Tag Archives: Verizon Communications

Waiting is the hardest part

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Waiting for Verizon. It’s the hardest part of my February so far. For those who have been keeping track, the IRS came and tried to strangle our wireless infrastructure to death, but apparently failed. I’ve been on-again-off-again with Verizon but now we’re firmly on-again. I’ve sent neatly wrapped missives to management but have yet to hear any response.

All of this would be maddening if Verizon was ready. Thankfully it isn’t maddening because Verizon isn’t ready. In fact, from what I’ve seen from my local Verizon sales rep, they don’t even have a vocabulary yet, let alone any plans or packages for sale. So while I struggle with this nominal Blackberry, I watch the time tick away waiting for Verizon to get off their duff and give us details on plans. Then I can take that information to management and maybe goose them into action.

Last night was a problem because I couldn’t make an outbound call with my minimally acceptable Sprint service on my Blackberry. I had to turn off Automatic Roaming, go up to the upper level of my house where I could get the weakest of signals and make a call to order pizza for dinner. Sprint’s network is wretchedly bad, and it almost never was the case before.

I haven’t the heart to call Sprint and tell them what I’m planning. So far all they know is that the IRS is likely going to be the reason why we close our contract. It’s a total straw-man, and as far as today, a rather nifty fabrication. The last time I told them I was contemplating leaving Sprint for Verizon they sent my sales rep, a VP of sales, and a third fellow who had the word “synergy” in his title, or something to that effect. Truth to be told, I don’t have a problem with my Sprint sales rep, or the VP of sales that came to visit, but that third guy was aggressive, abrasive, and thoroughly an unpleasant human being. If Sprint ever gets around to thinking about why they lost my business they can look no further than this third-man they brought with them. Leaving him in his cubicle may be the best move for their future business, if they have any after Verizon poaches every single one of their customers.

I couldn’t properly express to Sprint exactly why the iPhone on Verizon was so compelling. They kept on pushing Android on their network — Are you serious? Verizon is a double-dunk. The device has pretty much already sold me. The Verizon network is the other half of the power-shot and the fact that Verizon is willing to drop the pretense and become a commodity wireless service vendor means the biggest fear I had about the iPhone on Verizon went up in smoke. They aren’t going to nail it down, cover it with obnoxious Verizon “VZ” bullshit, they are going to simply put the device on their network and let the chips fall where they may.

This is like a hat-trick from heaven. Sprint pre-occupied with an IRS straw-man, iPhone on Verizon, and Verizon keeping their ugly branding out of the pot. Bam Bam BAM! If anyone wants to know why, that’s why. A hat-trick.

Now if only Verizon would get back to me… tick tock tick tock gentlemen!

Hamster Wheel

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A week ago a policy was sent which indicated that the IRS was effectively going to strangle the life out of our wireless infrastructure. Yesterday afternoon I learned that while the policy may be published, it was an error that it was sent out and the brouhaha that it caused was a mistake.

I talked it over with my boss and I commented that the only information I had to act on was the policy sent down and I didn’t have any other guidance. I had sent an email to management but never got a reply. Then my boss told me that sometimes not hearing an answer is an answer – and it hit me – a line right out of Serendipity, one of the best lines that Jeremy Piven’s character Dean Kansky said “So the absence of a sign, is a sign!?!.. They should make pills for this…” hit me and I had to suppress a serious case of the giggles.

So after talking with management, which is apparently dominated by the doppler effect, in so far that the words I hear are modulated by pitch changes as they rush away to another meeting, I got what I was after, which was an ounce of clarification.

So the policy exists and we are moving ahead with a wireless infrastructure. I contacted our Verizon rep and placed the toy train back on the tracks after so violently derailing it earlier and set the track power to maximum so we could catch up. Just as much as we don’t know exactly how we’re going to approach our wireless infrastructure, Verizon doesn’t know how they are going to handle our contract, at least yet. I bet when we make decisions, that will oddly be the same moment that Verizon makes it’s decisions. I suspect we’ll have a bumper crop of Kismet coming down the pike.

Moving to Verizon iPhone

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So I have done it. I have sent an email to my Verizon representative, Mr. Steven Miller with a letter expressing extreme interest in transferring our mobile infrastructure away from Sprint and towards Verizon on the iPhone device. We’re going to move 5 connection cards and 17 phone lines from Sprint to Verizon.

Now I wait with bated breath for the quote! Light I’m on pins and needles! To be free of this abominable Blackberry, I hardly know what to do with myself!

2010 in review

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 113 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 520kb.

The busiest day of the year was August 12th with 109 views. The most popular post that day was SmashBurger – Kalamazoo, MI.

 

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, alphainventions.com, mail.yahoo.com, and myearthgarden.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for blackberry vs iphone vs droid, blackberry vs droid, smashburger kalamazoo, blackberry vs droid vs iphone, and bluedepth.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

SmashBurger – Kalamazoo, MI August 2010
4 comments

2

Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID May 2010
1 comment

3

Droid vs. iPhone September 2010

4

Apple iPad April 2010

5

Solving Comic-Con Ticketing Issue (#SDCC) November 2010

Kicking The Can

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Sprint is utterly adorable. So far there have been two notable problems we’ve had, the first was trying to get a new line established for a new staff member in the office. They gave us a number with the exchange 363, which fails local dialing because the other POTS companies don’t understand that 363 is in the 269 area code. Sprint’s solution wasn’t “We’ll fix it” but “You should call the other POTS companies and request it be fixed.” Oh, really now? The second problem we had been crappy service in Kalamazoo Township. Instead of owning the problem, they simply just gave me the 1-800 number to essentially DIY. If I had 3 lines and ran a dumpy mom-n-pop shop out of Climax Michigan I’d be fine with it, but I’ve got damn near 25 lines and I spend two grand a month – I would appreciate some TLC god damn it. So here is an email I wrote to Sprint…

Thanks for the information.

This is the second time that Sprint has kicked the can as it were, the first time was Sprint’s determination that their customers were the proper party to resolve local carrier exchange switching errors and now with poor signal quality, as well. On some level I could be upset that Sprint has refused to take ownership of problems related to their network and problems brought to them by their customers but I am really not that invested in haranguing either of you about this. The first time is a mistake, the second time is by design. I have made a personal resolution to reduce the amount of stress and trim my rage for my own personal health and wellbeing. We are learning quickly that Sprint isn’t really invested in the whole ‘taking ownership of problems’ practice and because of these failures we are awaiting the announcement of an Apple iPhone 4-CDMA class device to be brought to Verizon and when that device is announced and manufactured I am going to recommend that we take our business to Verizon.  I don’t expect any better customer support from Verizon, but at least I won’t be filled with fantasies of skeet-shooting my mobile device any longer and feeling little blossoms of cluster headaches whenever I reset my device and get mocked by “SprintSpeed”.

As for the twin problems, the first one being the 363 local exchange switching error, we’ve avoided that by swapping numbers with a line number we already had possession of in the 599 exchange, solving that problem by sheer abandonment. As for the second problem, conditions may have improved for my user who was having problems, and if they come up again I will not bother either of you but take the issue to BWTS directly.

Thanks

So all we have to do now is wait. Wait for Verizon and Apple to ink those contracts, make sure Qualcomm has enough Viagra to go the distance, and hope that Foxconn doesn’t endure anymore “It’s Raining Men (and Women)” 🙂

Sprint Bork

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Today has been quite an annoying exploration in the vagaries of 20th Century POTS bullshit. My assistant has been on the phone for the better portion of the day with various Sprint representatives trying to get our latest Blackberry device for our new VP to work properly. The phone came with the exchange 363, which when you dial it using any regular phone line ends up in a doo-dee-tiii (computer gobbledygook sounds). Sprint claimed they couldn’t do anything about the problem, so Andy had them switch the number to a brand new one, another 363 number, and the same problem. In the end we switched an old number onto the VP’s device using the 599 exchange, oh would you look at that, damn thing works! Really what it comes down to is that we don’t want to have to dial 269-363-yadayadayada, we want to dial 363-yadayadayada. It’s not that complicated of a thing to figure out now! Of course Sprint’s response was “contact the other POTS companies and complain to them!” Really Sprint? How about YOU DO IT YOU LAZY BASTARDS! Yeah, one little teeny tinny voice is going to command Qwest or SBC Ameritech or Verizon or … to hut right to it and correct a local-exchange switching error. While we’re at it, Sprint, I’ll be sure to refine our ability to FART RAINBOWS!

So what did we learn from this interaction with Sprint? That they’d much rather ignore a POTS problem and let their customers agonize over it rather than take the !@#$ high-road and own the problem and FIX IT THEMSELVES. I suppose I do make a little tactical error here, in that Sprint apparently no longer considers itself a POTS company, no-no-no! It’s a Telecommunications Experience Synergizer. Or something.

To the rumors and all the hints and allegations that Verizon will have an iPhone in January, we say “Oh God YES!” It’s things like this that add ammunition to my professional recommendation that Sprint be fled-from as soon as possible.