Wowsers...that is horrible...I've been re-evaluating my thought of switching from Comcast to Verizon...and one or two more of these stories, and I might have my mind made up...
AGGGGGGGG!!!! Finally back online. Verizon install gone wrong.
Well, if anybody remembers my thread last week concerning the hiccups with my FIOS TV installation last Wednesday (9 hours and absolutely no success), things went from bad to worse, culminating with me losing my broadband from Thursday to today!
It should have been straightforward. We have existing FIOS--our phone and internet are on FIOS, so we have the fiber to the home, and the ONT (the junction box). It should just have been a matter of opening that video port, and then hooking the house coax network to the video coax output on the ONT.
In a nutshell, they had some kind of software malfunction at the central office and could not open my MoCA (coax port that brings in the video), and therefore could not get video to come out of my ONT and the whole installation was put on hold.
So my new TivoHD sat there. No HUGE deal--after all I hadn't yet cancelled DirecTV, so I just hooked my multiswitch back up, and I was watching my old DirecTivo box. And I redid guided setup on the TivoHD and at least got HD OTA to amuse myself.
But then, my internet started going up and down. By Thursday, most of my calls were being dropped (we had vonage.) By the end of Thursday, that was it for the broadband. The ONT was showing no ethernet link at all, and the MoCA port (over which the internet was supposed to flow after the video hookup) was flashing red and then green and then red.
Nobody could explain why, and Verizon made it EXTREMELY difficult to get anybody on the line that could help. Friday, they said someone would be coming out from 1-5pm. I waited around. At 5pm, they called to say they were STILL having that software issue and it wasn't in my house so there was nothing to do here. Sit tight, it'll be fixed soon, we'll have someone come out Monday. Great. Thanks for wasting yet ANOTHER four hours of my time. Brings me up to 13 hours of getting nowhere but having to be there.
I was livid. At this point, all I had wanted to do was ADD FiosTV. Not take away broadband, and, by extension, my home phone line. I spent all weekend being given short shrift on the phone, and nobody could explain why they couldn't see my ONT on the network. One particular CSR insulted me repeatedly on the phone, and I don't take kindly to that.
Well, they rescheduled me for a trouble ticket on Monday from 10-2. Great. Let's tack on another four hours. Everybody assumed it would fix itself on its own over the weekend, but no go. Finally, installer comes out 1pm, and within seconds he's got the network back up and running. Apparently when the video install failed, it left my broadband in some kind of software limbo between coming in over the ethernet port and over the MoCA port.
Flush with success, we moved on to the video install. The cablecards just wouldn't initialize and finally the tivo crashed. I don't know what was going on, but there were menus but no background, and then it kept telling me I had to repeat guided setup. So, we did. Fortunately, once that happened, it miraculously found the cards and paired up. I don't presume to know how that happened. Cablecards are a big mystery to me. But I did know just sliiiightly more than the installer, who kept chuckling during various phone calls back to Verizon that this was a first--the customer was showing HIM how to do it. But once guided setup went through its paces, it came up.
Then we got the dreaded macroblocking and pixellating. I almost cried. Nothing about this has been straightforward and I was hopeful that the software updates from Tivo would have prevented the problem in the first place. I had made sure it was totally up to date before we even stuck a cablecard in there.
He changed coax cables and no luck. Then he tested the line and it was a 4.44 out of 5, which he declared "very hot." Then he went downstairs and installed something on the line that dialed it back a bit, and all the problems went away. Hmm. Interesting.
I have my fingers crossed that that was it.
We'll see. I'm weary and only now back online to find 8,000 emails (slight exaggeration) I have to sort through.
If I never have to deal with no broadband and no phone for 5 days again, it'll be too soon.
It should have been straightforward. We have existing FIOS--our phone and internet are on FIOS, so we have the fiber to the home, and the ONT (the junction box). It should just have been a matter of opening that video port, and then hooking the house coax network to the video coax output on the ONT.
In a nutshell, they had some kind of software malfunction at the central office and could not open my MoCA (coax port that brings in the video), and therefore could not get video to come out of my ONT and the whole installation was put on hold.
So my new TivoHD sat there. No HUGE deal--after all I hadn't yet cancelled DirecTV, so I just hooked my multiswitch back up, and I was watching my old DirecTivo box. And I redid guided setup on the TivoHD and at least got HD OTA to amuse myself.
But then, my internet started going up and down. By Thursday, most of my calls were being dropped (we had vonage.) By the end of Thursday, that was it for the broadband. The ONT was showing no ethernet link at all, and the MoCA port (over which the internet was supposed to flow after the video hookup) was flashing red and then green and then red.
Nobody could explain why, and Verizon made it EXTREMELY difficult to get anybody on the line that could help. Friday, they said someone would be coming out from 1-5pm. I waited around. At 5pm, they called to say they were STILL having that software issue and it wasn't in my house so there was nothing to do here. Sit tight, it'll be fixed soon, we'll have someone come out Monday. Great. Thanks for wasting yet ANOTHER four hours of my time. Brings me up to 13 hours of getting nowhere but having to be there.
I was livid. At this point, all I had wanted to do was ADD FiosTV. Not take away broadband, and, by extension, my home phone line. I spent all weekend being given short shrift on the phone, and nobody could explain why they couldn't see my ONT on the network. One particular CSR insulted me repeatedly on the phone, and I don't take kindly to that.
Well, they rescheduled me for a trouble ticket on Monday from 10-2. Great. Let's tack on another four hours. Everybody assumed it would fix itself on its own over the weekend, but no go. Finally, installer comes out 1pm, and within seconds he's got the network back up and running. Apparently when the video install failed, it left my broadband in some kind of software limbo between coming in over the ethernet port and over the MoCA port.
Flush with success, we moved on to the video install. The cablecards just wouldn't initialize and finally the tivo crashed. I don't know what was going on, but there were menus but no background, and then it kept telling me I had to repeat guided setup. So, we did. Fortunately, once that happened, it miraculously found the cards and paired up. I don't presume to know how that happened. Cablecards are a big mystery to me. But I did know just sliiiightly more than the installer, who kept chuckling during various phone calls back to Verizon that this was a first--the customer was showing HIM how to do it. But once guided setup went through its paces, it came up.
Then we got the dreaded macroblocking and pixellating. I almost cried. Nothing about this has been straightforward and I was hopeful that the software updates from Tivo would have prevented the problem in the first place. I had made sure it was totally up to date before we even stuck a cablecard in there.
He changed coax cables and no luck. Then he tested the line and it was a 4.44 out of 5, which he declared "very hot." Then he went downstairs and installed something on the line that dialed it back a bit, and all the problems went away. Hmm. Interesting.
I have my fingers crossed that that was it.
We'll see. I'm weary and only now back online to find 8,000 emails (slight exaggeration) I have to sort through.
If I never have to deal with no broadband and no phone for 5 days again, it'll be too soon.
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