I know, I’m shocked too. Herman, at Verizon, thanks :)
My wireless on the Verizon ActionTec router suddenly stopped working. I know computers and how to navigate the router admin panel, wep keys, etc. Herman walked through a couple of the obvious things with me and still no dice. He then said “Well, obviously you know what you’re doing. We’ll send a replacement right away.” Apparently, the ActionTec router’s occasionally lose either wireless or hard ports and have to be replaced.
No waiting on hold, no talking to managers, no walking through stupid scripts, no offshore support.
It’s nice when support feels like a teamwork thing rather than fighting to get the help you need.
In my experience, when landline/DSL support is bad, it’s due to incompetence, not due to malice, as with cable companies*. For the most part, the service center people would actually like to help and at the same time their managers want to get good approval ratings.
They are judged on efficiency, too, but not so brutally as in cable companies, due to the legacy of PUC supervision of phone company operations.
*I’m not saying that the phone people at cable companies are evil; but their managers and executives are, hence the maliciously designed call screening and distribution system and the inability of cable company people to ever solve your problem without a dozen escalations and transfers. They are hoping you will just go away at some point.
I’ve been loving Verizon for cellular service a lot lately. I made the mistake of getting a really cheap HTC phone last time and was very unhappy with it, especially after having to replace it (under warranty) 3 times, so I broke down and bought a Droid with the full intention of paying the ETF on my old phone. The process to do this was rather convoluted and resulted in me getting billed for an extra line for a month. When I called about this excess charge, the Verizon guy looked over my account, disconnected the line that should have been disconnected the day it was opened, and waived the ETF for my trouble. I still have to pay for the month of service on that line, but that is small compared to the ETF. I cannot complain about the outcome.
