VoiceWing sucking much
Not too long ago I wrote about Time Warner’s Home Phone service not being that great a deal, when price compared to Verizon’s VoiceWing service. While that still seems to be the case, I’m having a much bigger problem with VoiceWing lately. Two actually – the service and the support.
My VoiceWing service has several, oft repeated issues. I’ll get a dial tone before, during, and after dialing a number (and no connection). I’ll get a busy signal when trying to make outgoing calls. No orange connection light on the router, requiring a reset. It’s getting to the point where 3-4 days per week the router needs to be reset, sometimes multiple times, before it starts working. Today, the phone wouldn’t accept incoming calls, and not only that, it wouldn’t go to voicemail either. It would ring once, and then go to a busy signal.
I’ve emailed VoiceWing support a number of times, and when I get a response at all, it’s a crappy, generic, Indian-English response back telling me I need to call them to have a tech troubleshoot my issue. Hey fuckheads – if my phone worked, I wouldn’t need support. Today, I finally got pissed enough to call them. After sitting on hold for half an hour, I was connected to someone in the India call center who was desperately trying to pretend they weren’t in India, but was actually my helpful, American friend Josh. Nice try, but we don’t pronounce it “Joe-shh” in the States, and no matter how hard you try your script does not sound like conversational English. But I digress. I complained not about the current day’s issue, but about the fact that my router seems to require constant resetting for my phone to be even halfway functional. However, I was informed that they were currently experiencing an outage and would be unable to assist until it was corrected. They would call me back when that happened.
No surprise, I got no callback. I’m about at wits end with this service. I live in an area where my cell reception is sketchy at best and I need a reliable home phone line. I’d hate to go back to copper, so my only other option may be to give Time Warner Home Phone a try, even though it’s overpriced and full of taxes and fees. Anyone out there using it and want to share their experiences?
Is this the fiber optic phone service? I was really looking forward to that becoming available in the Northtowns, but a part-time-maybe-it-works-sort of- sometimes service isn’t appealing, regardless of pricing.. That does suck much. Are you having similar troubles getting on the internets?
No, this is just a standard VOIP service that runs on any broadband internet, in my case Time Warner RoadRunner. The fiber optic service is slightly different, and they price it similar to copper. Which is kind of dumb because it operates the same as VOIP. But they count on people not knowing that and paying more.
My internet access is fine.
I looked at pricing of Verizon FIOS last fall at the EC fair. The pricing for home phone, internet, cable (and even cell phone, I think) together beat Adelphia / Time Warner package costs by a mile, without even including the present costs of my home phones. VOIP seemed choppy, canny-sounding and a bit fickle when I looked into it about 2 years ago – but 2 years ago could be ancient history as far as these technologies are concerned. I may have been listening to a “close-n-play” version of it on an “easy-bake” computer.
Can you forward your VOIP service to a properly working line? Although I must assume a dude of your technitude has already considered that.
I do get a kick out of the India-based reps trying to pretend they are from the U.S.. Quiz him to see if he can tell you the name a nearby city – preferably something really obscure, like Chicago or Atlanta, or a state capitol.
I’d gladly give Verizon’s FIOS package a try, but 1. they’re still not offering their own TV service in this area yet (AFAIK) and 2. they won’t be running fiber out my way for several years, I’m sure.
You can forward your VOIP phone, but that also seemed to be affected by the issues the day I wrote this post.
diddo – voicewing/verizon is the WORST customer service and tech support on the planet – run as far and fast as you can
I finally got so fed up with them that I ported my number to Broadvoice. I’ve never looked back…
I transferred my number from a real phone company to them to save some money. Things were fine until I had a problem.
My ATA died.
I called, they sent me a new one with NO INSTRUCTIONS.
I installed the ATA, went to my account page and attempted to update the “MAC ADDRESS” on my account to show the MAC ADDRESS of the new ATA. The system did not accept it.
I called, the technician attempted to update the account with the new MAC address. Did not work for him either. Her tried and tried, called me back and said it was done. No dial tone.
I was on the phone for 3 hours, they could not get it to work.
I REPEATEDLY ASKED TO BE ESCALATED TO HIGHER LEVEL OF SUPPORT BUT THEY DID NOT DO IT.
Called again the next day, got escalated but could not talk to the TECHNICAL SUPPORT or IT department.
Called about 4 times a day. NO DIAL TONE FOR A WEEK.
Send about 400 emails, not a single reply back.
No one on their phone line could tell me if TECHNICAL SUPPORT had even looked at my problem.
These people are utterly incompetent.
The people on the phone told me that TECHNICAL SUPPORT was too busy to help me. I did not have a dial tone in a week and phone company said we are too busy to help you. What were they doing? Sitting in a circle, pleasuring themselves??????
Pay a little more, get a real phone.
Does anyone out there have the tech number for the stupid tech department of Verizon Voice Wing?