Fun with Verizon Tech Support

vsp · 03-25-2002, 12:38 PM

I had a semi-entertaining run-in this weekend with two Verizon tech support workers. One of them was quite competent; the other thought she was.

The setup: My Verizon DSL abruptly stopped working on Thursday or Friday; the modem continually froze on "Connecting to remote device." I figured it was a remote problem, and gave it a little while to be fixed; when it wasn't, I called tech support on Saturday.

The woman who answered the call clearly had a checklist in hand, and immediately diagnosed the problem as "If it's hanging, the problem must be on your end. Now click the Start button, and select Control Panel..."

She had me tinker with a wide variety of settings, with the requisite reboot after each, and nothing worked. She also expressed a great deal of indignation at my notion that since I hadn't installed or uninstalled any programs, used any programs more complicated than Notepad and typical IE browsing over the previous day or two, and that my system had not changed in any way between when the DSL worked and when it didn't, PERHAPS the problem might not be on my system...

I will give her a small modicum of defense, in that I've been on the other end of the tech-support call as well, and sometimes you simply have to play it as Computers for Morons and assume that the customer knows nothing. Very often, the problem is because Customer X installed something new, tinkered with settings or removed something and swears that there's no WAY that could affect anything. But when exchanges like the following take place:

TS Drone: "Go to Network. Select your Ethernet card from the list."
Me: "Okay. Under Details, I see..."
TS: "Now, did I tell you to click Details? You have to stop assuming that you know what you're doing."
Me: "Huh? Well, I..."
TS: "Do you want me to continue with this call?"
Me: "Yes, I do, if I want this problem fixed."
TS: "Are you SURE?"
Me: "...YES."
TS: "Okay. Now, click Details..."

...it's a bit much to stomach.

After about twenty minutes of tinkering, including removal and reinstallation of Dial-Up Networking, three repetitions of "Do you want me to continue with this call?" and my being told that I "simply have to let go of the notion that your computer won't change settings and do things all by itself, because it will" [exact quote], she gave up and passed me to a Verizon network-support person. The only reasons I hadn't hung up the phone or demanded to talk to her supervisor by this point was that (a) I really wanted this fixed and (b) I had no guarantee that anyone else I talked to wouldn't swear by the same "The Customer Is Always Wrong" checklist.

Verizon Network Support: "Okay, I see the notes from the previous person."
Me: (restating the problem, briefly)
VNS: "Okay, let me try something. [pause] Try connecting now."

It worked on the first attempt.

VNS: "Oh, the problem was on our end. We didn't have you bound to a router properly, and I just fixed that."

It took some willpower for me not to request to be transferred back to the first TS representative.

The moral of the story is: Play nice until someone intelligent comes along...

verbatim · 03-25-2002, 12:49 PM

Ive had many a long session with Verizon tech about dsl. I do have to give them credit tho, cause after about a weeks worth of problems, they actually called me back(!). Ive had so many problems with their hardware.

First, there was the cd that they gave me. They ended up having to activate our account manually, after about as much run-around that they gave you. Then there was the wiring problem. Dsl dont work so well on OLD WIRES, those schmucks. Then service went out. And came back. And went out again. Then came back again. They gave themselves an excuse by mailing us a gay little card that said "please excuse the outtages, we are upgrading our hardware." Ahh, then theres the time after I got a linux router working that they started portscanning me. OOH! fun fun.

Most verizon techs are idiots. But when you get to the higher level techs, they are knowledgable and friendly. I guess you gotta take what you can get.

03-25-2002, 01:14 PM

I have had awesome experiences with my Verizon DSL. I have the expensive shit ($80/month for 1.5Mbits down / 384Kbits up), and maybe that makes a difference. I'm also pretty close to the CO. :P

I get stupidly fast downloads, super good pings (Q3 baby), and it always works. Besides the occasional 2 minute outage, I have no complaints. My setup may be partially to blame for my good experience, so lemme give some tips.

- Have a stable box connected to the modem. I have a Netgear RO318 Security router and it's great. Configure it and it stays just like that. It's doing nothing more than routing and stateful packet inspection, so I don't have to worry about Notepad fucking it up.

- That's it. Have more than one computer so if one fucks up, you can be quick to diagnose the problem. Other than that...

Sometimes my DSL gets a little flaky ping wise. Actually, it's happened exactly twice. It was fixed by resetting the DSL modem, so I'm inclined to think it's either hardware or something silly on their end. But this literally takes 2 minutes so I'm not real troubled by it.

I also have the DSL/Phone filter on the line where it comes into the house - that way I don't need to have it on every phone. This was just a convenience to me - I can plug in a phone anywhere and not worry about having to add a filter.

It probably also helps that I use Linux and MacOS X, where I don't have to worry about Notepad/vim fucking with network settings unless I explicitly tell it to do so. :P

alphageek31337 · 03-25-2002, 02:00 PM

just fr the sake of the saké, Adelphia broadbands has been veryvery good to me. I get <20ms ping to the moon (<30 on the dark side), uploads are wuick, and tech support recognizes that I'm not a moron. They're alright by my book, way better than Earthlink was.

lisa · 03-26-2002, 05:30 AM

Hmmmm... interesting.

You know, I doubt that that tech support person thought that she really knew much at all -- would explain why she was upset with someone "getting ahead of her." It throws of her scripted routine.

Anyhow, I just moved and can't get DSL at my place, so I ended up with Comcast cable internet -- not as bad as I thought. I'll still keep checking on DSL, but this works for now.

At my old place, I was using DirectTVDSL (formerly Telocity), which gave pretty nice service. For $49, they give everyone 384K/128K minimums and all users get a static IP (at least when I signed up, that was the rule).

On my end, I run an old 486/66 box with LEAF booted from a Compact Flash card. It also works quite nicely and can do just about anything I want to find/create and install a package to do. At one point (back in CA), I had my firewall/router also serving as a primary DNS for my domains. If you're so inclined, you can check it out at leaf.sourceforge.net. I am using the "bering" distrobution, which is based on kernel 2.4.x and has ip tables for firewalling rules. It also contains a damn cool mini-web server (accessable from INSIDE only) that allows you to check the firewall status.

juju · 03-29-2002, 01:30 PM

How do you hook a CompactFlash card up to a 486?

jaguar · 03-29-2002, 05:30 PM

I've got Smoothwall set up on a P100 here, acts as a firewall/IDS/DHCP server, does a fantastic job, can access it internally through either web or SSH (i i turn it on) It also has some interesting VPN capabilities i'm going to try out some time.

lisa · 03-29-2002, 09:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by juju2112
How do you hook a CompactFlash card up to a 486?

There are several boards you can buy that allow you to hook up a compact flash to an IDE port. It just looks like a hard drive to the system. No special drivers or anything required.

juju · 03-30-2002, 12:39 AM

That is completely badass. :]

03-25-2002, 12:38 PM	#1
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	Fun with Verizon Tech Support I had a semi-entertaining run-in this weekend with two Verizon tech support workers. One of them was quite competent; the other thought she was. The setup: My Verizon DSL abruptly stopped working on Thursday or Friday; the modem continually froze on "Connecting to remote device." I figured it was a remote problem, and gave it a little while to be fixed; when it wasn't, I called tech support on Saturday. The woman who answered the call clearly had a checklist in hand, and immediately diagnosed the problem as "If it's hanging, the problem must be on your end. Now click the Start button, and select Control Panel..." She had me tinker with a wide variety of settings, with the requisite reboot after each, and nothing worked. She also expressed a great deal of indignation at my notion that since I hadn't installed or uninstalled any programs, used any programs more complicated than Notepad and typical IE browsing over the previous day or two, and that my system had not changed in any way between when the DSL worked and when it didn't, PERHAPS the problem might not be on my system... I will give her a small modicum of defense, in that I've been on the other end of the tech-support call as well, and sometimes you simply have to play it as Computers for Morons and assume that the customer knows nothing. Very often, the problem is because Customer X installed something new, tinkered with settings or removed something and swears that there's no WAY that could affect anything. But when exchanges like the following take place: TS Drone: "Go to Network. Select your Ethernet card from the list." Me: "Okay. Under Details, I see..." TS: "Now, did I tell you to click Details? You have to stop assuming that you know what you're doing." Me: "Huh? Well, I..." TS: "Do you want me to continue with this call?" Me: "Yes, I do, if I want this problem fixed." TS: "Are you SURE?" Me: "...YES." TS: "Okay. Now, click Details..." ...it's a bit much to stomach. After about twenty minutes of tinkering, including removal and reinstallation of Dial-Up Networking, three repetitions of "Do you want me to continue with this call?" and my being told that I "simply have to let go of the notion that your computer won't change settings and do things all by itself, because it will" [exact quote], she gave up and passed me to a Verizon network-support person. The only reasons I hadn't hung up the phone or demanded to talk to her supervisor by this point was that (a) I really wanted this fixed and (b) I had no guarantee that anyone else I talked to wouldn't swear by the same "The Customer Is Always Wrong" checklist. Verizon Network Support: "Okay, I see the notes from the previous person." Me: (restating the problem, briefly) VNS: "Okay, let me try something. [pause] Try connecting now." It worked on the first attempt. VNS: "Oh, the problem was on our end. We didn't have you bound to a router properly, and I just fixed that." It took some willpower for me not to request to be transferred back to the first TS representative. The moral of the story is: Play nice until someone intelligent comes along...

03-25-2002, 12:49 PM	#2
verbatim Vice-President of Resentment Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Pennsultucky Posts: 199	Ive had many a long session with Verizon tech about dsl. I do have to give them credit tho, cause after about a weeks worth of problems, they actually called me back(!). Ive had so many problems with their hardware. First, there was the cd that they gave me. They ended up having to activate our account manually, after about as much run-around that they gave you. Then there was the wiring problem. Dsl dont work so well on OLD WIRES, those schmucks. Then service went out. And came back. And went out again. Then came back again. They gave themselves an excuse by mailing us a gay little card that said "please excuse the outtages, we are upgrading our hardware." Ahh, then theres the time after I got a linux router working that they started portscanning me. OOH! fun fun. Most verizon techs are idiots. But when you get to the higher level techs, they are knowledgable and friendly. I guess you gotta take what you can get. __________________ <-- I'm with stupid

03-25-2002, 02:00 PM	#4
alphageek31337 Enemy Combatant/Evildoer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 263	broadbanders just fr the sake of the saké, Adelphia broadbands has been veryvery good to me. I get <20ms ping to the moon (<30 on the dark side), uploads are wuick, and tech support recognizes that I'm not a moron. They're alright by my book, way better than Earthlink was. __________________ The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ---Friedrich Nietzsche

03-29-2002, 05:30 PM	#7
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	I've got Smoothwall set up on a P100 here, acts as a firewall/IDS/DHCP server, does a fantastic job, can access it internally through either web or SSH (i i turn it on) It also has some interesting VPN capabilities i'm going to try out some time. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

03-25-2002, 01:14 PM	#3
dave Guest Posts: n/a	I have had awesome experiences with my Verizon DSL. I have the expensive shit ($80/month for 1.5Mbits down / 384Kbits up), and maybe that makes a difference. I'm also pretty close to the CO. :P I get stupidly fast downloads, super good pings (Q3 baby), and it always works. Besides the occasional 2 minute outage, I have no complaints. My setup may be partially to blame for my good experience, so lemme give some tips. - Have a stable box connected to the modem. I have a Netgear RO318 Security router and it's great. Configure it and it stays just like that. It's doing nothing more than routing and stateful packet inspection, so I don't have to worry about Notepad fucking it up. - That's it. Have more than one computer so if one fucks up, you can be quick to diagnose the problem. Other than that... Sometimes my DSL gets a little flaky ping wise. Actually, it's happened exactly twice. It was fixed by resetting the DSL modem, so I'm inclined to think it's either hardware or something silly on their end. But this literally takes 2 minutes so I'm not real troubled by it. I also have the DSL/Phone filter on the line where it comes into the house - that way I don't need to have it on every phone. This was just a convenience to me - I can plug in a phone anywhere and not worry about having to add a filter. It probably also helps that I use Linux and MacOS X, where I don't have to worry about Notepad/vim fucking with network settings unless I explicitly tell it to do so. :P

03-26-2002, 05:30 AM	#5
lisa Etherial Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: CA Posts: 153	Hmmmm... interesting. You know, I doubt that that tech support person thought that she really knew much at all -- would explain why she was upset with someone "getting ahead of her." It throws of her scripted routine. Anyhow, I just moved and can't get DSL at my place, so I ended up with Comcast cable internet -- not as bad as I thought. I'll still keep checking on DSL, but this works for now. At my old place, I was using DirectTVDSL (formerly Telocity), which gave pretty nice service. For $49, they give everyone 384K/128K minimums and all users get a static IP (at least when I signed up, that was the rule). On my end, I run an old 486/66 box with LEAF booted from a Compact Flash card. It also works quite nicely and can do just about anything I want to find/create and install a package to do. At one point (back in CA), I had my firewall/router also serving as a primary DNS for my domains. If you're so inclined, you can check it out at leaf.sourceforge.net. I am using the "bering" distrobution, which is based on kernel 2.4.x and has ip tables for firewalling rules. It also contains a damn cool mini-web server (accessable from INSIDE only) that allows you to check the firewall status.

03-29-2002, 01:30 PM	#6
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	How do you hook a CompactFlash card up to a 486?

03-30-2002, 12:39 AM	#9
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	That is completely badass. :]

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