The fun of dealing with bandwidth vendors
February 5, 2010
I’m in the middle of an upgrade to the networking and telephone infrastructure of the company’s user sites. Our New Jersey office has this completed, and we’re now running a 13Mb/s symmetrical fiber line there, and at the same time, I’ve upgraded the phone system there to be capable of VoIP.
The idea is that we upgrade the bandwidth there, upgrade the bandwidth in our New York City office, and then migrate the NYC users onto the corporate phone system, so they can have all of the PBX features we’ve got in NJ. All of this is contingent on the bandwidth upgrade in New York, of course.
And so I scheduled Atlantic Metro to come install a 5Mb/s metro ethernet line, which was scheduled for Thursday the 4th. I thought, “cool, I’ll head into the NYC office and make sure things go smoothly”. A few days ago, I got a notice from Atlantic that Verizon would actually be doing the installation. That makes sense, I figured, since Verizon is the ILEC here. Attached to the email was a dire warning:
Please note that Verizon’s dispatch window is 8AM-5PM. A more specific time cannot be requested. Missed appointments will result in a Missed Appointment charge of $195.00.
Awesome. 9 hour window with punishment for not answering the door. Alright, so I let the NYC office know to be on alert, and that someone had to be there early (the office in NYC usually gets active a little later than that), and of course we had to let the building’s facilities people know.
I got here at 9 or so, since I wanted to be on hand when they were installing it. And so I waited. And waited. And waited. The building’s lobby people left, so I waited in the lobby for Verizon. And nothing. 5pm rolled past, and I called Atlantic Metro, and they said they’d check in on them. So I sat there and played some iphone games. And waited. And then I called back, and finally got an answer.
Apparently, Verizon’s tech was overbooked, or otherwise too busy yesterday, and so the Atlantic Metro guys worked hard to get it rescheduled for today. And so it was. Of course, it still has the same window, which is why I found myself at the train station at 6:45 waiting to head into the city. Again. To wait.
Of course, there’s always something to do while I’m waiting, and I don’t see the people in New York enough, and I love the city, but it’s just a pain in the butt!
For the record, I don’t think it’s Atlantic Metro at all. From all of my experiences with Verizon, I believe that they keep their techs overworked and overstressed. I know from my friends who are in the telco business that it’s never fun, and there is always a ton of work, but I really do believe in customer service, and that if you can’t extend any courtesy to your customers, you’re going to get no respect in return.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
You should charge them $195 for missing the appointment
February 5th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I had a similar experience with Verizon at a previous job. Our T1 (provided and managed by some other company) went down hard. Despite our SLA with the other people, it was a physical, off-site wiring problem and Verizon wasn’t able to get a tech out for 6 hours.
February 5th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I’ve never had Verizon try to charge us a $195 fee for missing the install. But I’m not in New York, so that may be a local policy.
Here in Pittsburgh, Verizon tends to show up an-announced. “We’re here to do the install!” We’ve had to turn them away at least once because building management requires 24 hours notice for non-emergency access.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
I stand by my claim that true customer service is a lost art.
And markets where there is one service provider and you can’t easily go to a competitor are a roadmap to misery. If there were another vendor competing with Verizon for your business, there is no way Verizon would be so disrespectful of you, their customer. If only you could somehow charge Verizon $195 (or better yet some hourly rate) for their missing an appointment they made.
I feel your pain my friend.
February 6th, 2010 at 9:34 am
You have it in writing, missed appointments will result in a Missed Appointment charge of $195.00. I’m assuming you copy and pasted directly from the email. No where does it state which party is subject to the charge. I say send them a bill for $195.00 for missing the appointment.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
In my somewhat abbreviated career, I’ve realized that service providers are the absolute worst and getting anything done in a timely matter. They all seem to have incredibly screwed up business processes and have no uniformity. What I mean by that is, it seems like no department or work group has any idea what another department or work group does. It took me 2 months to get Level 3 to change some 911 location information on 3 POTS lines. Three! If I call them to ask about a phone number or PRI circuit, they have to go into the “switch programing” to pull the information.