We got an email about a month ago from our landlords, informing us that there would be a Verizon FIOS meet-and-greet in our apartment courtyard at the end of May.
Our longtime internet / phone / TV carrier (which began with C and ended with OX) had excellent customer service, but had been getting progressively more expensive over the past few years. So, we thought, why not go have some punch and pie, and hear what the nice FIOS man has to say?
As it turned out, we were pretty much the only people who turned up at the meet-and-greet. (I had a very small Italian cold-cuts sandwich.) It was hosted by a cute young salesman, who talked us into switching from C + OX to FIOS. (He also offered us a whole boatload of gift cards, which very much sweetened the deal for Partner and me. We love gift cards.)
The actual conversion happened about a week ago. Poor Partner: he was home alone when the Verizon installer came. It took the installer forty-five minutes to find the place where the cabling enters our apartment. (It was in my clothes closet, incidentally.) Then it took another four hours for the installer to set everything up.
Then it took us another three hours in the evening after the installer left to get everything up and working.
The process wasn’t perfect, but then: what is? I got the master account working, and then started creating email accounts. I bogged down for a while, but finally figured it out.
Conclusions:
· The FIOS network is faster (slightly).
· The TV service (especially in HD) is clearer and has less interference.
· We get more features (like caller ID and voice mail) for less money (at least for the next two years).
· I vaguely recollect that, ten years ago when we went from ATT to C+OX, we went through the same kind of hell week.
More than a week has passed. I’m getting pretty much the same amount of email I was getting before; everyone has found me, even some of the spammers. I’m getting used to typing my much longer (but very descriptive) email address. And did I mention how much faster the Net is?
Shop around, kids. Shop around.
There’s gift cards in them thar hills.
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