Edmund Schweppe

This is a new one: the folks at Verizon sent me an email today saying they were issuing a credit to my account "due to a service outage" (presumably this one).

I'll believe it when/if I see it. But I'm cynical, sometimes.

In our last episode, Jeff (the Verizon tech who was supposed to fix the fiber problem) had not arrived by the time Verizon said he would, but he had eventually called and said he was on his way. He did in fact, eventually, arrive. (Although not until he had to call me again and ask for directions. I guess Verizon doesn't let its people use Google Maps.) Whereupon he discovered that (a) he needed a splicer and (b) he didn't have one.

So we waited some more, until somebody ran a splicer out to Jeff. Whereupon he went off and spliced something, and discovered that splicing the something did not fix the problem. So he called in and spent several minutes in Verizon AVR menu hell until he could get through to a real person, who did something or another in the back office, which eventually led to my service being restored. Which is a Happy Thing for me.

OTOH, I was down for nearly twenty hours, due to some failure in Verizon equipment somewhere. And Verizon's customer "service" organization managed to make promises to me that it couldn't keep, regarding repair time.

Ah, the wonders of modern telephony. Wasn't competition supposed to improve things?

The Verizon tech who was supposed to be here between eight and one to fix my broken fiber?

Well, he just called. (Please note timestamp; it is almost two local time. Two is later than one.) He's about thirty minutes away, and will be stopping first "at the hub" to see if "somebody stole [my] light".

Previously, I'd called Verizon again around 1:25. Their automated voice response system made me waltz through menu hell for a while before finally admitting that it'd be at least five minutes before a human could speak with me; would I like to hold or have their human call me back? I chose to have them call me (rather than further drain my cellphone battery). Five minutes later, sure as shooting, their automated system called me back - and put me on hold for a couple of minutes until someone in the call center was available! Not that the someone in the call center ("Matt") was particularly helpful, or in any position to be so; all he could tell me was that the local dispatch center had assigned the ticket to the tech. He thought that the tech's previous job had run longer than expected, but he couldn't tell - nor could he actually call the tech and find out. He said I should get a call from the tech within half an hour.

After I got off the phone with the call center guy, "Dave" (another Verizon employee - not the tech) called, to let me know that the local dispatch center had contacted the call center to say that the tech had in fact been assigned the ticket. Not terribly helpful to me, but it was sort of nice to know that Matt wasn't completely blowing smoke at me. Two minutes after Dave called, "Jeff" the tech called.

So now we wait. Some more. Guess I really didn't need to get much accomplished today, did I?

At the moment, the latter.

A little while back, I had Verizon's FiOS fiber-optic Internet and telephone service installed. It's great for fast Internet access (although it doesn't speed up sites with slow/overloaded servers) and the bundle included some nice phone options.

Unless, of course, the wall unit that connects the phone and router to the fiber decides not to play anymore. It's blinking "FAIL" at me, and naturally the only idea Verizon's help desk had (unplug the battery-backup unit and let the wall box reboot itself) was of no use.

Fortunately, cellular service is unaffected, so I was able to call Verizon and report the issue (and get a walkthrough on rebooting my wall box). But I have to sit here until Verizon deigns to send a technician out to look at the wall unit - "sometime between eight and one". Arrgh.

Not in my diet, but my home Internet connection is now fiber-optics to my living room.

This doesn't speed up all Web browsing, because some of the places I surf have slow servers. But oh boy does it speed up the higher-end sites, where the delays were due to getting bytes through the network rather than off the servers in the first place. And Remote Desktop into work now just flies.

Which is a Good Thing, since local gasoline prices are now pushing US$4/gallon. Spending a day or so a week not driving to work is looking more and more attractive.