[pf] The phone company hustle

by Kaleopono

06 December 2000 23:20 UTC

Some months ago (I didn't pay close attention) GTE Hawaiian Telephone
Company was bought by/merged into Verizon.  In mid-October my occupational
pursuits changed:  my voice and data phone lines under a corporate account
billed to the corporate office address (which I had no financial
responsibility for or control over) were terminated.  The same lines were
then reconnected via the computerized switching mechanism at Verizon's
central offices, to new residential service phone numbers billed to me at my
home address.

On the voice line for which I ordered basic voice mail service, I previously
had been able to check messages, press the asterisk ("star") button three
times to exit, and would then have a dial tone which enabled me to
immediately continue with the outgoing call I had been initiating when I
picked up the receiver and was alerted to check for waiting messages.  Since
the change, I no longer get the dial tone after pressing the asterisk button
three times to exit the voice mail detour.  I must next press the OFF
button, then press the ON button, to obtain the dial tone.  It's a minor
inconvenience, annoying nonetheless.

On the data line, previously my computer modem would go off hook, get the
dial tone, dial the ISP number, and then infallibly and immediately receive
the handshake tone from the ISP's modem, leading to a quick, first-try
connection every time.  Now, the typical pattern is: off hook, dial tone,
successful dial...but no answer.  The call hangs in deadspace (like the
voice mail exit on the voice line) on the first dialing attempt.  A second
attempt -- and occasionally a third or even a fourth -- is now routinely
required to obtain a modem handshake and establish a connection with my ISP.
The ISP checked all of their modems and determined that none are failing to
answer incoming calls.  This one is more like a burr under the saddle.

Persistence with Verizon Customer Service in my attempt to gain a dial tone
upon exiting voice mail -- while insistently and repeatedly restating the
fact that I had it before but don't have it now -- finally led to the
service rep's statement  "We don't guarantee a dial tone when you exit your
voice mail."  In the case of the computer line, the service rep said that
their computer systems person said everything is working fine at their
switching center and that there must be a problem in my modem.

In both cases, a marked degradation of service quality is "in my face" every
day.  Several attempts to gain restoration of the previous level of service
quality via Verizon Customer Service proved futile.  They say they have
tested the lines, which check out okay (this is not my complaint, they do
work, after all) and lay the blame on my equipment.  I find it impossible to
believe that _both_ my voice phone _and_ my internal modem, which were
working fine up to the moment of change in the account name and phone
numbers, would begin to create quality degradations immediately after the
changeover (is there a mathematician reading this who can calculate the
probability?).  The only things that changed were internal to the phone
company.

But this isn't all.  The bills were messed up:

1)  In both cases, unpaid basic monthly service balances from the corporate
bills under the old numbers (which were terminated) had been transferred to
my new, personal account numbers.  Verizon failed to distinguish between the
end of business service and the beginning of residential service under a new
name, billing address, and phone numbers.  When I objected, the Verizon
Customer Service rep stated after putting me on hold for a long time that
the carried-over corporate bill amounts had been paid.  This points to an
interesting circumstance:  if the amounts had recently been paid, then this
means they were billed to the corporate address.  Why did these amounts also
appear on my new, personal account statements?

2)  For the voice line not only basic voice mail was billed, but _also_ the
twice-as-expensive "voice message -- mailbox" which I explicitly declined
when establishing the new, personal phone number.  It appears that
regardless of what you order, they add other expensive line items.  Careless
subscribers who do not immediately object will continue to pay for these
unordered items month after month.

3)  For the data line, a monthly charge from MCI WorldCom for local toll
service to the account of the corporation I no longer work for was included
on my personal, residential Verizon statement "as a service to MCI WorldCom.
Direct your billing questions to the [MCI WorldCom] phone number in the
yellow border of this page."  I dialed that number and after many transfers
and requests to call different 800 numbers it was found that the number MCI
has the account under is the preliminary number allocated by Verizon when
the corporate numbers were cancelled and the personal residential service
was first ordered.  But I was given a different number by Verizon in the
end.  At the time I arranged for my new, personal accounts with Verizon  I
did not specify MCI, but another interisland toll service provider.  Verizon
disclaimed any responsbility, even though they were the intermediary
handling the entire transition.  MCI WorldCom reps assert adamantly that
they do not engage in slamming and that the error is Verizon's.  The charge
was reversed, but I'm told it will take two to three billing cycles for it
to disappear from my monthly Verizon statements due to the difficulty of
communicating the change to Verizon and having them adjust their billing
computer.

4)  Unpaid balances for long distance calls placed via _all_ of the
corporation phone lines prior to the change were transferred to my new,
personal phone numbers.  These included numbers at the corporate office 45
minutes away from my residence, and in the San Francisco Bay area.

The overall picture is one of gross incompetence, negligence or even
possibly overt, deliberate policy to confuse things so much that many or
most people will throw up their hands and give up, choosing to pay excess
charges because that's easier than trying to sort it all out.  The snafu
took me hours to unravel.

But there's even more....

Rubbing salt in the wounds inflicted by the events described above, while
Verizon Customer Service reps put me on hold repeatedly, for several minutes
in each case, it wasn't the pervasive but nonetheless barely tolerable Musak
that was piped into my ear (I much prefer relaxing, Hawaiian "slack key"
instrumental guitar music).  Instead, in the style of TV ads, the volume
rose to such a degree that I had to move the receiver away from my ear, and
I was assaulted by an endless stream of artificially happy-voiced Verizon
sales pitches for all sorts of new, add-on services and phone equipment that
I simply am not interested in.  This verbal assault looped...and
looped...and looped again!  It drove me up the wall.  I complained about it,
but it was immediately apparent that the customer service reps have no
control over it, nor the authority to transfer my complaint to a higher
level supervisor to enable me to pursue it.  Like the voice mail exit that
ends up hanging in deep space, in this regard, too, the phone company
appears unconcerned about customer dead-ends .

GTE Hawaiian Telephone was pretty bad, but Verizon seems to have made a
giant leap in the direction of polished consumer exploitation and sleeze.
Are the circumstances described above unique to some people who live in
Hawaii (which in many respects is probably more like a third world banana
republic than Oregon or Vermont)?  Do those of you who live in the
continental U.S. see similar degradations (maybe it's accurate to also use
"depredations") at Verizon's hands?

Can you exit voice mail by pressing "star" three times and get a dial tone
without having to hang up, first?

Do you think it is reasonable to expect to regain the level of service
quality that I enjoyed previously, when the two lines were under a corporate
account, and to persist in my effort to accomplish this?

Kaleopono