report on utilities

[flea]

Cancelling Duke Energy service? Online form. Easy.

Cancelling PSNC Energy service (gas)? Telephone call, very short phone tree/wait. Easy.

Cancelling Verizon phone/DSL? Interminable phone tree, misdirected once so far. On hold. Ridiculously, DSL and phone must be cancelled seperately. Note: their web site SUCKS.

I hate phone companies. In my experience they are uniformly evil; Verizon is the worst I've dealt with so far. A major reason I don't have cable is how evil the companies are.

Has anyone ever had a good phone, internet or cable company experience? If so, which company? I would SO pay more for basic competence.

Comments

[noradeirdre.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever had a good phone, internet or cable company experience? If so, which company? I would SO pay more for basic competence.

AHAHAHA! No. However, IME, Verizon was actively evil. Comcast is merely stupid, annoying and incompetant. Our neighbors were pleased with Vonage, though I'm not sure if you need something already in place to use their services.

[rainoftoads.livejournal.com]

OMG, Verizon are the worst. When we cancelled our DSL, they didn't even manage to do that right and they kept charging us for two months after we moved. It took nearly two years for them to straighten it out and it's still listed on my credit report.

I experienced basic competence from a cable company only once, and that was with RCN, who do not have a very wide network.

Comcast installation and customer service are laughably incompetent, but I'll stick with them as long as they're the only alternative to Verizon.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Installation of RCN (cable/internet): good, prompt, few problems. Lack of confusingness/lack of wait on hold since then: terrible.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I've had nothing but good experiences with Cox cable. I use Verizon for phone, simply because they bought out NYNEX, who bought out NE Telephone, etc. Fortunately, my phone needs are simple, and there's little Verizon can do to screw them up. At least so far.