VOIP Vendors Suck (this means you, Verizon)

And now, some anger from another site. Mark Gibbs at Network World posts reader complaints about the truly shoddy service offered by Verizon, and some idiotic account mangling courtesy of Vonage.

I've used Verizon VoiceWing (Verizon'sVoIP) for the last 7 months. My conclusion is that VoIP is an absolute fraud! Performance is just awful. Calls are dropped regularly. Voice quality is generally okay, but seems to be sensitive to the voice (certain voices break up pretty badly). Call setup is a problem. After I dial a number, the delay varies. Hangup detection does not work reliably. It has been down for hours at atime...

...When I complained, they said that they aren't responsible for what the Verizon VoIP people do. None of the three groups (ILEC, DSL and VoIP) have any communication with each other. In fact, the Verizon VoIP people announced that they do not support the Netgear router that the Verizon DSL provide.

Ha ha ha! Classic Verizon.

Link

Time Warner's Lousy Service Continues

I am so furious at Time Warner Cable's truly mediocre service that I've reconsidered everything positive I've thought about them over the past five years I've used them. They've successfully burned all of the goodwill they generated with fairly problem-free Internet and cable service with two months now of idiocy.

Today marks the second month after we've moved in. A month and a half after we got cable -- since Time Warner couldn't let us do it ourselves, inexplicably, and it took them over two weeks to haul their asses out to plug in the damn digital cable box.

That cable box has since been manfunctioning regularly -- especially nice when you only have a few hours of personal time on the weekend, and you'd like to spend it watching Rome. Inevitably, what you end up watching is "PowerTV Guardian" -- some aspect of the digital cable box's operating system.

We've called these idiots several times to troubleshoot this. They sent someone out last week, but they didn't show up until after their appointment, at which point, we weren't available. Of course, Time Warner operators claimed that the technician HAD shown up on time. (I've got the message on my answering machine to prove that they didn't. Morons.)

We're still waiting for them to come by to fix their cable box. Of course, this entails taking most of a day off from work to sit at home while they DON'T COME.

Time Warner Cable deserves to lose everything it has unless it can resolve service issues like this immediately. Why not have technicans come by your place after hours -- you know, when you might actually be home? Or, why not have them keep the appointments they make? Of course, that's probably too costly for Time Warner -- gotta keep those shareholders happy.