Verizon DSL has a horrible standard email system.

To Whom It May Concern at Complaints.com:

I erroneously attempted to send the following email to Verizon's Volume Support email re a recent experience (3-14-08) I had with their emai on my DSL account Verizon Website. I received an automated reply to it that was not at all helpful:

To: Verizon DSL Support Persons

From : Email User

You guys have a crummy email system, and have for years, despite all the supposed changes in the past several years.

I'll give you an example from last evening. My brother responded to a Verizon email I had sent him about rock musician Lou Reed. I hit "Reply" on my standard Verizon email account, and it opened a reply email, with his email inside of it. This is all well and good, that is, standard operating procedure. It is supposed to do this. Yippee, something works correctly.

So I compose a thoughtful and somewhat time-consuming reply to him. At the end of it, I remember NOT to hit "Save Draft" at the end of it because I recall your email system eating the draft of an email I attempted to save sometime last year. After that email fiasco I ended up not having anything to send either. Grrrrr!

So this is problem #1: Fix the friggin "Save Draft" part of your email system.

And no, I don't have a special computer, a faulty DSL line, or any special software on my computer such as security software that gums things up. It is a vanilla computer that works fine on Yahoo and Google email systems.

But this time, sending an email to my brother, I think to myself that I will be smarter. I simply hit "Send", last evening, hoping that my lengthy email to my brother will not only be sent, but that your crummy, primitive email system will save a copy in my "Sent" folder, as I have instructed it to do. I like to have a record of what I have emailed.

So what happens? Your dumbass email system flips me over to the Verizon account sign-in page. O.K., perhaps this is some sort of hypervigilant email security system, in order to guarantee that nobody unauthorized is using my account. I had signed in about a half hour beforehand, and had not left the Verizon email Web page during the entire encounter.

So I dutifully sign-in to my Verizon email account as requested of me, even thought I had signed in previously. And what happens? I get returned to my Verizon email page and my long email to my brother has vanished in the nether regions of cyberspace, never to be seen again. It wasn't in the "Drafts" folder. It wasn't in the "Sent" folder. It wasn't anywhere to be found.

It was gone.

Not cool, Verizon Support People. Not cool at all. )-:

There is a half an hour that I won't get back again, not to mention the information in the email.

How is it you expect people to want to use your email system if it wipes out a lengthy, personal reply due to shear incompetence?

This is the sort of crappy Web interface I used to regularly run across 8 years ago on the Internet! There is simply no excuse for such garbage from a major Web player such as Verizon in 2008! No excuse whatsoever. None.

I am writing this from a Google Gmail account of mine. Why mention this? Because it is saving drafts of this complaint letter AUTOMATICALLY! Without me asking it to do so! Wow! Somebody is thinking at Google, aren't they?

Want to know what else rarely comes into my Google inbox? Spam email. Almost never. And I have only had a few false positives in my Google Spam folder. How do they do it? I don't know, but somebody is on the ball at Google. In fact, it is a bunch of somebodies who are on the ball at Google.

And in my Verizon inbox? Quite a bit of Spam, especially for as little as I use that email system. Its address is not in a lot of circulation around the Web. What do you guys have? A Spam folder, where obvious Spam email that I have to move into the Spam folder just sit there until I delete them. What is an obvious Spam email? Email with gibberish words in the subject box. You know, like "yenottie more length obadogle badie"

Why don't I use your standard Verizon email more? Because it is a piece of crap email system that I learned to avoid years ago, and now have, once again. learned to avoid it even more. Fix it, for the love of God!

Now you are probably going to suggest that I try your NEW email system. Don't even go there. What comes with the standard Verizon DSL account should not have the sort of obvious bugs, flaws and crummy, email-losing features that it has.

So problem #2: what is with making me re-sign in to my Verizon account when I go to send a time-consuming reply to my brother, after I had only signed in about a half an hour prior? Stupid, stupid, stupid. What, does Verizon think that my computer got hijacked while I was still using it? I never left the Verizon email page while composing my lost email.

Just plain crummy all around. How much does Verizon collect monthly from me for my DSL account? Over $30/month. Multiply this times the thousands of DSL accounts Verizon has, and that sum has got to be enough to get some technically competent code monkeys in there who can figure out how to make a properly functioning, basic email system in 2008. At least, I would think so.

I am very disappointed in my Verizon DSL email system, and the rest of the Verizon site as well, which is very Web unimaginative. What are you guys doing at Verizon, watching too much You Tube when you should be working? Get on the ball.

Signed,

Rob Little, aka "ThomasHopkins981at verizon dot net"

Comment On This

I use to work for Verizon, and I know exactly what you are talking about. I worked for a couple of months for verizon. And I completely understand your frustration, I felt the same way working for them. I worked for the Verizon Highspeed internet dept. And basically my job was to keep the customer going in circles until they eventually gave up trying to fix their problems connecting to the internet. Being that I use to repair computers for a living, I know quite a bit about computers,modems, etc. After going through the so called 'training'. A group of about 20 of us were thrown to the 'wolves', so to speak. After a few weeks of lying to people...my conscience started bothering me. It was a particular customer, an old lady...very sweet. She reminded me of my grandma. She literally started crying on the phone, About how she could never get connected to the internet. The first thing I did was to check to see if service was even available in her area, or if some ass had sold her "verizon high speed internet" some where, where it wasnt even available.(I had already seen a few cases where customers had signed 2 year contracts, and they didnt even have service in their area!). And sure enough, after I checked on the system...the service wasnt even available in her area. I just told her the truth "mam, verizon high speed dsl internet service is not even available in your area...." she had been going back and forth with "Technical Support Agents" for about a year...and no one had even told her that service wasnt even available in her area. Yet she was signed up for a 2 year contract and was even paying! So from then on, I just started telling people the truth of why they couldnt sign on. For example I noticed that every evening at about 6:00pm, people would call real angry about not being able to connect to the internet. And they were always from the East coast. They would call saying "it was working fine a few hours ago..." I remember one guy, he was a profesional network technician. And he even knew that something was wrong with Verizons network. He even told me "your network is down somewhere." So after a while, I started jogging my memory...I was thinking to myself, where have i seen this before? And I remembered, some years ago. When I first signed up to the internet back in about 1995-1996, with America Online. It was damn near impossible to connect, Id always get a busy signal. And thats when I put 2 and 2 together! Verizon was having the same problems with their DSL service(not enough capacity). They were filled up to the max and couldnt get all their customers onto the net. So I just started telling the customers the truth. "Sorry, sir but the networks are full, thats why you cant get connected...wait a few hours and it will clear up." And I just started to really fix peoples problems, they would tell me "finally someone tells me the truth." or they would just get mad and hang up. I remember I figured a way out to stay on the phone a lot longer than the maximum allowable time of 13-15 minutes. After that WE HAVE TO hang up.(they watch our call times, using a computer) So I would stay on the line with people and actually connect to their computers and FIX their problems,

(the ones having software issues, with verizon's software.)

I remember with some customers..I would stay on the phone for about 1 hour. But they were so thankful I would fix their Verizon Software problems. I actually started to enjoy my job. THEN, the management started to eaves drop in on my calls. And started to hassle me. And One day I just got tired of hiding of doing the right job. So instead of hiding that I was staying on the phone longer than I was supposed to, I just let the timer run. And sure enough on about the 25th minute, my supervisor came and barked at me and said "hang up on that customer now!" the customer and I were having a great time talking while I was connected to his computer getting his Verizon Software installed and working correctly. I just ignored, my supervisor and explained to him, what she was telling me. And he said "well im the customer and I am paying for this service and I want you to fix this for me." I told him, "yes, sir I feel the same way..." and I just kept working..Then another supervisor came he pushed the back support of my chair down...and told me "get off the phone." Then I told the customer, "sir, my supervisor is telling me I need to get off the phone." then the customer told me, "let me talk to him." So I said, "ok.." then I took my head set off, and handed it to the supervisor that pulled my chair down, and said "He wants to talk to you" Obviously, since there are "procedures" a customer must go through to reach a "supervisor". The supervisor denied the customers request to talk to him. So I told the customer "he doesnt want to talk to you" then the customer said "why?" then I said "because he is not man enough." Needless to say, I ended up getting escorted out of the building by security, and recieved my termination notice through the mail a few days later. So, if you are a Verizon Highspeed DSL Customer and are always having problems connecting, its not you computer or modem. Verizon doesnt have enough capacity they are always selling contracts that they cant fulfill. So When you see their commercials and it says "Its The Network." It really is.

Comment On This

Hey Rob...Ifeel what you're saying. When verizon upgraded to verizon central I unknowingly ended up with verizon/yahoo email. This initiated by me contacting them to get just a little help in re-setting my outlook email account after I had to do a system restore.

Now if I fail to check my email for a couple of days I end up with as many as two hundred spam contacts. Atleast the previous version would allow you to block the sender and their domain. Yahoo verizon just appeared to open the door for all of the unwanted trash that had been blocked.

Even now I have constant problems in getting outlook email because their system some how screws up the connection for outlook email. And, ofcourse, their helpful on-line assistance is always peeping in to correct the problem that was not there beforehand.

As with you, I was told to check a host of things from wires to the crappy westell router.

It never seems to occur to their techs that maybe, just maybe, thy are the

root of the problem.

Signed,

Pissed In Parkville