The thing you need to know about Verizon is that it is not a big company, rather a bunch of smaller quasi-integrated companies. I say quasi-integrated because they do not seem to talk to each other. It is almost like a governmental agency in that it is difficult to communicate with and often dysfunctional. Verizon's three main arms Phone, Internet and TV pretend to be a single company, but any time you need to do something you bump into the reality that they are islands with very flimsy bridges between them. The website is maddeningly slow and unintuitive. Go ahead and try to get your cellphone pictures downoaded to your PC -- you will see what I mean.
Hmm, you say, A communications company that does not know how to communicate with its customers? How can this be? As an analogy, just think of the federal/state government. They are always talking about "what the people want," but in fact the pols and their minions that work in those organizations have little concern for their constuituents except during an election year. They see the continuence their office as the raison d'etre of their activities, at the expense of ethical concerns for public needs. This is how companies behave when they have a virtual captive market.
I am not taking sides in the current labor dispute between the union and the company's management. I hate both sides. I hate the management because they have the clunkiest, least customer-friendly internet presence of any company I have the misfortune to deal with. If you call them for help there are no human beings in any process that takes less than 30 minutes. If you stay on the line and work your way through a bewildering array of autmated attendant menues you can finally talk to a person. Who has the time or patience for that!
Why can't they get some decent web designers in to fix their unusable 1990's designed web pages?
I hate the union too, because they are willing to throw the innocent customers like you and me under the bus because they cannot settle the contract with management. They are willing to hold you and me hostage to their demands for heavily subsidized health care, job protection for incompetent union members, and other benefits. Why should we -- who pay our own health care costs and have no benefits - be sympathetic with a bunch of pampered union members, looking for more free stuff?
Strike? If I were Emperor, I would just find some people who wanted those jobs at the current wages and benefits. I think there are a lot of them.
So a pox on all of them.
2 comments:
Make that 4 companies - the phone company is really 2 comapnies: landline and cellphone. I was talking to a landline rep about ways to lower my bill (she agreed to reduce my basic rate $10/mo for no apparent reason), but when I said let's look at the cellphone bill next, her response was "I can't. They're a whole different company". This despite the fact that I get one bill from Verizon for both landline and cell. That's like asking my doctor about a rash and him saying I have to go see someone else for an answer. Oh wait...he does that all the time.
If you want to talk to someone at Verizon, just firmly say "agent" when its voice mail electronic harpie asks you a question. It's magical.
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