an user name and password entered in before it works. Just the once as it stores it within the memory of the, um, modem. Once it has that it goes off and fashions a PPP bridge to the Internet.

Like real modems of yore this connection can drop and especially if the connection is not being used. Not at Chez Jules, though. There is internet traffic buzzing over the wire every minute of every day. So I tend to notice things like dropped connections very quickly. Consider this screen grab of the management interface from the, um, modem:

400 disconnects in a month since I last power cycled everything. Egads.

“Ah,” you say, “the Web is bursty! You click, read for a bit, and then click to ask for more data.” And you’d be right thinking that the Web works like that. When you’re not asking for data there is no traffic. The dropped PPP connection does spring back to life in a few seconds and the majority of people who only browse the Web would not notice the problem at all.

My world isn’t like that. I stay connected through weirdo secure shell character-based interfaces that are very picky about dropped connections. That’s a desirable security feature and most certainly not a bug. Moreover, a few seconds of dropped connections also plays merry hell with VoIP and video conferencing. Just as annoying as old AMPS cellular conversations back in the 80’s and 90’s.

Naturally one should just call up Verizon and have them look into this. Theoretically a great idea.

If the Divine Comedy is ever adapted for modern computing there will be a tenth circle of Hell that is a once weekly conversation with level one technical support. Just trying to explain that there is no Start button on a Mac and that no, I literally have no Windows machines in the house might even get its own tier. If time is precious then this is where a relationship with Verizon starts to get expensive.

But then things started to get weird.

I’m a sucker for all things faster than what I have I was tempted by an email from Verizon coaxing me into a 7.1Mb relationship for more or less what I’m paying now. Sweet!

Trying to get somebody who can modify my account (providing they can find it in the first place) is what a modern day Dante might see as a whole new level of Hell.

I hold the following truths to be self evident:

• I pay residential rates and but technically this is a business account.
• If I talk to business they can’t help me as I have to talk to residential department.
• Residential will then take the number I’ve been assigned as my circuit ID and swear it belongs to a business that closed it out two years last May.
• If I can coax residential to find the account by name and address the circuit ID is magically now valid and they have no other circuit ID’s they can share. Sometimes this is interspersed with periods of holding and comments that are usually along the lines of “I’ve never seen this before…”
• Rep fishing does not help. Ever.
• There are no supervisors who work at Verizon who can help with this. I’ve never been able to speak with one anyway which makes me believe there are no supervisors at all at Verizon.
• Residential occasionally deems that I have to talk to the local business office.
• There may or may not be a secret number for the local business office and I cannot have it. The published number they give me goes to the same voice tree as the 800 number for general enquiries. Which means I will never be able to speak to a human being who can help me.
• We always have a good laugh during that bit at the end when they ask is there anything else they can help with (tee hee) and hope that they’ve provided me with excellent service. Poor things. You know they have to say this and sometimes you can smell the embarrassment in the air.

Bless. They have tried, though. They’re at the whim of crappy information tools, scripts, and training that is put there to help the 98% of people they talk to on any given day. They’re always such lovely people to boot and the last thing I’d do is be a toolbag and start yelling at some poor person who’s just doing his or her gig.

My calls usually take 30 minutes to an hour and a half each time I call in. This is even more time than I spend with level one technical support and my spare time is my most achingly scarce, precious commodity. I’m guessing I’ve invested a good 40 hours on this over the past year. A whole working week. That’s wickedly expensive.

Just for a laugh I thought I’d try and cancel today.

“The department you are calling is closed >click<.”

It’s even impossible to cancel. I see chargebacks in Verizon’s future and they can sort it out with the credit card company. Thankfully they’re fabulous.