Verizon has been plugging the living daylights out of their FiOS broadband service for a couple of years now. Fiber to the house means that, in theory at least, your pipe to the Internet is capable of the sort of speeds that broadband customers in other countries (in particular, South Korea) take for granted but are still only dreamt about in this country. Problem is, they started promoting the service long before the physical plant was built out, and now, even when they can offer service in some communities, it’s not always available everywhere. For example, we recently got a letter from Verizon telling us that we could sign up for FiOS “right now!!”, but because our street has underground utilities we won’t actually be able to GET the service until 2010, and then on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
The Consumerist had a post a couple of days ago about a guy who DID get FiOS installed eight months ago and has never had it work correctly, despite having placed 115 service calls with Verizon. But here’s the scariest part: according to PC World magazine, Verizon’s FiOS customer service is ranked THE BEST out of all the major ISPs.
Maybe waiting until 2010 isn’t so bad after all.
