I swear, this site isn’t supposed to be "all complaining, all the time", but poor customer service seems to follow me around these days.
Due to some problems with sending faxes over a VOIP solution (Vonage, I’m looking at you), we’ve decided to add a "normal" phone line to our residence. Being the 21st century kind of guy that I am, I decided to order the phone line over that new fangled Internet thingy.
At 2am on Monday morning, the Verizon web site insisted that my apartment didn’t exist. Believe it or not, I can understand this. We live in a brand new apartment complex, and it’s not unusual to run into this problem. I figured I would call Verizon during the day and get the line ordered.
Naturally, I didn’t manage to do it, so this evening I decided to give it another try on the web site. I entered our address, and this time it came up with a match! Woohoo! Wait a minute, I don’t live in apartment 101, I live in apartment 107. Hmmm, I thought that perhaps I had fat fingered the apartment number, so I back up a page and look. Nope, I entered 107 correctly. Weird. Click "next", click "no I need to correct my address", and then reenter it. Click next. Now the page is different. It still shows apartment 101, but it now shows options for adding services to the existing phone line, as well as an option for changing the address. Being a curious sort, I click on the option to change the address again, and it does nothing.
Peachy, I figure I’ll drop Verizon a note to let them know that their web site is confusing me with an existing customer. I go to their contact form, fill out a couple of fields, tell them I’m not a customer, write a full set of notes describing the issues. I figure they won’t fix it if they don’t know it’s broken, so I’ll let them know (again, I’m just that kind of guy). When I try to submit the page, an error message pops up and says I must enter a valid Area Code. Huh? There is no area code on the form. However, if I change the form to indicate that I’m an existing customer then area code and phone number fields show up. Okay, I put in the area code for this area, toggle it back to me not being a customer and try to save. No joy. Now I must provide a valid phone number. Um, guys, I’m looking to get me one of those new fangled phones, I don’t have a number. Fine, I’ll enter a valid phone number, just don’t try to actually call me at 555-1212…
Finally, I hit save again, and this time I faced with:
"Internal Server Error – Read
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request".
Welcome to 1998. The sad thing is that I can’t deny them my business, because the solution that I have in place is already "the alternative" and it doesn’t work.
Happy Tuesday! – Eric.
Pretty Stupid For a Smart Guy 