the boomer live

After a long time using Brighthouse in Pinellas & Hillsborough County (changed fromTime Warner),  and three months of poor internet service, we finally decided to give the much touted Verizon Fios Service a try.

We have had the Verizon FIOS service for 7 months and the following is our opinion of  the service.

Installation: I understand that Verizon used to do their own installation but they now use sub contractors to keep up with demand.  Our installer was a subcontractor, and he arrived at 4pm,  4 hours late.  Installation went smoothly and everything was up and running by 8:30pm.  The next day I noticed that the Multi room DVR was acting erratically.  Called the install company to report the problem, they said they would be out next morning to replace it.  Next morning arrived and no sign of the install company, called them and they said the tech had to go "south" and would be at my house next morning.  Not a good way to impress a new customer.  The tech arrived 4pm (late again) next day, replaced the DVR, and everything worked.  Overall, although the tech was personable, the installation experience was not very good.  Rating 5/10

Internet Service: Has been rock solid.  We have the 2/10 Mbps service, speeds test consistently return 1800-1900mbps upload and 9000-9500mbps download.  We use the Verizon Actiontec Wireless router and are very impressed with its power, the wireless signal covers the whole house with good power.  (our previous Linksys router required a signal booster) Rating 9/10

Phone Service: Works like a regular phone, very good voice and sound quality.  System has a back up battery in the garage incase there is a power failure.  Rating 8/10

TV: TV quality is very, very, good.   We have had no problems with video quality, unlike Brighthouse when we had frequent issues with signal strength. Rating 9/10

DVR: We have a multi room DVR and a separate standard DVR.  Multi room DVR works well, we watch program recorded on it (located family room) on a standard box in the bedroom, however you cannot watch recorded HD programs on the standard box.  Music stream from computer works well but Verizons software could be improved.  The remote controls occasionally have a 3-5sec lag in getting the signal to the DVR, this has only started happening recently so I am guessing there might have been a software update in the box that is causing this.  A couple of things we miss from the Brighthouse DVR… no slow motion button for a program you are watching and if you press record half way through a program it does not record the program from the beginning. Rating 5/10 (because of missing features)

Program Guide: There is no easy way to say this……the program guide is horrible, absolutely the worst we have seen.  The look is OK but many descriptions are wrong, incomplete, and or give you very little information, wrong times etc. etc.  Menu structure is a bit convoluted and slow.  Sometimes if we want to be absolutely sure to record something we check on the Internet for the correct time.  The icon letting you know a program is new and not a repeat is not shown on the main scrolling guide screen but is buried a layer down, crazy.  Rating 1/10

Summary: We are very happy with the overall service, except the program guide and some minor things.  But when renewal  comes up we will be looking at Brighthouse again to see which service is the best at that time.

One other item.  About 3 or 4 months ago we received a nice letter from Verizon saying that they appreciated our business, that they wanted to improve service and we were being assigned a personal "service person" .  The idea being that if we had issues we would always deal with the same person.  The letter concluded that we would be contacted shortly by our personal "service person"  who would give us his/her direct phone number (and email I think).   You guessed it…..we never heard from anyone.

Verizon has signed up the easy cream off the top, dissatisfied customers from other companies, and are now offering special deals and freebies.