fios - failure follow-up

This is a FIOS follow-up from our outage last week.

Thursday

The Internet and phone services through FIOS went out in the morning. That afternoon I called the FIOS service phone number. An automated system answered, ran a battery of tests, determined that a service technician would need to personally review the box; it then created a trouble ticket for our outage; I was to be contacted “shortly” to schedule an appointment.

Friday

No contacts were received to schedule an appointment.

At 1:00 p.m. I called the service number again. This time the automated system recognized that there was an outstanding ticket and routed my call to a human. The service representative ran a battery of tests to confirm the ticket was correct (including having a "technician" review the results) before agreeing that there was a problem and a technician would need to see the system at our house. The service rep would not send anyone to the house without my guarantee that someone was at home. He said, "Call back when you're at home, then we'll dispatch someone."

I left work early and went home. At 3:00 p.m. I called the service number again. The automated system once again routed my call to a human, who had to run the same tests a third time to confirm there was a problem. He told me, “We will have to schedule a technician to visit your house. The earliest slot we have available is tomorrow, between 8:00 a.m. and noon.”

Given my past experience, I decided to take the earliest available slot, even though it was the same time as the biggest football game of the year: Ohio State vs. Michigan.

Saturday

Even though the Internet and phone services were still out, the HD television service was working fine. Ohio State was happily trouncing Michigan when I received voicemail on my cell phone from Verizon. The dispatcher reported that they were unable to locate a technician to visit our house – I should expect a call later.

A technician called at 1:00 p.m. to report that he was “in the area” and would be at the house shortly. At 1:30 he appeared and began running local tests on our ONT. He reported, “It looks like you have a problem with your ONT. I have a spare in the truck – I’ll have it running in no time.”

Full service was restored at 3:00 p.m. after the installation of our third ONT in five months… only to have some of the HDTV channels fail by 5:00 p.m. Another call to Verizon, another system reset, and all services appear to be working.

Summary

FIOS is shiny, cool, and unreliable. When it works, it’s unbeatable for performance – unfortunately, it fails far too often for most people... only geeks should fight this beast.