On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Brian Wallingford wrote:
There's no question that there's a certain amount of social engineering involved in contacting (or being allowed to contact) competent folk. It's advisable to be sure that any staff who will be contacting them are fully versed in any services they will be discussing. The clueful staff at VZ are much more receptive and accessible when they know in advance that they can expect to pick up a likewise-clued individual.
My favorite (extreme sarcasm) lines I received from Verizon: - (At 25 Bway with a T3 from the carrier room.) "The T3 outage you are experiencing is not our problem." Turned out someone messed up a cable in to their router in the carrier room. A tech that they dispatched to 25 Bway got access to the carrier room and recrimped the cables in to THEIR equipment, not ours. Anyone who knows 25Bway knows you can't enter the carrier room without a purpose. I can't go there and say let me work on VZ equipment in the Carrier room. - "I don't see the circuit ID for the T3 you just gave me in here do you have another CID for it?" - Random person in back office I had been transferred to, "(definitively) It's not a problem on our system...What was that CID again? Let me trace each leg of the Circuit. (pause) Oh wait, there is a problem in the Central Office that that would affect that line" Me, "How do I keep up with the progress of this ticket? Is there a ticket number on that problem?" Him, "It's an internal ticket number. I can't give it out." - "If you are having intermittent problems, we can't do anything about it. We can test the line and if the T1 shows clean we will close the ticket." - Me, "The T1 CID $CID is down." Them, "What would you like us to do?" - (From a T1 plagued with issues after 9/11. Paraphrased:) "Due to the wiring in your building it would probably be best if we just ran a new T1 out to you. You will need to sign a new 60 month contract and we will work out the details of closing the old T1 once the new one is setup." (This was a sales rep.) - "Hi, I'm Chris L. I'm your new account manager. I will be your contact with any problems you have." (Chris no longer answers his phone. Neither does anyone else from the "Enterprise Services" dept here in NYC. None of the phone numbers Chris sent to me respond either.) - The Trouble ticket line has given up any semblance of desire to help Most companies answer "$Company_Name, This is $Name speaking, how may I help you?" The TT line, "Verizon?!" - T1 group, "I can loop the smart jack." Me on site, "The smart jack has no lights." Them, "Oh, wait I was looping the wrong smart jack, what was that CID again?" - My favorite recording from the trouble ticket line: "We are experiencing an unusually high call volume, please try your call again later <CLICK>" - One T1 outage last year: T1 tech says need to dispatch to site, Site tech says no issue at smart jack need to get basement people in here (don't remember the name right off), basement people say we can't hear anything from C.O., C.O. tech says we can't hear anything from the building. This outage took 5 days to recover from to get techs on site and dispatched after each person pointed the finger at another person. I could go on, but it is just depressing. I still have no one to complain to if I can't get a hold of my sales rep or the T1 TT line screws up royally.