Verizon wouldn't lie to sell phones -- would they?

In previous posts, I have been unkind to my local-monopoly Internet service provider Time Warner cable and the US ISP industry in general. I've also been unkind to Verizon FiOS in their battles with Netflix and criticized their "gentleman's agreement" to abandon fiber to focus on wireless connectivity, leaving me at the mercy Time Warner Cable.

Those stories all had to do with landlines -- what about Verizon mobile? My wife had an unlimited account with a reseller of Verizon mobile service (a "mobile virtual network operator" or MVNO). She no longer needed the unlimited account, so decided to switch to Verizon.

This was shortly before the new iPhones came out, so she wanted to keep using her old phone for a month or so and, since she had been using it on the Verizon network, she assumed it would work after shifting her account from the MVNO.

To be safe, I went online and had the following chat with a Verizon salesman named Brandon:

Chat transcript -- click image to enlarge

As you see, I gave him the phone's mobile equipment ID (MEID) number and he said it was incompatible with the Verizon network and offered to sell me a new phone. I pointed out that the old phone had worked on the Verizon network for years and he suggested that it may have been blacklisted or have the wrong antenna -- like AM versus FM radio. He elaborated, saying it might be compatible with some, but not all, of their network or perhaps my wife had been roaming for five years.

Maybe the phone would not work somewhere on Earth, but it has worked everywhere my wife has been in the United States and abroad for the past five years. (She is not an early adopter :-). Here are the specs (MEID 990001106522642):

I am not a mobile phone geek -- Is there something that would render the phone incompatible with Verizon mobile service?

We ignored Brandon's warning and opened a Verizon account -- the phone worked fine (in southern California) until it was replaced with a new iPhone.

My guess is that Brandon was just telling me what he saw when he queried Verizon's database, so he was not lying. But is the Verizon compatibility database accurate and, if not, is Verizon lying in order to sell new phones? (This reminds me of the Volkswagen smog check shenanigans).

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Update 10/10/2016

Let's talk about customer service.

In spite of Verizon saying it was incompatible with their network, my wife has been using her old iPhone 4 on their network without problems. When she transferred her account to Verizon, they said she had to sign up for a billed (post-pay) account, but could then switch to an automatically-charged, pre-paid account (to get a higher data cap) whenever she wanted to.

She did that two days ago. Doing so required that she speak on the phone with three different Verizon employees -- a support person, a sales person and an account verification person. There were long waits on hold before each of those conversations and she had to explain the situation to each of the people -- there was evidently no transfer of information between them. The entire process took well over an hour.

I am posting this for two reasons:

1. Verizon has sold their FiOS landline service, but it was the lowest ranked company in the lowest-ranked industry (Internet service providers, ISPs) on the American Customer Satisfaction Index before the sale. I've not seen a ranking for mobile ISPs, but based on this experience, I would expect Verizon to look bad.
2. One frequently hears complaints about poor service from bureaucratic government agencies. Government agencies are large organizations with monopoly power. ISPs are also large organizations in monopoly or oligopoly markets. A large, private organization in a monopoly or oligopoly market is nearly as likely to provide poor service as a government agency.

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Update 10/15/2016

The customer-service saga continues.

I made two payments on my wife's pre-paid account. Perhaps because she changed her account from post-paid to pre-paid, Verizon failed to credit one of the payments and does not seem to realize that she is now post-paid and should be getting a higher data cap.

I tried to clear it up by going to the "My Plan" page on the Verizon Web site, but the page was temporarily down:

That was 25 hours ago. The page is still temporarily down.

I also tried to clear this up with a phone call or chat, but could only find sales pages on their Web site. (I got the phone number last week from a Best Buy store clerk).

Verizon is making the folks like the IRS or Department of Motor Vehicles look good.

Excellent customer support from SurveyGizmo

From time to time, I encounter noteworthy customer support. That might be excellent customer support from a company like Zoho or bad and wasteful customer support from a company like Verizon.

I am happy to report another example of excellent customer support from the online survey service SurveyGizmo.  They have tutorials and webinars on their Web site, and instead of customer forums, they offer email support.

I recently asked a technical support question, and, as you see below, received a cheerful answer in 51 minutes and an answer to a follow up in 68 minutes. Even better -- mine is a free account. If I were paying, I could have called on the phone with my question.

Here is the actual email exchange:

Larry Press
Sep 08 09:31 pm
Is there a way to delete a group of responses -- those before a specified date?

SurveyGizmo
Sep 08 10:22 pm
Hi Larry,
We don't actually have the ability to delete groups of responses, but this is a great idea. I think you should add this suggestion under our green Feedback tab on the right side of your account. This would be very useful!

Larry Press
Sep-08 2010 10:22 pm.
Thanks -- is there any way to delete them other than viewing and deleting them one at a time?

SurveyGizmo
Sep-08 2010 11:30 pm.
You can only delete all responses or delete them one at a time.
Sorry for the inconvenience!

Good support from Zoho

My last post was about a bad customer service experience with my ISP, Verizon. This is a story of good support by the folks who run the Zoho Creator database service.

I wanted to add two capabilities to a database I had created using their service, but could not see how to do either. I posted queries at their technical support site, and had answers to both within a couple of hours.

The answers came from Zoho employees, not contractors, and both were perfectly responsive.

One of my problems was solved with a somewhat obscure workaround and the other could not be solved at present. They said they were planning to add a feature to take care of the second problem, and I suggested a user interface change to make the first clear.

It felt like a conversation with a knowledgeable employee of a responsive company.

Have you had some good experiences with customer service or support at some Web sites?

Government AND private industry can be inefficient and bureaucratic

As a California State University professor, I see a lot of waste and bureaucracy -- government organizations can be very inefficient. But so can private companies. Consider my experience with my ISP, Verizon.

Last week I ordered 7 Mbps service from Verizon, but, after they switched it on, I was only getting about 1.5 Mbps. I assume there were tons of re-transmission errors due to an overly aggressive modulation scheme.

When I called to complain, a Verizon "technician" kept me on the phone trying one thing and another for nearly an hour before he gave up and got his bosses permission to schedule a "truck roll" to come to my house and fix the problem.

The minute the driver arrived, he told me that, at 9,000 feet from my central office, there was no way I was going to get 7 Mbps. He checked the line, and concluded that I could reliably run at 4.2 Mbps, but, unfortunately, Verizon only offers 3 and 7, so I could only get 3 Mbps.

They could have easily told me at the time of the order that 7 Mbps was not available at my house, saving an expensive truck roll. The technician who scheduled the truck roll when I called customer service to complain could have done the same.

The driver told me he does about five calls per day and three are typically fruitless. He added that he was happy with the system because it gave him job security. What a guy.

When he left, I had to make yet another 30-minutes-on-hold call to Verizon to change my order to 3 Mbps. The driver could not change the order automatically.

Verizon information is walled off in "silos." The truck driver can determine the distance of my house from my central office, but cannot change my service order. The ordering system can sign me up for a service, but cannot determine my distance to the central office to see if it is feasible. The customer support technician cannot do anything except, eventually, order a truck roll.

In chatting with the driver, he also confirmed the Internet rumors and leaked memos saying that Verizon was not installing new FIOS fiber, but focusing on increasing the take rate on what they have installed already. So much for me getting fiber from them any time soon.

(I wonder how much Verizon has extracted from the California Public Utilities Commission in return for "promises" to install fiber. For more on Verizon's broken promises, see this book by Bruce Kushnick.)

What has been your experience with customer service from your phone company or ISP?

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Addendum:

I continued limping along with 3 Mbps service, hoping for FIOS, when my bandwidth dropped to just over 1 Mbps. When I called to complain, I was told that I was so far from the central office that I could not get 3 Mbps service, so my rate was lowered. I explained that it was working fine at close to 3 Mbps, but that did not sway them.

I gave up on FIOS and switched to Time Warner cable. FIOS is still not available in my neighborhood.

How will WolframAlpha change math instruction?

When portable calculators were invented, we debated whether students should be allowed to use them in school and on tests. WolframAlpha takes this question beyond grade school.

Stephen Wolfram, co-founder of Wolfram Research, invented and commercialized Mathematica, an incredibly powerful symbolic math program. A command line version of Mathematica is embedded in Wolfram's latest product, the WolframAlpha Web service. Here are a few examples:

• Enter y = 10 x, and you are told that it is the equation for a straight line with x and y intercepts at 0 and a slope of 10, and the equation is plotted.
• Enter x^2, and you are told it is a parabola, which it plots and gives the global minimum, derivative and indefinite integral.
• Enter x^2 + y^2 + z^2= 10, and you get a plot of a sphere along with its center, radius, diameter, volume and surface area and other information including derivatives.
• Enter sin(x)^2 + cos(x)^2, and you get a plot of a constant 1 along with series representations and integrals.
• Enter derivative x^3, and you get the derivative and its plot plus an indefinite integral and global maximum.
• Enter integral x^2 + 3x dx, and you get the indefinite integral along with its plot. If you click on "show steps," you see the steps leading to the solution.
• Enter definite integral x^2 (0,1), and you get the definite integral from 0 to 1 along with a plot.

You get the idea -- try a few for yourself, and you will be amazed at the power of this symbolic math program.

Should students of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, finance, statistics, calculus, etc. be allowed to use WolframAlpha in class, for homework, during exams?

P. S. For links to further discussion, see this post.

Zappos and Flickr -- excellent and terrible customer service on the Web

Here is a short excerpt from a talk by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, in which he discusses their customer service.

Customer service excellence is a core value at Zappos. They publish their 24/7 toll-free phone number on every Web page. Customer service representatives are expected to give friendly, helpful “above and beyond” service, and Zappos does not time calls or set sales-based performance goals. They view a call as a branding opportunity rather than a necessary expense. Reps even direct customers to other Web sites when appropriate.

Zappos also gives free shipping and return shipping, accepts returns for a year, stocks every item in their own 24/7 warehouse, and often surprises customers with an upgrade to overnight shipping.

(Hsieh's full talk, in which he stresses culture building more than customer service, is here).

Contrast that with my experience with the absurd customer service on the Flickr photo sharing site. On March 13, I submitted a question asking why people could not see photos I had placed in a "public" Flickr group. The next day, I received this response:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we've successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond shortly.

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

Lastly, you may not be aware that our FAQs and forums are full of help goodness.

The Flickreenos

They tried to blow me off to their FAQs, warned me not to resend my query, and irritated me with their cutesy language, but, that would be OK if they helped me with the problem. The next day, I received an email saying they had escalated the question to a "senior representative."

But, evidently the senior representative had a five week backlog. On April 24 he got back to me with a non sequitur, boilerplate-laden answer.

Customer service clearly costs Zappos more than it does Flickr, and they are targeting a high-end retail customer, but, no matter what the purpose of your Web site is, you should study Zappos' example and do a lot better than Flickr.

Have you seen other examples of very good or very poor customer service on the Web?

37Signals -- excellence in Internet customer relations

We discuss progress in storage, electronics and communication, and it is common knowledge that all three technologies are improving exponentially. Everyone speaks of "Moore's Law." (But few read the short article that gave rise to the term).

What do companies do when better technology cuts their costs? Most grin and watch their profit margin rise. But, another alternative is to create good will by passing some of the savings on to customers.

When I logged on to my 37Signals Basecamp site yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see this message:

More storage space for the same price!

Last night we increased file storage space for Personal through Premium plans. Personal plans now get 1 GB (up from 250 MB), Basic plans now get 3GB (up from 500 MB), Plus plans now get 10 GB (up from 3 GB), and Premium plans now get 20 GB (up from 10 GB). Max plans remain at 50 GB for now, but if enough people start to hit that limit we will increase that limit as well. We hope you find the increased storage space useful and thanks again for being our customers!

That, combined with their forthright handling of a recent service interruption, is a case study in good customer relations!

Which do you feel has done a better job of passing technology improvements along to the consumer -- PC companies or telephone companies?

Best practice: what to do when a service outage occurs

We have discussed the pros and cons of relying on service providers. Reliability is one issue, and, when something goes wrong, you want fast action and continuous status reports. 37Signals, provider of Basecamp project management and other services, responded well during a recent two hour service interruption. The following log was posted on their Web site, fully informing users of the problem and progress toward its solution.

• All systems are currently offline as we're experiencing network outage from our provider. We're working on it right now. No data has been lost, all our machines are still working, but they're not accessible from the internet. Sorry for the inconvenience — 10:03am CST (16:03 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• We have located the problem to be with the load balancer setup. A new unit is being installed. We should be back shortly. Again, we're terribly sorry for this disruption of service — 10:28am CST (16:28 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• The technicians at our service provider are still working on installing the new load balancer. We're breathing down their neck as heavily as we can. And we profusely apologize for this unacceptable interruption of service — 10:56am CST (16:56 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• The load balancer has been swapped and is currently being configured. We should be in the home stretch now. Again, we're incredibly sorry for this disruption. This is not how Fridays are supposed to be — 11:18am CST (17:18 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• Our service provider is still working on the configuration of the new load balancer. We're on their case every few minutes to get updates. It's hard not to be very disappointed that a simple load balancer replacement can take this long for someone who's supposed to be the best in the business. We're out of new ways to say we're sorry, so we'll just say it again: We're so sorry for this — 11:50am CST (17:50 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• The latest from our service provider is that the reason it's taking so long is because the configuration for the load balancer lives on a CF card that has also gone bad. The configuration is currently being rebuilt from scratch — 11:57am CST (17:57 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• Now we finally have access to the servers with remote access. We should be able to bring the services back one by one now. Looks like there's finally light at the end of the tunnel — 11:59am CST (17:59 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• Basecamp is now back. We're bringing back everything else we can as fast as possible. It might take a few minutes for the DNS access to update, but it's coming back — 12:05am CST (18:05 GMT) on January 18, 2008.
• All the products should be coming back online now as soon as the DNS updates. It seems like we're coming out of the woods entirely7 — 12:13am CST (18:13 GMT) on January 18, 2008.

Could an outage like this occur if the user ran their own application? Would in-house staff have responded as well as 37Signals staff did to this outage?

Using the Web for customer feedback

Dell solicits product requests from customers on their Ideastorm site. That is fairly common, but they have added a voting mechanism. If a user likes a posted suggestion, he or she can endorse it with a single click. Dell decsion makers (and customers) can query the site to see which requests are most popular and take appropriate action.

37 Signals also makes excellent use of Web forums for customer feedback using threaded discussion forums. Here is the forum for their Basecamp project management service. They accept and discuss feature requests, tips and tricks, how-to questions, bug reports, and examples of Basecamp use along with making announcements.