Verizon/Frontier rant

[Grannyhiker]

How many of the rest of you have been on verizon.net and (as my son#1 put it) have been "sold into slavery" as the result of Verizon's selling everything but their wireless services to Frontier Communications?

I was just migrated to the new Frontier Communications server and now have to change my email address on everything before the end of the year. Between the forums I belong to, internet banking and the various vendors I shop with, that's well over 50 changes I have to do individually! I've done the personal email (the easy part, thanks to distribution lists); I'm now working on the forums (PortlandHikers being first, of course). The bank and credit card companies will be more difficult. As for vendors, I'll probably do it next time I order. At least Frontier is forwarding email sent to the verizon.com address until the end of the year. I guess we should be thankful for small favors!

The service for the migration was distinctly less than sterling. It took several phone calls for me to find out the new servers so I could reconfigure my email software so I could once again send or receive email! They seemed really surprised that I would need this information! I really feel for the many folks who don't know how to reconfigure their email; most outfits (including Verizon when I signed up) send out CDs which do the job automatically.

I was really tempted to change my service provider, except that who knows when the same thing will happen to Comcast or any other corporation in these "interesting" times?

Rant over--thanks for the opportunity to vent! And my sympathies to other Verizon internet, phone and TV cable customers who are going through the same process!

[Crusak]

When I got the notice in the mail about the 'change' I called the number on my last Verizon bill to make sure it was legit. Hmmm we only have a home phone with Verizon, er, I mean, Frontier, but we may be dropping that now.

[justpeachy]

How frustrating! This is one of the reasons that I don't use e-mail through my internet provider, which in my case is Comcast. I have addresses through Yahoo and Gmail, and they aren't likely to make me change my address anytime soon.

[retired jerry]

Now you've done it - overturned giant can of worms

My number one hate is Sprint Cell Phone. Would bore people to go into details, but it's hard to get through and they can't fix things.

Number two is Yahoo mail. Just as an example I'll click on the box to select an email, then click on delete, then it will insert an ad which moves everything down one row making me "select all" not select just one email, then it deletes all.

But I'm too lazy to change either.

[Stevefromdodge]

If you think the transition is bad in the home realm, you should see the business side of things!

Ack!

[Guy]

One solution is your own domain name, this can be done for very few dollars these days. Once you own it you own it and you can point your e mail to where ever you want. Several of my family members here & in the UK use my meacham.org domain for their e mail. If they change their internet provider or from yahoo to google etc, they just let me know their new address & I update my domain info. Their address never changes.

That being said I think Google Mail has got pretty darn good over the last year & I now point all my mail from 2 different domains (personal & business) to one Google Mail inbox. They have a pretty rich set of features & their spam filters work extremely well, at least for me.

On Frontier DSL versus Comcast - I'm certainly no Comcast fan but I have to admit that their internet service is very fast and reliable, there have been very few down times of more that than a minute or two & even those are rare.

[kelkev]

Grannyhiker,

Sorry to hear of your issues, I had the same problems a few months ago.....suddenly, I was unable to log into my verizon.net email......couldn't get it straightened out, so I decided to ditch my email through my internet provider (Frontier/Verizon), and opted for hotmail/live.com email instead. A real pain in the butt to get everything switched, to say the least. All of this due to the Frontier switchover. I should have made the switch years ago, so much more streamlined, all integrated with Windows 7 and Windows Live Mail. But I love my 25/25 download/upload FIOS internet!! Blazing fast. At any rate, another fine example of an "organized" and "streamlined" transition when one company becomes another. A recipe for confusion, disorganization, and frustration.

Kevin

[Crusak]

I like Guy's idea - get your own domain. I have one (which I haven't really done anything much with) and it gives me 50 email addresses with data storage for each email account. I think I'm spending $14.95 a year (which is probably more expensive than a lot of options) for hosting & domain registry.

also, like Guy mentioned, google mail is pretty cool.

[Tito goes hiking]

Thanks for sharing your rant. I had the same problem and had not heard of anyone else have problems with the switch and wondered if it was just me.

[sassysadie]

Yep

I changed my email over to google mail so I do not have to deal with this again.

There is a reason they want you to use their email system - makes itmore difficult to fire them and move to a different supplier