A very frustrated employee of Frontier Communications working in one of their Ohio offices sent Stop the Cap! a detailed report on some of Frontier’s problems with customer service, unfair fees, and other horror stories. In this final part, a look at Frontier’s broadband service and how the company is still struggling to integrate ex-Verizon customers now a part of the Frontier family. “It is as if Dollar Tree bought out Wal-Mart.” 

Frontier recently began marketing faster Internet speeds to many of their customers who can finally sign up for something roughly equivalent to today’s standard speeds from cable operators. But even in its more advanced forms of bonded DSL, ADSL2+, and VDSL, all remain distance-sensitive. Customers may simply never get the speeds they were promised if they live too far from the phone company’s central office.

Frontier wants to see the end of speed test results like this.

We recently started pushing our premium speed broadband to customers who qualify for our new speeds, which run up to 25Mbps for residential customers. Customers who truly qualify for this service will actually get to receive decent speeds comparable to what Time Warner Cable and Comcast offers.

We were originally planning to market this as competitive with FiOS fiber optic speed, but I’m honestly not surprised they dropped that angle once they thought of how stupid it would sound to veteran DSL customers that a standard telephone line could reach those speeds. Even the majority of our Frontier FiOS customers are sometimes lucky to receive the speeds that cable offers, but for different reasons.

If a representative says you do qualify for faster Internet service, it is still an absolute crap-shoot whether or not you will actually get through a two-hour streamed Netflix movie in two hours instead of four thanks to buffering issues.

We are still in the early stages of rolling out these new speeds and there are still many issues in our internal systems to work out. For example, if our internal Salesforce/DPI system has not been updated, you are not going to get the faster speed service even if you can see the central office from your house. When it does show a customer is qualified, both the customer and I rejoice because I get a commission and the customer can now successfully access Facebook in less than three hours. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and three of my orders for premium broadband Internet failed to complete despite the fact our system said they were qualified.

The cryptic reason? “Technology restraints do not allow this customer to reach any higher speeds.” That comes courtesy of our techs, who use it as a catch-all to cancel orders. Nobody can tell me why. I’ve asked dispatch, assignment, and tech managers and they have given me different explanations — none that seemed valid.

That leaves me calling back the customer, now excited they can finally use our broadband service to play online video games or Skype their son in college without being disconnected and let them know I was a big fat liar when I promised them something better, only to leave them stuck with what they had.

Next we need to update the information in those customers’ profiles so future reps do not lead them on. I have rechecked those accounts and to this day none of that information was updated. I just see my cancelled orders. So, there is even misinformation taking place within the company, preventing us from providing a risk free service.

Modem fees are a nuisance to a number of Frontier customers. The company is eliminating them for some customers.

Modem fees no longer apply to many Frontier broadband plans

Modem fees used to be an issue, however they are now increasingly included in the price of your broadband service. This can be especially good news in a competitive market where your broadband bill drops by nearly $7 a month, but those already using their own equipment will no longer see any savings from service credits applied to their monthly bills.

Are you really getting Frontier FiOS broadband speeds? Maybe not.

Speaking about misinformation, we have several Frontier FiOS customers that are actually only getting basic cable or DSL Internet speeds because their house was never actually wired with fiber. A street may have fiber optic cables all around, but if a customer is still using copper cable from the pole and inside their home, they are paying for services they are not getting. These customers are often noted in customer records we can access, but we are discouraged from sharing that information. This is not entirely our fault. This was a problem left over from the previous owner, Verizon Communications, which left us the mess to clean up. If you are only receiving half of the FiOS speed you are paying for, this may be why. If you complain, we will issue credit or create what we call a “SIFT Ticket” to send a tech to investigate a possible service upgrade.

Playing the Telephone Game with the telephone company

There have been countless times when I’ve been told five different things by five different people about how to handle a customer calling in for assistance. I understand that with millions of customers it is hard to predict what will happen on that next call, but simple things such as a consistent way to handle customer requests should be standard stuff. So, what can I do? Pick one of the five options and hope it is the right one for the customer.

Working for Frontier means dealing with short term goals that vary wildly day to day with no focus on any sort of objective. These loose operations and inconsistencies come straight from the top. This affects our long term goals as a company (whatever the hell those might be). These endlessly varying short term goals leave us with no foundation for long term goals because… again, there is no focus. That needed to be said twice.

Customers notice the rampant inconsistencies. A lot of customers candidly tell me, “you guys are spread too thin, and there is a severe lack of communication between all of your call centers.”

This is true, and much of it has to do with our purchase of former Verizon landline customers. It is as if Dollar Tree bought out Wal-Mart. I feel like we have bit off more than we can chew, despite the fact management dismissed these concerns as “speed bumps from the conversion.”

It is now 2012 and 2013 is coming closer every day and I am still dealing with the same issues that should no longer be happening as often as they should.

So, in closing, this has been my rant about the company I work for. I do enjoy my job (honestly, I do) and the people I work with are great. Even the customers who scream and yell at me, or the ones who commend me for my work, they’re all great in their own way. Nothing is as satisfying as actually calming someone down who has an issue with their bill, only to have them apologize and be grateful they got me on the phone. You have to truly be a people person to do this job, and not just do it for the money or it won’t work out for you. I’m not the most perfect representative, but I hope to strive to truly make every day I’m there in my cube less and less miserable and tedious.

Hopefully this crap can eventually be flushed and one day soon Frontier’s wheels will run smoothly.

Apple’s iPhone 5 Wi-Fi bug is showing up on several wireless networks.

Wireless companies with usage caps are in the money — your money — if you happen to own Apple’s iPhone 5. A serious bug afflicting the phone’s ability to connect and hold a Wi-Fi connection when using certain wireless security protocols is chewing up customers’ data allowances and exposing them to overlimit fees, even when they think the phone is connected to a free use Wi-Fi network.

So far, Verizon Wireless has confirmed the problem is impacting their customers, but our readers report problems with AT&T and Sprint iPhones as well.

“Under certain circumstances, iPhone 5 may use Verizon cellular data while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network,” said Torod Neptune, a spokesman for Verizon. “Apple has a fix that is being delivered to Verizon customers right on their iPhone 5. Verizon Wireless customers will not be charged for any unwarranted cellular data usage.”

Stop the Cap! reader John Pozniewicz thinks that is nice of Verizon, and wonders when AT&T will start dealing with the nearly $100 in overage fees he has already run up on similarly afflicted iPhone 5 smartphones he bought just last week.

“As best as I can tell, the problem seems to relate to the type of Wi-Fi security protocol your router has enabled,” Pozniewicz reports. “Many in the Apple community forums and I both agree the most likely culprit is AES encryption.”

Sprint customer Halle Thompson also wrote Stop the Cap! yesterday reporting her Sprint iPhone 5 was unable to hold its Wi-Fi connection either, forcing her to deal with Sprint’s slow 3G network, even when at home.

“Thank goodness Sprint doesn’t have a usage limit and overage fees or they would own my house by now, because I use my phone for everything,” Thompson says.

Thompson switched off her router’s wireless security and the problem disappeared, but now her Internet connection is open to everyone in her apartment complex. Pozniewicz spent the weekend experimenting with wireless security protocols and quickly found AES caused his Wi-Fi connection to become unstable.

If your readers are having the same problems I am, here is a workaround that will keep your router reasonably secure and accessible until the pointy heads at Apple figure out this disaster:

Recommended Security Settings:

• WPA only (least secure)
• WPA2 only
• WPA or WPA2 with TKIP

Not recommended:

• AUTO – AES
• WPA or WPA2 with AES enabled
• WPA or WPA2 with both TKIP and AES enabled

Verizon Wireless has told customers it will credit back any overage fees incurred as a result of the bug, but only if they ask. Customers should also demand Verizon reset their allowance or at least note their account regarding the problem. Customers should request credit for overlimit fees for both September and October, because early reports indicate the software update designed to fix this problem has not worked in all cases.

Pozniewicz is having much less success with AT&T which so far has refused all comment on the debacle and has been unwilling to issue any service credits for overages. Pozniewicz is upset, noting he has only had his iPhone 5 for a week and it has already cost him and his company an extra $100.

“I am extremely careful about only using Wi-Fi for anything that will consume a lot of data, but my only clue there was a problem was when I noticed how slowly my so-called ‘Wi-Fi’ connection was performing at home and work and that is when I discovered it was not actually using Wi-Fi at all,” Pozniewicz says. “What is insidious about this is that the Wi-Fi connection is still showing on the phone display, even when I am actually using AT&T’s network.”

Thompson reports her phone does seem to initially connect to Wi-Fi, but then loses the connection seconds or minutes later, eventually switching to Sprint’s 3G or 4G cellular networks. Sprint’s unlimited data plan makes the issue just an inconvenience. For Pozniewicz’s company, which has a contract for a dozen iPhones 5’s with AT&T, the overlimit fees are really adding up. His employees are also quickly burning through their own monthly data allowances.

“AT&T is a pack of vampires and they don’t care about anything other than my money, even after talking to two supervisors, one of which implied I was either lying about the problem or an idiot,” he said.

Here is how iPhone 5 customers can check their data usage: Select Settings, then General, then Usage, then Cellular Usage to see what your phone reports you have used thus far. If the numbers seem wildly out of whack, contact your wireless carrier and let them know you may be afflicted with the iPhone 5 bug and have them note your account for future credit for any subsequent overlimit fees.

Verizon customers should have already received a software update in an effort to correct the problem. You can verify this by following these steps:

1. Select Settings, then General, then About.
2. Wait for the message “Carrier Settings Updated,” then touch OK.
3. Allow the update (if any) to install.
4. If your phone does not automatically restart after the update is complete, turn the phone off and then on again to complete the update.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/iPhone 5 Wifi connection issue.flv[/flv]

iPhone 5’s Wi-Fi problems documented by YouTube user “MNeuenswander,” who found changing the security protocol on his router seemed to resolve the problem.  (2 minutes)

Verizon Wireless is dealing with the appearance of fraudulent “look-a-like” websites purporting to offer special discounts and features for customers willing to give up account information that could expose them to future fraud.

In the most recent examples, “VZ for Me” and “It’s Fall at Verizon,” customers are asked to give up their Verizon login and phone information that could result in phone cloning and service theft.

The latest generation of phony websites are virtually indistinguishable from legitimate ones, with fully functioning web pages and depth of content. The only two giveaways:

1. The website does not use the appropriate URL (vzforme.com and itsfallatverizon.com vs. verizonwireless.com);
2. Once logged in, the website cannot actually divulge any account information it never had access to, unless the customer supplies it themselves.

News reports about the sites have triggered actions ranging from browser blocks, which warn about potentially fraudulent sites and Verizon Wireless’ own successful takedown campaign.

Consumers are advised to avoid any links found in e-mail messages or web pages that offer to take you to a company’s website. The safest way is always to type the web address yourself.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KIFI Idaho Falls Investigation Fake Verizon Wireless site targets S-E-I-D 9-23-12.mp4[/flv]

KIFI in Idaho Falls reports on its special investigation of phony Verizon Wireless websites phishing for customer data.  (3 minutes)

Greenwich Village business owner Louis Wintermeyer has spent the last three months without phone or broadband service from Verizon Communications.

“It is hard to believe it has gone on this long,” Wintermeyer told the New York Post. “You feel like you’re in Bangladesh here. I mean we’re in the West Village!”

Across Manhattan, and well into upstate New York, Verizon customers who start experiencing landline problems often keep experiencing them for weeks or months on end.

Wintermeyer couldn’t wait that long — he relocated his car-export company to his Rockland County home. Another Verizon customer in the same building — the Darling advertising agency, experienced intermittent outages adding up to 10 weeks of no service since February.

“We really sounded like amateurs,” Jeroen Bours, president of the Darling advertising agency told the Post. “We would be in a conference call, and all of a sudden the call would go. It just doesn’t really make a good impression.”

In the Adirondack hamlet of Wanakena, when the rain arrives, Verizon service leaves a lot to be desired.

One person’s phone may be working but the one next door will be completely out of service or crackly at best, according to local residents.

“It’s almost comical,” Ranger school director Christopher L. Westbrook told the Watertown Daily Times. “It’s so bizarre because some phones will be working while others are not.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Phone Situation Improving Officials Say 8-3-12.mp4[/flv]

A fiber optic line cut near Cicero, N.Y. in early August disrupted phone and cellular service from Verizon across the North Country. WWNY in Watertown covers the event.  (1 minute)

One Adirondack Park Agency commissioner who lives in the area says he has been without a phone 15 times in the last two months. Unfortunately for North Country residents, cell phone service is often not an option, because carriers don’t provide reliable wireless service in the region.

Local businesses cannot process credit card transactions, broadband service goes down, and a handful of privately-owned pay phones out of service for months have been abandoned by their independent owner because of the ongoing service problems.

Verizon repair crews come and go, but affected customers report a real reluctance by Verizon technicians to complete repairs once and for all.

“The permanent fix is not happening,” says Angie K. Oliver, owner of the Wanakena General Store.

Bours said one Verizon technician told him the company no longer cares about its older copper wire landline business. Rural residents upstate sense the company has little interest spending money on deteriorating infrastructure.

Some Wanakena residents suspect Verizon has thrown in the towel in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, where independent Nicholville Telephone subsidiary Slic Network Solutions is constructing over 800 miles of fiber optic cable and operates a fiber to the home broadband and phone service.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Lewis County Phone Service Restored 8-20-11.mp4[/flv]

Last summer, Lewis County suffered a similar widespread phone service outage that left businesses and homes without service for days.  WWNY says Barnes Corners was hardest hit.  (1 minute) 

Verizon spokesman John J. Bonomo blamed lightning strikes for the problems in Wanakena, but said the cable serving the area was intact and should not be responsible for service outages.

Gray

Near Syracuse University, some businesses and residents were without phone service for nearly two weeks in June.

The largest outage began when more than 150 customers around SU lost service after a storm. More than a week later, nearly two dozen customers were still without service, including the 4,000 member U.S. Institute for Theater Technology.

A damaged underground phone cable was deemed responsible, but repairs were slow.

Earlier this month, Massena town supervisor Joseph Gray fired off a letter to the deputy Secretary of State after a major Verizon line north of Syracuse was damaged, cutting off landline and cell phone service throughout Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties.

“I would have called your office to speak with you directly, but I couldn’t because our telephone service was unavailable,” Gray wrote. “Since I became supervisor of the town of Massena just over two and a half years ago, on at least three different occasions telecommunications in the entire North Country has been thrown into chaos because a Verizon fiber optic cable was cut 150 miles from here. Many of us found our emergency services, business, residential, and cellular telephone service interrupted, not to mention disabled credit card machines, facsimile machines and Internet service in some cases.”

Gray criticized the Public Service Commission for allowing Verizon to operate without service redundancy in the state, providing backup facilities if a fiber cut occurs.

“As a result, the Public Service Commission (which perhaps should be given a different name if my experiences with them is typical), has done nothing to address this dangerous situation and, more incredibly, appears unwilling to acknowledge that the problem exists,” Gray said.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman blasted Verizon’s poor landline service in a petition sent to the New York State Public Service Commission. Schneiderman called Verizon’s service unacceptable in New York, with customers forced to wait inordinate periods to get service restored.

“Verizon’s management has demonstrated that it is unwilling to compete to retain its wireline customer base, and instead is entirely focused on expanding its wireless business affiliate,” said Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman’s office filed evidence in July that Verizon was undercutting its landline business in New York and diverting money for other purposes:

• Verizon’s claim it had spent more than $1 billion in investments to its landline network was misleading: Roughly three-quarters of the money was actually spent on transport facilities to serve wireless cell sites and ongoing spending on FiOS in areas already committed to get the fiber-to-the-home service;
• Verizon investment in landlines has declined even faster than its line losses. The dollars per access line budgeted for 2012 is one-third less than the investment for the 2007-2009 period;
• In just a five month period, 19.5% of the company’s 4.3 million customer lines in New York required repair. This means every Verizon customer will need an average of one repair every five years;
• Verizon’s complaint rate with the PSC has exceeded the PSC’s own limit for good service every month since June 2010. Most recently, Verizon exceeded the limit by more than double the threshold;
• Verizon’s agreement with the Commission establishes two classes of customers: “core” customers (8%) that qualify for enhanced repair service because they are elderly and/or have medical problems and non-core customers (virtually everyone else). The Commission only enforces service standards and repair lapses with “core” customers, which are required to have out of service lines restored within 24 hours 80% of the time. Verizon is free to delay other repairs indefinitely without consequence.
• The PSC has already fined Verizon $400,000 earlier this year for poor service from October-December 2011.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWNY Watertown Gray Phone Disruptions Perilous Flaw 8-7-12.mp4[/flv]

WWNY talks with Massena town supervisor Joseph Gray, who has launched a campaign to force Verizon to develop a plan to better handle outages in northern New York. (2 minutes)

The CWA’s Verizon-Cable Company Deal Monster

While Verizon customers in more than two dozen towns and communities around Boston can enjoy fiber optic broadband service today, residents inside the city of Boston cannot buy the service at any price. It is largely the same story in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany, N.Y., and Baltimore, Md.

With Verizon’s fiber network FiOS indefinitely stalled, local community leaders and union workers are more than a little concerned that Verizon is spending time, money and attention promoting a deal with the cable industry — its biggest competitor.

The Communications Workers of America is stepping up its protest of a proposed deal between Verizon’s wireless division and large cable operators including Comcast and Time Warner Cable that would result in cross-marketing agreements that sell cable service to Verizon Wireless customers and wireless service to cable customers.

The union is urging the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to stop the deal because, in their view, it will destroy any further expansion of fiber optic-based FiOS, reduce competition, and raise prices for consumers.

The union notes that cable operators are not being asked to promote Verizon’s FiOS network, only Verizon Wireless’ phone services. Verizon Wireless, which barely mentions FiOS service in many of its wireless stores, would suddenly be promoting Comcast and Time Warner Cable instead.

The odd-network-out is clearly Verizon’s fiber optic FiOS service, which was originally envisioned as a competitor against dominant cable operators. But when the economy tanked, Verizon stalled fiber deployment, agreeing only to wire areas where the company already concluded negotiations with local officials. That leaves urban population centers in the northeast (except New York City) stuck with the cable company or Verizon’s DSL service, which has been become increasingly difficult to buy.

Verizon countered the deal would be good for consumers, especially those buying cable packages.

“We believe these agreements will enhance competition, allowing Verizon Wireless to take market shares from other wireless companies, while allowing cable companies to more vigorously compete by enabling them to offer wireless services as part of a triple or quad-play package of services,” the company said in a statement.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CWA TV Ad Behind Closed Doors.flv[/flv]

The Communications Workers of America launched this new ad — “Behind Closed Doors” — last week in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Pennsylvania media markets. (1 minute)

But union workers in FiOS-bypassed communities like Binghamton, N.Y. suggest customers will simply be on the short end of Verizon’s stick. They note the nearest city where Verizon is deploying fiber optics is suburban Syracuse — more than 70 miles to the north.

BALTIMORE: Left behind as FiOS spreads to six surrounding counties

BOSTON: No Internet revolution

ALBANY: The Empire State’s capital city has no FiOS

BUFFALO: Hit hard by the digital divide

SYRACUSE: Surrounded by high speed—but none for the city

[flv width=”580″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WBNG Binghamton Union Fights Verizon Deal 8-8-12.mp4[/flv]

WBNG reported on a CWA-sponsored protest against Verizon’s deal with cable companies in FiOS-deprived Binghamton, N.Y.  (1 minute)