Andy Dills wrote:

Getting Verizon to do anything involving the internet, even if you possess the phone number of the department to call, is impossible. They do a good job with circuits. They do an abysmal job with IP and related issues.

This must be a different Verizon than I dealt with at a colo/small ISP facility then, 'cause the Verizon I dealt with wasn't real great with circuits either. At least, compared to the job the IXCs did at a former job of mine... Bob

Andy Dills wrote:

Verizon? Colo? ISP?

Probably should have expressed that more clearly. Not colo'ing at Verizon, but an Internet colocation facility that also provides it's customers with T1 and Frame Relay connectivity to the Internet.

But they've never had a sonet outage once in our entire time of doing business with them. So they do employ competent people. Plenty of them. But they aren't concerned with IP or SMTP.

This is in NJ, also "native" ex-Bell Atlantic territory. And I agree they have competent people... But I would dispute "Plenty of them." In fact, I think this is where I saw the biggest problem: getting a response from a Verizon tech in a reasonable time when dealing with an outage. Most of the outages were "last mile" type outages, but we did have them mess up some frame relay connections out of the blue with a broken switch configuration. And if it should be a circuit from NJ to PA via their special "conduit" between the LATAs, it became a finger-pointing nightmare, since the NJ group would say it's the PA group, who'd disagree, and then there's the group responsible for the conduit, which is a separate group from either of them. And to be fair, this colo facility wasn't that large, buying T3's worth of T1's at a time, whereas the place I was at before had around 6-10K data and voice circuits worldwide that they managed, and the major IXCs had on-site personnel. But even without the on-site folks involved, dealing with the IXCs was a much better experience, more "polished," with good SLAs and escalation paths. Sorry, didn't mean to hijack a search for a Verizon Internet admin. :-) We now return you to your mail/worm discussion, already in progress. Bob

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.