Problems with Verizon FiOS bill payment

Recently I had a problem with my Verizon FiOS internet bill. Since my dad works over there, I decided to take it up with him. Naturally I’m sharing the email I sent him with all of you:

Dad,

Below you will find a copy of the recent email I received from Verizon billing services. Here’s a rundown of what happened:

- Had my credit card # stolen in early December. Cancelled the card and received new one. Decided to boycott Circuit City for the rest of my life since my number was stolen on their site and they later tried to sell me a two year protection plan on a $15 DVD I purchased in the store two days later.

- As I had used my AMEX to pay my Verizon bill automatically every month, I went into my account on Verizon.net to update my card info as any upstanding customer would.

- I completed the form online, pressed submit, and got a message saying, “Thank you. You have successfully updated your card information”. I smiled in the false belief that everything was well in the world. This was back in December.

- I received the threatening email you see below a couple days ago saying that Verizon had tried to charge my card as normal, but that the info was not valid. If I don’t pay my bill within 10 days, my service will be shut down.

- I went back into my account on Verizon.net and discovered that my new AMEX card info had not been saved successfully when I changed it the first time. Verizon lied to me.

- I tried multiple times to update my card info on the web. Each time it said it had been done successfully, but when I exited and returned, my old number was still in there. Verizon lied to me several more times.

- I tried to make a one time payment in lieu of setting up auto-payment again. This too said my card info was invalid and/or could not be processed.

- I tried to call the 1-800 number (after spending 15 minutes trying to find a 1-800 number), but it said all agents were busy and to leave a message. I’m not leaving a message on a machine for some poor 18 year old Indian guy that has to return calls to disgruntled, American customers at 4 AM in New Delhi when a person in the know at Verizon headquarters in New Jersey is number 5 on my speed dial.

I know I didn’t punch in my card info incorrectly as I repeated this process at least 5 times over the course of 45 aggravating minutes. I know the card is good because I’ve been using it to pay for other stuff (including other online bill payments and your Christmas present) for over a month. I would not like to have my internet service shut down on me because I enjoy using the internet and need it to do work. I’m trying really hard to pay you guys, but you don’t seem to want my money. I know you’ve spent billions of dollars on the FiOS rollout and would like to start generating a reliable revenue stream, and by taking my money we both win. I get screaming fast internet, and you get money. Your stock had a good year in 2006, but imagine how much better it could have been if you accepted money from your customers!

I was thinking about threatening to switch to Comcast, but unfortunately I think I’ve already tipped my hand when I told you how much I hate them. I will say one thing for Comcast, though: they take my money all the time.

Any help or advice you can lend would be much appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

“Valued Verizon Online Customer” Name Redacted

Dear Valued Verizon Online Customer,

Thank you for choosing Verizon Online. Unfortunately, we are unable to bill your Verizon Online service charges to the credit card you provided. To avoid disruption of your broadband service, full payment is required immediately.

Important! Please update your credit card payment information now for your Verizon Online Internet access service charges. Here’s how to make changes to your current credit card:

Log in to the Verizon secure Web site using your Verizon user name and password at www.verizon.net/myaccount. From the choices on the left, under the Billing heading, click on “Change Payment Method.” This is the correct choice whether you are changing to a different credit card on merely updating the expiration date on the credit card you are currently using.

Also, you may elect to make a one-time payment online by credit card, debit card, or direct debit from your bank account to pay the balance on your account. If you select this option, you must pay your balance in full in order to avoid disruption of your broadband service

Log in to the Verizon secure Web site using your Verizon user name and password at www.verizon.net/myaccount. From the choices on the left, under the Billing heading, click on “Make One-time Payment.

NOTE: Making a one-time payment will not change your billing method or any credit card information currently on file. You MUST select the “Change Payment Method” choice to make changes to your current credit card on file for your Verizon Online monthly recurring charges.

You may also make a one-time payment by calling us at 1-888-338-9333 between the hours of are 8-6 EST Monday through Friday.

We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. If we do not receive updated credit card information or another form of payment within 10 days of the date of this notification, we will suspend your account and refer any outstanding debt to collections. If you have an annual service contract and your service is terminated before the end of your annual commitment, an early termination fee may apply.

Verizon Online is committed to delivering high quality service and world-class technical support to you and all of our customers. Please know that while you’re enjoying your Verizon Online Internet service, we’ll be working hard to keep your business.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online
Billing Services

——————-
View your bill, understand the details of your bill, update your credit card information, make a one-time payment, and more online at http://www.verizon.net/myaccount.

This message was sent from a notification-only e-mail address that cannot accept incoming e-mail messages. Please do not reply. Copyright 2006 Verizon. All Rights Reserve

Technorati Tags: verizon, fios, bill, circuit city, comcast, complaint

Blockbuster Total Access

If you’ve watched any of the BCS bowl games this year, you’ve probably noticed an abundance of ads for Blockbuster Total Access.  Coincidentally, I had just signed up for this service about two weeks ago, so I thought I’d write a little bit about it here because it’s freakin’ sweet.

I’m kind of a movie nut.  I love watching movies.  But for whatever reason, I’ve never really been in to renting movies.  I always tend to buy them instead.  I figured, why would I go to a movie store, stand in line, pay $4 to rent something I’ll watch once, and then have to drive back to the movie store to return it when I could just buy the stupid thing for $12 at Best Buy. 

Well, there is definitely some truth to that.  For movies you’ve seen and know are worth buying, or ones you are almost certain you’ll like, I think that’s the way to go.  But for me, there’s a lot of movies I hear about, but I’m not sure I want to take the plunge and buy them.  Oftentimes some of the flicks I want to see aren’t available in Best Buy (a lot of foreign movies,  for example).  So when I saw a Techcrunch post about Blockbuster Total Access, I thought I’d take the plunge.  Here’s how it works:

1) Sign up at blockbuster.com and create your movie queue.  A queue is basically of list of movies you want to see arranged in order of importance to you (a top 10 or 40 or 100 list, if you will).  Once you sign up and create your queue, your first movie will be shipped to you within a day or so.

2) Get excited when you see the movie has been delivered to your mailbox.  Since I live in a major metropolitan area (Philadelphia), the movies get to my door relatively quickly.  They come in a simple paper envelope with a paper CD sleeve inside, and also a return envelope.

3) Burn a copy of the movie for later use Enjoy the movie within the clearly defined parameters of the MPAA.

4) Return your movie.  Here’s where Blockbuster is differentiating itself from Netflix because you have two options:
       a) Return the movie by mail in the prepaid postage envelope and have your next queued movie shipped to you, or
       b) Return the movie to a participating Blockbuster location

    Now, if you choose option b), you get to do the following:

5) GET FREE MOVIES.  When returning a Blockbuster Total Access movie to a bricks & mortar location, you get one free movie rental (subject to the normal return policy).  Essentially, this allows you to double your movies!  When you return the movie you got mailed to you, Blockbuster automatically checks it into the system and mails the next movie on your online queue.  But while you’re waiting for that one to show up at your house, you can enjoy the free one you just picked up at the store.  The free rental is also now good for video games (which normally rent for $8 a pop and of which a burned copy can be played on a hacked Xbox and are fun for the whole family).  Now you can do this:

6) Get more free movies!  Every month, every Blockbuster Total Access customer gets an e-coupon good for one free movie rental.  You can use that any time you want before it expires.

Now as far as plans and pricing goes, there are all sorts of options.  I went with the cheapest one, which allows you to have one movie out at a time and limits you to two movies per month.  This plan costs just $5.99 per month.  However, when you think about it, I’m really getting five rentals per month for $6 (my two online ones, plus my two free ones when I return an online one, plus my e-coupon movie).  That works out to $1.20 per rental.  Now, if you were to go to Blockbuster and rent those movies in the traditional way, it would cost you $20 (movie rentals are now $4 each).  I’m saving $16 by participating in Blockbuster Total Access, and it’s a crapload more convenient (especially since I have a store within 4 minutes of my house to get my free movies).

If you rent movies at all, I highly suggest you check this out.  So far, I’m a huge fan.

Technorati Tags: blockbustertotalaccess, movies, netflix

How do I use Bittorrent?

Bittorrent is a big mystery to a lot of people.  Check this out for everything you need to know about Bittorrent.  I recommend using uTorrent for a client.

Technorati Tags: bittorrent, utorrent

GIMP is great

I started getting into photography about a year ago when I got my Nikon D50. It’s a really fun hobby. Well, just now I’m starting to learn about photo editing, which is something I’ve always shied away from in the past. A lot of the software out there seems just too simple and not robust enough (Picasa, for example), but Photoshop was always just way over my head. You need a college class to figure that out, plus it’s prohibitively expensive.

Enter the GIMP.

No, not that gimp! The GIMP is a free photo editing suite available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It does most things that Photoshop does, and, as I said, it’s free! There are plenty of good tutorials online that teach you how to do cool stuff. For example, I learned how to do selective colorization the other day. Here’s a result, which my wife will probably kill me for, but it looks cool.

So, if you don’t have $700 to spend on overpriced software, check out the GIMP. For most people, it’s all they’ll ever need.

Technorati Tags: gimp, photography, editing

Music labels starting to get it?

Here’s an interesting bit of news today: some major record labels are going to begin releasing unrestricted (read, sans DRM) MP3’s of popular artists to gauge demand for such a product.

This is fantastic!  The major reason I have resisted iTunes up to this point is because of the embedded DRM in anything you buy there.  I’ve heard horror stories about people losing their entire music collections when they change PC’s or MP3 players because the DRM only allows the files to be on one machine.  That’s ridiculous.

I would gladly pay for songs that I can do whatever I want with.  It’s a convenience and usability issue, not a financial issue.  If I pay for something, I own it.  I can do whatever I (legally) want with it.  Let’s hope this takes off.

Technorati Tags: DRM, music, mp3, labels

Try Cooliris!

Hey kids, found a great Firefox extension today called Cooliris.  Basically it allows you to preview a link without actually going to that page.  It’s fantastic.  You’ll be browsing the web twice as fast.  It’s especially useful when reading blogs that link to a bunch of articles.  That way, you can quickly check out the link without actually leaving the blog.  Ingenious!  It’s available for Internet Explorer and Safari as well.

Flickr World Map

Coolness!  Now you can see a map of the entire world on Flickr with all geotagged photos.  As of this writing, there are over 6.7 million photos now geotagged on Flickr.  That’s amazing!  Flickr released their geotagging service just a few months ago.  The pace at which people have adopted it speaks to the increasing popularity of geotagging.  Way to go, Flickr!  Just another reason why Flickr is by far the best photo site on the net.

Technorati Tags: flickr, map, geotag, photos

The power of Youtube

There’s a lot of people out there that think the Google acquisition of Youtube is kind of crazy (including me), but consider this: the following video has been viewed over 34 million times since it was uploaded on April 6th of this year.  That is a staggering number.

Pay special attention at the 3:40 mark.  My sister, who insists that she had only consumed 3 drinks my entire wedding, performed the same move in front of over 115 friends and family at my reception.  Well done, sis.

Technorati Tags: youtube, google, wedding

President of Disney calls piracy a “business model”

I found this gem from Torrentfreak:

Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group explained that Piracy is a business model. She told that content providers should compete, instead of fight it.

Sweeney spoke these wise words in her keynote address at the Mipcom festival

“We understand now that piracy is a business model, it exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability.”

She continued:

“This time two years ago, Disney was congratulating themselves at the end of a season that saw lost and Desperate Housewives make it big. But at the end of the meeting, the head of operations and engineering presented a high-quality, ad-free version of DH that had been put online less than 15 minutes after the show aired. That was a defining moment for the business. We we don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”

That’s some innovative thinking from “the man” if I ever heard it.  The key component of that quote: “high quality, ad-free” and “online less than 15 minutes after the show aired”.

The big question is how do the networks compete with pirated material.  Well, I can tell you that the solution is NOT streaming the shows online — how would I watch them in my car on the way to work?  The answer is NOT charging $2.00 for an ad-less episode — I’m not paying $30+ to watch a season of a show with no ads when I already pay for cable.  The answer is NOT charging for a show with crappy quality — I want good quality, of course!

I would gladly pay, say, $0.25 an episode for a good quality, DRM-free, portable format media file with no advertisements.  Hey, maybe I’d even pay 50 cents.  I would pay ZERO to download such a media file with ads, so long as the ads were not any more obtrusive than current TV ads are.

Another question is bandwidth.  “The man” currently views bittorrent as an evil word, but at some point I think they’re going to have to adopt the technology.  Look at it this way: last week, about 30,000 people were downloading the latest episode of Prison Break at any one time, and that’s just nerds like me that know how to use bittorrent.  As online video continues to grow in popularity, the bandwidth costs will continue to skyrocket.  Bittorrent would save the networks (and whomever else) a bunch of money so they’d be able to reduce the costs of their content to the general public.

Just my $0.02 (or 1% of an episode of Lost, however you want to put it).

Technorati Tags: bittorrent, tv, downloading, media, drm, piracy

Rumor has it…

…that Sequoia Capital, a VC firm in California, invested about $11.5 million a year ago for a 30% stake in YouTube.  After YouTube’s sale to Google for $1.65 billion, Sequoia will walk out of the deal with somewhere in the neighborhood of $480 million.  If you do the math on that, that’s about a 3,900% IRR.  That’s a pretty decent investment, I’d say.

Technorati Tags: google, youtube, acquisition, finance, investment, vc, irr

Gootube

In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard, the Google/Youtube acquisition went through for $1.65 billion.  Craziness.

Google Hacked

The Official Google Blog got hacked over the weekend - yet another reason I switched to WordPress.  Readers noticed a post that was out of the ordinary due to a number of misspellings and grammar mistakes.  Hmm…has Todd Cochrane been playing tricks?

Technorati Tags: google, hack

Geek News Central Unreadable

Todd Cochrane has run a site/blog called Geek News Central for a number of years now.  About a year and half ago he started doing a podcast about technology that is actually pretty good.  It’s one of the most listened-to podcasts out there, and was one of the first that I listened to when I was introduced to podcasting last year.  One thing Todd always stresses is actually going to his blog in conjunction with the podcast to be able to check out various links and such.  Well, I can’t take his blog anymore.  Over the past couple of months I have become increasingly irritated with the postings because the grammar and spelling are so bad that they’re (which does not mean the same thing as “there” or “their” ) virtually unreadable.

Now, I know that blogging is not a “professional” publication, but for someone who hosts a blog as widely read as Todd’s, you would think he could take two minutes and reread his posts before publishing them.  Everyone makes mistakes, and I’m sure some wise guy will probably find a few in this very post, but this is consistent and really annoying.  Take, for example, a post from earlier today about Technorati:

“What is the deal with Technorati. It seems every time I go to that
site and enter a search term their search is broken. I am finding more
cross linked post not via Google than I am Technorati. Has the
blogsphere gotten so big that they cannot handle the task if indexing
the blogs.  I am really disappointed in there performance and really tired of
getting screen that say this feature is not implemented yet. By the way
when you get that error it’s because their servers were to busy if you
try five minutes later you can usually get a search result.”

Why don’t we help Todd out here, shall we?

“What is the deal with Technorati?  It seems every time I go to that site and enter a search term, their search is broken.  I am finding more cross linked posts via Technorati than I am with Google.  Has the blogosphere gotten so big that they cannot handle the task of indexing the blogs?  I am really disappointed in their performance, and really tired of getting the screen that says, “this feature is not implemented yet”.  By the way, when you get that error it’s because their servers were too busy.  If you try five minutes later, you can usually get a search result.”

Honestly, there were parts of that post that I had to reread four times to understand what he was trying to say.  I’m not trying to be a jerk here, because Todd seems like a good guy and is usually pretty entertaining to listen to.  But we’re talking basic, junior high grammar here.  There are roughly 15 errors in that 5 sentence post.  I’m just trying to say that the more popular bloggers out there should take a little more responsibility for their work.  Thousands of people read you every day, Todd.  I know you’re busy, but would an extra two minutes of time per post kill you?  It’d make at least this subscriber check out your feed a bit more often.

The power of blogging is undeniable.  In the future, people are going to continue to get their news not from traditional sources, but by going to Technorati or Ice Rocket and seeing what the blogosphere has to say about an issue.  People are reading fewer books and other edited forms of literature and reading more MySpace pages.  People are writing fewer academic papers and composing more instant messages.  If “popular” blogs don’t start writing properly, we’re going to be a nation of people that doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” in a few years.  Take responsibility.  Quit being lazy.  If you have to, hire an editor with the ad revenue you’re making.  Please, just make your blogs readable. 

Technorati Tags: geek news central, todd cochrane, blogging, blogosphere, grammar, spelling, english, future

Google’s Pinging

You can now ping Google from your blog with updates, and Dave Winer reports that it’s compatible with Weblogs, Inc.  Sweeeet.

Technorati Tags: google, ping, winer, scripting news

Google loves Youtube?

Mike Arrington reports a rumor of a possible acquisition of Youtube by Google for $1.6 billion.  Based on his experience, he thinks that it’s about 40% likely that the rumor is at least partially true.

Technorati Tags: google, youtube, techcrunch, m&a

Smart move by Nikon

Here’s a really interesting story. Nikon handed out a bunch of their new D80 DSLR cameras to “prolific” Flickr photographers as an advertising stunt. They collected all the photos shot by the people and included them in a Flash-based website, and then used them in an advertising campaign. What a great freaking idea. As the article says, this is how viral marketing should be done. It makes Nikon look “cool” to the Web 2.0 crowd.

I have a Nikon D50, which has been among most popular cameras for Flickr users forever, and absolutely love the thing. If Nikon keeps doing stuff like this, I’m sure more and more people will be turning to them in the future.

Technorati Tags: nikon, web 2.0, viral marketing, flickr

Google Reader is official!

There is a brand new version on Google Reader out for all you RSS users out there.  Techcrunch likes it a lot, which is saying something.  Maybe I’ll try it out so I have an internet-based location for all of my feeds.  According to Techcrunch, Google has tried to expain the use of RSS in its simplest terms (they even released a video on how to use it).  So if you’re still wondering what RSS is and how to use it, maybe this is a good place to start.

I couldn’t live without it.

UPDATE: I just imported my feeds to check it out.  One major annoyance: it doesn’t allow for subfolders like Sage does, so my feed list isn’t organized like I want it to be.  GreatNews does the same thing.  Why can’t these things import the folder hierarchy as it is shown in the OPML file?  That is annoying.

UPDATE 2: I have about 550 feeds, and it’s really slow.  This may be due to it catching up the first time I load all those feeds into the reader, but it made Firefox crash.  Maybe it’s not quite ready for primetime, but the features are kind of cool.  It works like Gmail for feeds, which is sort of need.  Just not robust enough, it appears.

Technorati Tags: google, googlereader, techcrunch, rss, feeds

Bill screwed up again

Well, here’s some bad news.  The Xbox360’s new HD-DVD addon will NOT have an HDMI output.  This essentially means that 1080P will not be a possibility on the machine.  When will Microsoft learn that increased connectivity options will actually help sell their units?

For instance, why did you have to buy a special dongle for component and digital audio output on the original Xbox?  The answer is simple: so Microsoft and other 3rd parties could make huge margins on proprietary cables.  How did it work?  Well, in this case, I chose never to buy the cables just because I was pissed off about it.  So I didn’t receive the gaming experience that I could have, and wound up with a chip on my shoulder towards Microsoft (not that that isn’t uncommon).

Bill, options and choice are good things.

Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd, 1080p, hdmi, microsoft, gates, suck

Talk opens up

Up to this point only Gmail users have been able to sign up for Google talk (something I never realized).  Well, now Google has opened it up for everyone.  Do people actually use Google talk?  If you use it, leave a comment and let me know what you like about it relative to AIM, Yahoo, and all the rest.  I’ve never used it personally.  In the late 90’s I started using AIM in high school and used it all through college.  Once I started work, everyone in my company used Yahoo, so I had to use that as well.  Now I use GAIM, so I can do it all from one place.  GAIM, by the way, is awesome.  Much better than the AIM client, and it’s portable!

Technorati Tags: google, googletalk, im, aim, yahooim, gaim

Bittorrent is taking over the internet…

Courtesy of Torrentfreak:

The popularity of BitTorrent is growing every day. BitTorrent sites
are on the rise, and now four of them hold positions in the top 500
most popular websites on the Internet. Even more are expected to join
the club in the near future.

Back in 2004, Suprnova managed to
settle itself among the 1000 most visited websites on the internet. So
when the site was taken offline december 19, 2004, there was a huge gap
to fill. Today, 6 bittorrent sites entered this top 1000 list,
generating more traffic than Suprnova ever did.

Sites in Alexa’s Top 1000 (rank September 26, 2006)

205 Mininova

218 Torrentspy

387 The Piratebay

439 Isohunt

573 Torrentz

593 Demonoid

Top 4

As you can see, there are now four BitTorrent sites in the top 500 of the most visited websites on the internet. Torrentspy and Mininova are currently 218 and 205. The Piratebay and Isohunt follow in 387 and 439 respectively.