Technically Speaking

Voyager was unveiled yesterday. Is it the answer to the iPhone. Kind of looks like it might be, only the fact that Verizon likes to censor your data as discussed yesterday. That in itself is a no sell in my mind. As far as iPhone clones go, this will be the first of many, so Apple better innovate again or at least lower their price point.

Free Music - Well let’s hope for music’s sake alone, that never comes to pass. If that ever happens, forget about artists ever releasing any music. They may as well just go on tour forever. Let people pirate them, and than find them and shake them down for a cut of the bootleg profits. I saw the article yesterday on the Radiohead experiment. This should be quite interesting. If the demand keeps the price at least in the $0.79 range I would say they won, and there will be a new business model to follow. One point that I do agree with is that with the p2p sharing, you sometimes end up with total crap.

Facebook - Is it just a great theory and we are all along for the ride? Well count me in, as I always told my band members - hang on for the ride, the train has left the station. No idea why I use the “train” example, but if Facebook fails, it won’t be for quite some time. There are far too many companies with a vested interest to let the “train” crash anytime soon.

Technically Speaking, that was all that interested me so far this morning. If you feel any of them belong as a GMAFB, by all means go post it now as I have some people looking over the site in the next day or so. Sign Up to post, vote, and comment! Here are 34 that need a break.

One company that I never have had the opportunity to partake in is the company called Verizon. Now after reading this editorial today, I’m rather glad I have not gone down their avenue for service. It appears that they are now censoring in the round about way, and that isn’t a good thing to have happen.

As the editorial points out

The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services.

It’s not only Verizon that I’m worried about, as wasn’t it AT&T that censored that Pearl Jam concert about 2 months back? Have things shifted so far to the right extreme in our country where special interest money is all that counts?

Special interest groups that are funding the right wing branch of our government seem to have carte blanche these days. In the name of the first amendment, these obstructions to a free America must be stopped. I don’t foresee anything good by cracking down on free speech. Once the first amendment is gone, there goes any reason to live in America any longer.

If Verizon, AT&T really want to clamp down, the next thing they will do is make sure your blog isn’t seen over their communication lines. We all remember what happened to that ISP @home.com right? It can happen again just like that if we don’t stop it now. Once AT&T took away the lines for @home, they were done. End of story, end of company.

Technically Speaking, these are all my opinions, and most of the time I have enough issues with my web host going down than worrying about Verizon or AT&T censoring my blog! The thought that the next time there is an outage it being AT&T or Verizon shutting my blog down is a scary enough thought for me to write this post.

I have just received a very distressing e-mail about how Verizon is now in the game of screwing around with customers. The e-mail I received was very lengthy, so I will make a long story short.

The customer had the great FiOS service in New York, and was quite happy with it. He switched credit cards with their auto pay service. When it came time to debit the old card, the new card wasn’t in place yet. He then called to give the new card information. Well he forgot, and he woke up one Sunday morning and his service was suspended. No big deal, right?

He calls that evening to give them the new card information. They tell him, his account was not suspended but *cancelled*. Kind of mean, but it happens, right? It gets better.

He had the very high speed 30/5 service. When he realized that it was his fault for not calling in the new card on time, he did apologize for that. Now remember, he was on an autopay service. He then asked to just restore the service. Guess what? They no longer were OFFERING the service they just CANCELLED on him. They only had a 20/5 service. He relunctantly accepts the downgraded service. Remember, the customer felt a little stupid for not calling in the new card on time, so he felt a bit responsible for that.

All good, right? Think again. He usually prints out his bill from the online service to expense back to his work. Guess what? He can’t. In fact, he can ONLY see his OLD 30/5 account. No information on the new 20/5 account. Plus there still were mysterious “disconnect charges” on that bill that should have *NEVER* been posted to the account.

He has spent an abundant amount of his time now on the phone being led around by one of those “intelligent voice answering services”. He spent more time being transferred around then on the phone with a representative of Verizon. In fact with the last “no print” option he is dealing with, the person (after 45 minutes of wrong place transfers and waiting) tells him, “Oh, you must call this 1-888 number, sorry we don’t deal with that!”

The reason I am posting this, is due to my own bad customer service experience with Charter Communications and also closer to this, Sprint/Nextel. Customer service these days is more like Customer Screwjob.

In the end, you should never be *disconnected* for a late payment without trying to resolve the issue first with a customer. This customer called in a few hours after his service was turned off. Once Verizon had the correct billing information, the service should have been turned back on. There should have never been a disconnect.

Technically Speaking, this person that dropped me the information has been a long time customer of their FiOS service. He has had it since their March 2006 roll out to his area. There is absolutely no excuse for treating a customer like this. Verizon - Shame on YOU!

Launching in Washington DC. Very interesting. Now I personally need to get to one of the coasts soon.

I won’t have FiOS here in the middle of nowhere for probably 5-10 more years. By that time the east and the west will be saying screw all the bands and communicating via brain wave or something.

If you are one of the select few who gets broadband via Verizon’s FiOS fiber pipe, and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, on Friday you will get to watch the telco giant’s leap into the content business, courtesy of its new channel humbly called FiOS1.

Technically Speaking, I’m trying!