Earlier today, I filed a complaint on the SCC’s website, asking why it would take Verizon up to seven (7) days to come out and restore my dial tone. I subsequently exchanged several emails [...]]]>

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC)’s Division of Communications is my new BFF when it comes to dealing with Verizon.

Earlier today, I filed a complaint on the SCC’s website, asking why it would take Verizon up to seven (7) days to come out and restore my dial tone. I subsequently exchanged several emails with a SCC staff member and by 12:30 PM, I received this note…

“Thanks for your response.  Our office has now filed a complaint on your behalf to (1) assist in getting your telephone service restored as soon as possible, and (2) to get any explanations as to why it quoted such an extended interval on a repair issue.”

As I opened up my garage at 5:45 PM, lo and behold, I see a Verizon van across the street.  The tech wrapped up his phone call and walked over.  He tells me that I have a pair of bad wires between my house and the distribution point around the corner and he has put a ticket in for someone to get out side.  He also tells me that I got bumped to the front of the line for some reason; I tell him that when I called in I got the whole 7 days thing, so finally I got fed up and filed the SCC complaint, nothing personal. He agreed that having to wait up to 7 days for service wasn’t exactly good for the consumer.

Turns out he and a bunch of his coworkers are up from Richmond for the week helping Verizon Repair work through a backlog of trouble tickets.

Later this evening, at about 7 PM, I received a stock auto-bot message from Verizon saying it was sending out a technician tomorrow to our address, “Press 1 to confirm” and someone needs to be around to let the tech inside the house… OK, I’ll ignore the last part, but I want to be around to see if I get dial tone back.

The moral of this story:  If you are in Virginia, the SCC is probably as good as calling up the president of Verizon Virginia to complain about poor service.

The deeper mysteries of this story:

1)  Just what happened to result in a sudden spike/rash of trouble ticket calls for Verizon repair?

2) Does Verizon have adequate staffing on call to meet state regulatory requirements of resolving 95 percent of telephony problems in 48 hours? If the company has to ship techs up from Richmond, the answer might be “No.”  See (2) in italics above.

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into headaches with Verizon landline repair. However, the SCC is purportedly getting complaints about longer service intervals statewide more recently.

Again, why? I’ll be making some more phone calls on Monday to dig a little deeper.

Seven days for a tech to come [...]]]>

My Verizon landline went dead on Monday. I filed a trouble ticket on Monday evening. At that time I was told that “the latest someone would be out to look at my line would be Monday, July 13, but if there’s someone free earlier, we’ll call you…”

Seven days for a tech to come out seems excessive by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose I could call the President of Verizon Virginia to complain — that’s the secret ninja trick that all Verizon employees know — but I don’t have his number in my cards.

Instead, this morning I went to the Virgina PUC and emailed in a complaint this morning. By the time I returned from the gym today, I received a response which read in part…

“As to the current service quality regulations, 95% or more of all telephone company outages should be cleared within 48 hours.  The quoted ‘seven days’ interval is not acceptable to the Commission’s standards and should not be a company policy within Verizon.”