 Hi, I'm Mitch Mitchell, and I'm gonna talk about my Verizon Fios adventures, misadventures, whatever terminology. I'm not really sure how we want to look at this. You know, I've been a Time Warner customer in some form since 1975. When I first moved to Central New York with my parents back in 1975, Time Warner was it. And back then you had the old boxes where you, you know, it had the little cable on it, and you just pushed the numbers. And I thought it was really cool. I'd never seen anything like that before. And over the years, I've just always gone with Time Warner. For pretty much most of it, we haven't really had a choice. You know, it was either Time Warner or nothing. There was another cable company in town, but they didn't serve Central New York, which didn't make any sense. And then along comes Fios in the late 2000s. And, you know, they're through Verizon. Now, Verizon is the phone service in our area. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, my wife and I switched to Verizon for our cell phone because where we live, we never had good coverage with AT&T. So we switched our cell phone, our regular phone with them. But I had resisted going to Verizon Fios. I just had been resisting it all along. And we kept getting these rates, you know, these nice price quotes and stuff like that. And I kept holding off. It just seemed like there would be something lacking, and I just didn't want to do it. So let's move to about three weeks ago. So about three weeks ago on a Saturday, my wife and I, my wife ended up getting a brand new car. And while we were there doing some paperwork, I get this text message saying something about upgrading my cell phone. And I had the Samsung Galaxy 3. And I said, well, let's go see what this is all about. It's right down the street. So after we leave the car dealership, we go down to the Verizon store. And of all things, my wife had to go to the bathroom. So she leaves because they don't have bathrooms in the Verizon stores. And she leaves. And I'm on a waiting list to talk about the phone. Next thing you know, here come the Verizon people. And I don't want to talk to these people. But you know what? I'm trapped in the store. There's really nothing else I can do. I could say, no, leave me alone. Go away. But I don't want to be rude. So I let them talk to me through all this stuff. And we're just going to move this around a little faster. We get to this thing where there's this package that they're offering me based on a couple of things that I said we had to have. Then all of a sudden this package was astronomically lower than what I was paying. I say, what? How'd that happen? Now, in the long run, the amount went up some because you had to add boxes. My wife is very specific that the one channel that had to be on there was the Oprah network. And it turns out that even though Verizon offers four packages, they don't offer the Oprah network until you get to the third highest or the second highest, whatever it is. So we had to go there. Okay, fine. You know what? With everything that I would be getting with this Verizon package, which included the phone, by the way, so that's an extra bill I don't have to pay. And even though I would keep my alarm system through Time Warner, I would be saving way over $100. You know, there was nothing there. And also, I'm moving from basically paying extra money for 30 gigabytes per second, whatever it is. I can't remember what it is right now. Anyway, leaving 30, going up to 50, upload and download. Because with Time Warner, you got to 30, upload, download, but you only had five upload. That was the best you could get unless you paid even more money. And the bill had just kept going up higher and higher. I was out of town for a while. And after 18 months, the bill had gone up almost $70, even after they'd given me a discount. So it just seemed like this was the way to go. Maybe they have their own schemes. I don't know. But, you know, so we set this thing up. And then I said, well, wait, you know what? I've got a Time Warner phone as well. And I'd like that a second line. I want that exact same phone number. So they assure me, yes, we can get this done. So we set the appointment up for the following Wednesday. So the following Wednesday comes. And they're supposed to be there between, I think it was noon and five or whatever. And they showed up at two o'clock. And you're thinking, okay, this isn't so bad. We're going to get this thing done. And they had a files box in the house because someone came like three or four years ago and installed it and said, you know, if you ever decide to go with files for everything else, you already got the box here. This becomes a story later on. So the guy gets there and he says, yep, we've got your internet, TV and phone. I said, and you got my second phone. And he looks at the thing and says, no, I don't have a second phone on here. Well, you got to have a second phone on here because I asked for a second phone. I'm supposed to be getting my current phone number moved over from Time Warner to Verizon. And I'm supposed to have a second phone. Well, this becomes a very interesting thing that basically delayed my getting bios for two weeks. Reason being, they had put the request through on that Saturday and it didn't go through. And so by that Wednesday, not only did they not have it on their thing, but they also didn't have the phone number. So they decided, they decided and asked me, and I just went along with it, that they would rather install everything at the exact same time. So they left. They were there. The guy was there an hour and a half. I didn't know what he was doing because he wasn't in the house. My wife and I were both in the house. We didn't know where he went. And eventually, a tech manager showed up. And he's the one who decided this other kind of stuff. And I said, okay, fine, let's back it up for a week. So we get to the second week. And the same, let's say the next week, which is actually now a week and a half. And the same guy comes back. And it was really odd because the first time two guys came, this time one guy comes. And the other phone still isn't on there. So, you know what? I've messed up this story. That's not true. He never showed up. What happens is I get a phone call from a guy. And the guy says, we're wondering if you're going to turn on voicemail. I said, I don't have voicemail. He says, sure you do. I said, no, I don't. I've never had voicemail. I was told when I first moved into this house in 2000, we didn't have voicemail. And the guy says, oh, really? He says, let me look. And he said, oh, well, you're on an old package. We don't even offer this package anymore. I said, well, yeah, it was called the Freedom Plan. He says, yeah, you've probably noticed it's been going up. Yeah, I noticed it's been going up. He says, that's because you're basically paying for an old plan that we don't have. And because we don't have it, the rates just keep going up on it. So by moving to the new plan under the files, you're not going to have that extra thing. And as soon as you got that files box, you actually had voicemail. What? No one's ever said anything like that. He says, sure. So what he does then is he says, OK, so I'm going to confirm the phone number. So he confirms the phone number. And then he says, OK, this is going to be your new business line. And he gives me some number. I said, no, it's not. My business line is supposed to be this. And he says, oh, they don't have that any kind of order like that. He said, let me go check. So he goes off to check. And I'm sitting there and about five minutes later, he comes back and he says, well, we don't show that that number has gone through yet. I said, but they've had a week and a half. We mean that number hasn't gone through. I don't know. So I said, well, just doesn't make any sense. They didn't want to come if they couldn't install both numbers. So he says, well, OK, I will cancel this for the moment. And let's see what happens. So now I'm looking for a phone number. And I'm looking for a phone number for this guy who's not there. And I said, wait, I have a phone number for this woman who I had called. I had actually met her when I had to go back to the register to ask some questions about this whole thing. And she said she was a district manager of some type. So she gave me her phone number, her cell number. So I call her and she's on the road and I tell her, OK, we've got a problem with this phone number. She says to me, didn't Donna call you? I said, no, no, why was I supposed to get a call? She said, oh, we're having trouble. Time Warner won't release the number. I said, why won't Time Warner release the number? And she says, we don't know why they won't release the number. They won't tell us anything. So we need you to call Time Warner. I said, well, that's going to be interesting. I'm going to be calling Time Warner to wonder why they haven't given up a number that they're going to know that I want the number because I'm giving up Time Warner. And she says, well, unfortunately, that's the only thing we can do. So I get on the phone and I call Time Warner. Time Warner takes 20 minutes. I'm on the phone with them for 20 minutes. Actually, I'm basically on hold because they're doing all kind of stuff. But when they come back, the lady says, we don't see that we've ever had a request for that number from Verizon. Well, that's not what they're telling me. And she says, well, we need your name. We need your phone number. And we need your Time Warner account number. I said, well, OK. Well, they never told me they needed Time Warner account number. Maybe that's the issue. So I get off the phone. I call this lady back. I tell her what they said. I give my account number. Fine. We're good to go. We're going to do it another Wednesday. And now she's going to give me $100 discount off of all the beginning packets because, you know, whenever you get a service, they front load all this time and stuff, whatever. They say they build you ahead of time. You've got to pay this extra bit. So she's going to knock up $100 off of that. I'm thinking, oh, this is a good deal. I'm getting an extra $100 taken off. So we get to this past Wednesday. I'm recording this on a Friday night just so you know. So we get to Wednesday. This guy shows up at about $2.30. I think it was $2.30. Yeah, the guy shows up at $2.30. So there you go. He's going to show up at $2.30. And he looks at the order. He's coming in. I said, where's the second line? He says, we don't have it on the order. I said, come on. The lady just called me this morning, said everything was all set. She was looking at it. What do you mean you don't have a second line? He says, there's no second line on this order. He says, I will call the tech guy, the director, supervisor, whatever he is. So I'm like, oh, goodness. So now I call this lady and I finally get her on the phone and I say, OK, you need to talk to this guy. This guy's name is Mike and her name was Regina. So they start talking and she says, well, I looked at something this morning and he asked her what she's looking at. But of course I can't really hear her side. So then he says, well, you know, we're going to wait to see what, you know, the director has to say about this. So now he goes outside. I don't know what he's doing. I don't see him for a bit. He said he's going to walk around the house. But there it is. I basically sat in the, what my wife calls the big Papa Bear chair in the living room and I just sat there in a chair just chilling. And, you know, I'm going to lose my internet connection. There's nothing else I can really do. So I'm basically reading, you know, I'm reading magazines on the nook because I have a nook. So eventually he comes in and he says, well, we found out what the issue is with the phone number. I said, OK, what's the issue with the phone number? He said, well, even though we think we put the number in right, instead of a six to two beginning of the number, it went into six, five, seven. I said, we're going to double the six, five, seven. We don't have that in this area. He says, I know. He said, that's why we think it was a glitch. Communications company, they ain't communicating all that well, are they? So we had this glitch. That was the whole thing. Time Warner had never had rejected the number. It wasn't any problem whatsoever. It was that Verizon system had put in the wrong number. So the guy says to me, well, we've got this other issue now. What's the other issue? He says, well, I could start it, but I have to quit at four o'clock because I can only work up to 430, but I have to check in before then to turn in all the equipment. So we're going to have to have another guy come out to do this. I said, when? He says, well, it'd be tonight. He wouldn't be here until like 536. I said, I got to be somewhere at six. That ain't going to work. So he says, well, what about tomorrow? Now I was going to go to the business show in town. We had the local business show, and I usually go every single year, but I said, OK, fine. I said, 10 o'clock. I said, we're not doing anything earlier. I don't want anything later. If you can come as close to 10 as possible, we can do this. He says, OK, we will try to make it as close to 10 as possible. Well, as close to 10 as possible turned into 1230. But what was I going to do? So he shows up at 1230, and he's going to do everything else except for that second line. So now he's off doing whatever. And eventually he comes in. He puts in the cable boxes. He puts in this little tiny little dinky modem that's for the internet. He hooks it all up. We run through all the gesticulations that you need to do to set up the the remotes and to set up the internet. And now at least I'm good to go. I still have to use the Time Warner phone because he can't come back until Monday to add the new line. Now they've got it fixed. They know they're going to have it on Monday. He's going to come Monday and install the new number or my old number on the new system. And everything will be fine. I can take my Time Warner stuff back, get my money back, and I'm good to go. Now you're probably thinking that that's the end of the story. It ain't the end of the story because this is my life. So now what happens is I had to go eat because I hadn't eaten because I've been waiting all day for all this stuff to happen. So I decided to take myself out for, well, late lunch. So I take myself out for my late lunch, I come back, and now I'm going to try to hook up email. Email is a mess trying to hook this thing up because, one, it won't work until you actually create an email address. See, I thought I could convert my SMTP server on my email program. I use Thunderbird for that. I thought I could just put that in, but you can't put that in because you need a password from at least an original email address. So I go online and I try to find this thing. And I had an existing Verizon account, but they said that because it was an existing account for an old number, that it's invalid now. So now I have to get a new account number. I have to give them a new username and a whole new password. It's like, what the devil is this? So that's what happens. So I go through all that. Now I start looking and I can't find the email. I have no idea where to go to email. And this little box pops up talking about chat tech support, customer support. Beautiful. So I get this guy on there and I can't even pronounce his name. So this guy is doing the tech thing and he asks, can I have access to your computer? Sure, why not? I'm hesitant. But I said, sure, why not? So the guy gets on and he starts doing this thing and we get to this page. He shows me the page. I see the page. And now he tells me, OK, you got to create a username and password. And I had to try to think and it turned out not to be as easy as one thinks to create a username because everyone's already had a lot of my usernames, which is really strange. But eventually I get there and put all the information that's supposed to be in. We go hit the button. It doesn't work. It won't go through. It keeps getting this error message. So then he tries it and he creates a fake email address kind of thing and he tries to put it through and it fails. Now I usually use Firefox. So he said, is there another browser we can use? I said, sure. So I pull up Chrome. So I pull up Chrome. He goes to the Verizon page. He starts doing whatever. I'm still sitting there. And the next thing I know, he went into my Chrome settings and totally reset the entire browser. Now I go to the message box and I say, what are you doing? He says, well, I have to reset your entire browser because it's not operating properly. And I said, well, what the heck? I said, you better not do that with my Firefox browser. And he says, oh, I won't. So the guy basically erased every app that I had, every setting I had, whatever, without telling me he was going to do it. What the devil is that? Like I walked into your house and ate all your cookies with you sitting there looking at me wondering, why did he just eat all my cookies? He didn't tell me he was going to eat all my cookies. So the guy does this. Now I'm irked. Now I'm just mad. It's like, what the devil? So anyway, he finally gets this thing going. He says, yep, it turned out it wasn't the browser. It wasn't the browser. So we now at least have one email. So now he asks, well, you want me to set up something? No, no, no, no. I'm done. I'm good. I got email. I can set up everything else. I'm good. And in essence, I was because it turns out now I had an email address and I could go in and I set up my email client with the SMTP server and the pop server for new email address, which I actually then later on had to go create another one because I wasn't going to use that one as my email address because there was no information in it. I didn't want anyone else to see. And it wouldn't work. Why didn't it work? I had to go and do research on Google. I couldn't find it on the Verizon page, at least initially. So I went to Google, put it in. Eventually it kicks me to something. And it turns out that unlike a lot of other places, Time Warner or probably AOL, whatever, you actually have to define the port numbers. And I think they're called port numbers right now. So anyway, it's like pop.verizon.net, but you have to put in port 465. It has to be there. And for the SMTP server, you have to put in 995. You also have to put in the SSL privacy thing and you have to put in password. I mean, you have to put all those settings in. But you don't usually have to do that with almost anything else. I didn't have to do it for my business email addresses. I didn't have to do it for the Time Warner stuff. I'd never had to do it before. So I didn't know that initially. But I put it all in because I figured it all out and I got it working. Then I decided, OK, now I'm supposed to have 50 download, 50 upload. Let's go run some speed tests. And it was failing the speed test. Just wasn't getting it done. Now I'm frustrated. Now I'm irked. But I'm also thinking because now the brain is in real thought mode. I said, you know what? Maybe when that guy remote it into my system, it messed up my computer a little bit or froze some stuff. And I wondered if maybe that was the case because I noticed the fonts on my browser looked odd. So I reboot the entire computer. And once I did the computer reboot and it came back up and I could test everything, it was OK. I decided to try New York City. I went to the speed test, speak easy, whatever. And you can pick different cities. So I picked New York City and it got me 20 download but 46 upload. I said, OK, that's horrible. And then I did Seattle. And Seattle got 56 download and 63 upload. So that tells me that it doesn't matter necessarily that you're closer to a place. It's just wherever the place is. But then I ran to Verizon and Verizon came in around 50-50. And there you go. Today it's around 50-50. So I am not so upset with the speed anymore. The phone, I did set the voicemail, by the way. I didn't know if I could have set that voicemail. If I had known about the voicemail three years ago, I might have switched three years ago. Eh, that's how life is. So I don't know necessarily how happy I am yet. I will tell you the truth. I like Time Warner's guide, Menu Guide on the TV better than the Verizon. Verizon, every so many channels, you get this gigantic ad for loading something. And I have what they call the Quantum Package. Well, they're advertising to me the Quantum Package. I already got that. But it's got to be in there. And it's just weird. I mean, my main channel starts on channel 500 because that's where the high-def channels are. So it starts on 500. I can't even put it in the channel three because the TV just looks at me and says, what's wrong with you? You know that channel three ain't high-def. So you can't go there. And I keep telling myself the money and the upload speed are going to be worth it. As it is, I'm going to be uploading this video. And it should be interesting to see just how fast it uploads compared to when I had a maximum of 5 megabits per second. We shall see. Anyway, this is my story. I don't know if anyone else has ever had this kind of frustration or had frustrations. And so far, everyone else has always raved about files. Of course, they've all said it took four to six hours because they didn't already have the files box. So at least on one level, it didn't take me that long since I already had the box. But on another, I think I put in my time over multiple days, but I put in my time. This is my story. I don't know. Anyway, let me know what you think. If you made it through 24 minutes of this rant, we'll find out. Anyway, I'm Mitch Mitchell. Y'all enjoy your day.