The “One Michael Daigle Rule”

Well, the adventure with Verizon over its poor Internet service continues.

On Friday, after five hours the company had agreed to a service call, and on Sunday, Cooper did a fantastic job checking all parts of the system. He corrected a couple of wiring faults, put a new filter on the main line and determined that our modem had perhaps been damaged during the storms of the early spring. It was not recording a full load of broadband. So he subbed in a Verizon modem.

OK. It worked. Until this morning when it began to rain. Since 6 a.m. the Internet service has crashed eight times.

Since they replaced my non-Verizon modem, guys, it ain’t my fault anymore, if it ever was.

The real problem is that to report this outage, you need to be able to get online, and so far each time I had some time to do so, the Internet service was down.

And when that happens, the tech will run a test that will, of course, show the system working properly because I’m able to communicate with him.

When the system is down, and the analysis would actually show meaningful results, you can’t reach the India-based tech. And since Verizon does not provide a local phone number on which I might be able to discuss the system problem while it is occurring, the whole thing is one big dog-chasing its-tail saga.

It’s a classic, doc it hurts when I do this…well, don’t so that scenario.

I’m gonna have to live with this now (and pray for sun) because today don’t have five hours to engage Verizon.

The other part that this whole thing that puzzles me is that again on Monday I got maybe the ninth call from a Verizon employee asking me to verify my address. I told him he was the ninth person since Friday to raise that issue, including Cooper on Sunday who spend about 10 minutes with a service tech apparently clearing up the company’s computer confusion.

As an aside, but perhaps as an indication of how such issues are examined at Verizon, Cooper had to call some general Verizon phone number to get to his in-house support. He had to listen to several voicemail advertisements and click his way through several layers of Press 1 or Press 2 to get to the person he needed.

Sorry, but that is idiotic. Who designed this system?  The service personnel in the field don’t have a direct line to tech support?

And it is an indication that Verizon’s entire service effort is designed to fail.

(Oh, and while I was writing this, the Internet crashed again.)

But back to the address issue.

The Verizon employee called and said they needed to verify my address.

I told him he was the  ninth person since Friday to ask that question.

He said he was sorry,  but that they had another Michael Daigle living in Madison, NJ.

I wanted to say, hey, buddy, it’s a free country. Michael Daigles can live where they choose, and since the name has been around since the 1300s, there might be more than one Michael Daigle, and more than one of us might live in New Jersey.

But this was some kid at a computer in India with a  directive to clarify this situation.

I told him I had lived at the same address for 18 years and wondered, after speaking with eight of his coworkers since Friday if there might be an electronic note to that effect.

Finally I said, I’m sorry but this is not my problem to solve. It’s yours, Verizon, one of the leading telecommunications companies in the world.

Fix your own system.

But, in the spirit of cooperation, I’m going to institute the “One Michael Daigle  Rule.”

All the other Michael Daigles in the world have to change their name, or if they use Verizon, find another Internet provider.

I hear the protests. But I don’t care.

It’s my rule.

And since I thought of it, you have to change.

Make up your own rule.

But I’ll concede if your rule makes Verizon a better Internet provider, you win.

About michaelstephendaigle

I have been writing most of my life. I am the author of the award-winning Frank Nagler Mystery series. "The Swamps of Jersey (2014); "A Game Called Dead" (2016) -- a Runner-Up in the 2016 Shelf Unbound Indie Author Contest; and "The Weight of Living" (2017) -- First Place winner for Mysteries in the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards Contest.
This entry was posted in Commentary. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply