My Verizon Customer Service Nightmare

A little while back, during the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s seminar titled, Social Media: Animate Your Marketing, the presenter gave me a great idea for a rant. Mike Woycheck, of Pittsburgh Bloggers and AlphaLab, gave a great presentation about company blogging…When to Comment, When to Listen, and When to Blog. And, of course, there are many great examples of companies who were forced to listen to consumers who had to blog about bad experiences online, i.e. Dell Hell, which basically caused Dell’s entire customer service approach to change, and so on and so forth.

So, bingo! I had been suffering from writer’s block, but instantly had the motivation to write about my recent 3 to 4 month customer service nightmare in the hands of Verizon FiOS Internet.

To make a long story short, I have been attempting to cancel my Verizon FiOS Internet service for approximately 4 months now. It turns out that Verizon’s lovely automated phone customer service program is not so lovely. In the past, it took me 3 weeks to get through for some technical support when my Internet stopped working. When it was time to cancel my service, I was prepared for the worst (or so I thought). Full Story »