Okay - I'm Giving Verizon FiOS a Try!

Submitted by Carolee13 on Fri, 12/21/2007 - 10:08pm.

I finally took the plunge and am going to get FiOS high speed and TV (I'm sticking with Vonage for my telephone). They're coming out on January 2 to hook me up. It was the latest rate increase that started to push me away from Comcast, then when it took over two weeks and countless phone calls to three states to straighten out a relatively minor problem (and it's still not really straightened out), I went over the edge completely and am more than ready to try FiOS. One thing was immediately apparent: the FiOS customer service is a million times better than Comcast - as they say in the UK, it's like chalk and cheese! I'm really hoping it will work for us; I'll let you know how it turns out.

Submitted by Chris Casey on Mon, 12/24/2007 - 1:08pm.

Me too... they must be filling their install calendar fast. I just ordered and got a January 24 install date. We did the whole triple bundle, phone/internet/tv. Fingers are crossed that it will be good, because we'll have it for two years!

Submitted by Windward1 on Fri, 12/28/2007 - 3:34pm.

My wife and I had FIOS installed a couple weeks ago. So far I'm unimpressed with the internet service, it can be awfully sluggish in comparison to our old Comcast connection at times. We did go with the cheapest internet option FIOS offers but I was still expecting better. There is no way I'm getting 5mbps down and 2mbps up. Overall I can live with it though because we are saving $ and it's not so slow that I can't tolerate it, that and Comcast was way overcharging for their service. We also bundled the phone into our package and I'll have to warn any of you that are going that route: if you do this there is a chance that you will have to replace your cordless phones. My wife and I had to get rid of our 2yr old (but very nice) $120 set of cordless phones because they were picking up large amounts of static and we couldn't even hear the people calling us the quality was so bad (this happened on and off until Verizon troubleshot it to the phones). You'll need to ensure you have phones with the DECT 6.0 technology that won't interfere with the FIOS frequencies. Maybe the newer digital phones that don't have DECT will work but we didn't want to risk it. Anyhow, that's my opinion for the time being. Perhaps you guys will have better luck with your connections. I'm curious to hear if your connectivity is better than mine or not...

Submitted by TJ Southard on Sat, 12/29/2007 - 12:28pm.

I signed up Yesterday, Chris you might want to call them because I have an installation date for the 16th. The activation charge for the internet and the tv is 29.99 and the promotion for the free TV is sent to you though a web site address a month later. You do have a choice between a 19" LCD TV (no brand name given) or a $200 gift card to Best Buy. We don't need another small tv, so I think were gonna put the 200 bucks toward a bigger size for the main level.

Also - signed up for the 15mb

Try your speed test here - www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

Cheers - TJ

Submitted by billriski on Sat, 01/05/2008 - 10:08pm.

Back in 2006 I left COMCAST as my ISP. Issue wasn't cost or speed, but availability. I went for too long with outages occurring several times per week for hours at a time. And for recurring problems like this, I got so tired of their help desk telling me to do this and do that - to be sure the problem was them not me - every time I called.

In Nov 2006 I moved over to Verizon DSL, which had just come available to my house. After about a year my conclusion is: right decision. Speed is nearly the same as I was getting from COMCAST (see below), and I have had one short interruption in 13 months - which I easily fixed myself by just rebooting the modem. FIOS? Maybe; I'll watch this space and see what Chris and others recommend.

Speed test (Jan 2008 via Speakeasy's Seattle server):
Download Speed: 2800 kbps
Upload Speed: 650 kbps

Submitted by jasonk on Fri, 01/11/2008 - 2:43pm.

TJ, thanks alot for posting that speed test thing. Very interesting.

I have had Comcast for about the last 5 years and really have never had any complaints with the Internet. I work from home about 80% of the work week or more, so it would be a huge problem for me if I had any frequent outages. Incidentally my speed test results for Jan 2008 via the Seattle server are:

Download: 6162 kbps
Upload: 1562 kbps

I think that $10 difference a month between Comcast and Verizon DSL is the reason for the big speed difference.

I locked into the Comcast triple play mainly to get the Comcast phone service. (Our phone service now costs about $30 where it used to cost nearly $80.) Since moving here in 2003 we had frequent Verizon problems with our land line phone which I could never understand. Getting technicians out here from Verizon was a nightmare, weeks to get anybody out, techs not showing up, etc; And this is just basic phone service we're talking about. I couldn't have been happier to say goodbye to them.

I'd be really curious to hear more about the tv service that comes with Verizon Fios if anybody would care to post some info about it. Thanks!

Submitted by Chris Casey on Fri, 01/11/2008 - 4:20pm.

Hi Carolee...

So, how did it go? Anything to report about the installation? The service? What's your overall impression after just more than a week?

Many of us are dying to know! :-)

Submitted by Carolee13 on Mon, 01/14/2008 - 10:59pm.

Well Chris, to answer your question with a rather long-winded reply: The transition from Comcast to FiOS has been super smooth. Installation was a great experience; the tech arrived well within the time window of eight (!) hours, got here at noon, called twice before arriving just to let me know his progress. Explained what he was doing while installing. Set up the wireless connection (which wasn't on the order), when finished went over each item, set up an account with me, programmed the three remotes for the TV's, and left me his personal number in case I had any questions. He called me two days later to make sure everything was running smoothly and to see if I had any questions. As far as customer service, it's been terrific. The first night I discovered one of the TV's only went up to channel 99 so I called the 24/7 customer service line. The recording told me the wait time and gave me the option of getting a callback rather than waiting. I opted for the callback and received it within 15 minutes from a live person (at 11:45 pm) who checked the problem and "switched on" the non-working channels. I called them another time during the day to ask a question about the internet service and had a 13-minute wait time. This time I waited and again spoke to an extremely helpful live person. I hope this is an indication of the level of customer service!

As far as the service itself goes, the high speed is a bit faster than Comcast on my desktop and for some reason is a lot faster on my laptop. No idea why that is! And it hasn't been doing the occasional "blip" which freezes everything for a few seconds like what happened with Comcast. Another big difference is my landline phone. I use Vonage and when I was on the phone I couldn't be in the same room as the computer because I would get such clicking and popping on the phone line. But with Verizon I can be on the phone right next to the computer and hear nothing but the person I'm speaking to - it's great! For TV I have just the basic setup, no premium channels. But there seem to be a lot more basic channels than Comcast had. Music channels for example. With Comcast Digital I got MTV, MTV Hits, MTV Tres, VH1 and VH1 Jams. With Verizon It get those plus MTV2, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, BET Jams, and something called FUSE which is international rock/pop/etc. Plus a bunch of country music video channels. There are other examples too, like several Discovery channels, not just the one. And to top it off, the picture on my TV is fabulous where previously it was constantly snowy. In fact Comcast came out on three different occasions to try to clear it up but was never able to correct it.

Finally, the cost looks to be about $30 per month less than Comcast. I haven't gotten my first bill yet so don't know if the taxes and other surcharges will make the difference a lot smaller but I really don't mind! I'm very happy with Verizon - I'm hoping I'll still be this happy as time goes on!

Submitted by Chris Casey on Tue, 01/15/2008 - 2:25pm.

It will be a long nine-day wait for me now, but your info has me very encouraged.

Submitted by Chris Casey on Thu, 01/24/2008 - 8:27pm.

So, despite ordering my FiOS right after reading Carolee's original posting, while still watching all my neighbors who ordered after me but got their install before me, today at last, my turn came.

In each of my neighbor's cases, an installer came out and buried their cable the day before their installation date. Not so in my case, but my installer said they've been so busy that these pre-bury crews are getting caught and passed by the installers. So for now, I have a cable across my front yard. At least it's not mowing season.

My installer, John, did a great job. He gave a heads up call on his way out, wore his paper booties over his work boots while in the house, pulled the fiber and installed their boxes right where I wanted them, and took the time to answer all questions and give me a good overview of how all is connected and works.

I had just a few minor frustrations. I thought I had ordered the multi-room DVR service, providing the ability to view recorded programs on your DVR from any other TV in your house (this has great appeal to all in our home). But apparently that didn't show on my order, and when I called to add it they couldn't because my install was so new I'm not yet in the system or something. John had given me his cell number, and I gave him a call. He said that enabling this feature requires only the flip of a switch at the office, and they should be able to do it tomorrow. OK, no biggie.

Worse is the issue with our cordless phones that Windward described earlier in this comment thread. In fact, it was while calling Verizon about the previous issue, that I found my Internet connection dropped, and the phone was way buzzy and scratchy. After the call ended, the Internet connection came back just fine. On the back of the guide that came with the Verizon Wireless Router, it states that the router works on the 2.4 GHz frequency, and if you have phones on the same frequency (as I do), you may experience interference. So I will likewise need to switch to either 900 Mhz or 5.8 GHz phones. Again, frequently in my computer life, upgrades beget upgrades, I can deal with that.

As for speed, my last test on Comcast before pulling the plug was 3,904 kbps down, 346 kbps up. My first test on FiOS... 16,209 kbps down, 1,806 kbps up. Nice :-)

Still much to explore with the TV offerings, HD, on demand, etc... but my first impressions are very very positive.

Submitted by Brad-Hancock on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 9:40am.

Alas, according to Verizon, it is still not available in my area. I find this a bit disconcerting as they dug up my yard back in the late fall/early winter and there are a number of paved areas where they made small rectangular holes and have not yet properly patched them. I am also a bit concerned about the customer service since they can't give me any estimate of when it will be available.

That not withstanding, I am still interested in giving it a try when it does come around.

Have any of you changed your thoughts in the ensuing days/weeks since you've had the service? Any additional problems or concerns encountered?

Thanks,

Brad Hancock
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

Submitted by hasselstromk on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 3:48pm.

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

This is a good site that lets you test your internet speeds using various locations across the country. I am getting 10mb plus to a local dc server and 4/5mb to servers in Seatle. Keep in mind that just because you have high speed internet - the website your downloading from has the ability to limit your speed so that you don't "hog" their end of the bandwidth. Also, there could be other bottleknecks on the internet that can limit bandwidth. i.e. FIOS is only as fast as the slowest point between the server and your house.

Submitted by Chris Casey on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 9:48am.

Wow, that's a telling indicator of their demand. I wonder how much of the Montclair TV market that Verizon has already claimed? I had the same experience that TJ did at Comcast when I went to return my cable modem. A long line of others, all there for the same reason, to return their Comcast hardware.

Things were different with my cancellation of DirectTV. Apparently I own the dish, receivers and DVR. If we still get any snow this year, I may need to take it down and try it as a sled!

Anyway, it's worth the wait. I have quickly turned into this guy since finally getting HD...

Area Dad Will Only Watch Things In HD
The Onion

Submitted by Carolee13 on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 2:21pm.

...I sold my DirecTV dishes on eBay, which worked out great. I figured I might as well get something for them rather than having them sitting around useless. Although I never thought about the sled idea :) - my son would have liked that since at the time we had a huge hill behind our house!

Submitted by pvigliano on Mon, 05/12/2008 - 11:15am.

I signed up for Verizon Fios back in mid January and had the choice of a free flat screen TV or a Best Buy gift card as part of my sign up package. After choosing the TV I was told it would take 6-10 weeks to receive the TV. Well this Thursday will be week 12 and the reward center at Verizon can not tell me when I can expect to receive the TV.

Is anyone else having similiar issues with Verizon?

Submitted by dburke-fonda on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 12:06pm.

We live in the area just updated by Verizon for FIOS and have placed our name on the list for new installation. The offers that we have received don't include a new TV or a gift card...I'm envious! The best offer so far is TV, Internet, and Phone for about $105/month, for 12 months.

Submitted by Chris Casey on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 10:10am.

I had my Fios installed in January, and had never heard anything from them about the promised TV or gift card. So last week I worked the phone and finally found my way to the 'orders department - 410/265-2439', who confirmed that I had placed my order during a promotion period (I knew that already, but confirmation is nice), and then they connected me to the 'promotions department - 866/279-0438', who were very apologetic and let me know I was now in the queue and that I should get more information in a few weeks. We'll see.

Submitted by LuvMontclair on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 11:49pm.

The install was done 12/28/07. We also knew we qualified for the 19" HD TV or BestBuy $200 gift card. It took numerous calls and weeks but finally received the gift card 05/07/08. It seems the promo's are handled by a sub contractor for Verizon (no surprise there) and Verizon is very slow about forwarding new customer info to determine if you are qualified. We actually received a letter stating we were not qualified but since we tried so hard, and were valued customers, they would send the gift card anyway?????

The actual tech install experience was very informative, smooth and trouble free. We have not experienced any problems (tech, equip, customer service) since we signed up. One exception was the HD DVR box would constantly re-set itself 4-6 times per day. The "help desk" sent a remote signal that worked for a week and then sent a tech with a brand new box(as opposed to the "re-furbished" we were given originally without being told). The new box has not failed yet (6 weeks and counting). The re-set problem did cause all programmed features to be lost and required re-programming every time (the remote and picture settings in the TV itself).

I do love the fact that when I click on my mouse buttons, FIOS has already got me where I wanted to go! It's that darn fast!

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