Verizon vs. Comcast

I was able to get FIOS the day it was released in my neighborhood, which was one of the first "pilot" areas for the roll-out.  I've had it for well over a few years now and just love it.  I don't ever remember having an outtage at all, except when they came to install the TV service (which took a couple of years before they offered it.

enjoy !

j

I guess you are doing better than I!  But then if I get one outage (it lasted about an hour with my initial diagnostics and then their trouble shooting) every 5 months, that is good enough for me!

I had an opportunity to get it a couple of years ago, but my aversion to being on the "bleeding" edge made me back off (they had offered it in other markets, that was when they started here).

I have had Comcast since it came to my area 35 years ago or so. Have been thinking about switching to Verizon Fios as they just put it in my area about 8 months ago. I have had a difference experience with Comcast as I always get a real person to talk to without any problem and can't tell you when my last outage was. Maybe I'm just in a good area here in NJ or lucky. I called last week to tell comcast I may be switching and just wanted to give them a heads up. They asked me what it would take to keep me and I said, lower my monthly cost. Thinking they would come back with me saving 20 or 30 dollars they took it from $170.00 to $102.00/mo. This is only for 6 months however and than they said to call back and they would see what they can do again for me. So with not having any problems I'm still locked in with comcast but have heard great things about Verizon.

I thought of doing that - but they violated the spirit of an agreement I signed with them (if not the actual letter of it).  I guess you have a better crew because the one down here is lousy on customer service, abusive to you when you have a question on billing, and just antagonistic period.  It was not always that way.  We started out with a cable company whose name I forget 30 years ago, but it was bought out about 6 times before landing in Comcast's hands.  And the service went to hell when it did.

if you have a good thing, stick with it! (and it sounds like yours is good).  But do not move to the Old Dominion.  You would quickly come to hate your old friend.

Comcast is now rotten from the core out. Their content sucks, their services suck, their phone support sucks, theri pricing and issue resolution sucks.

Xfinity is just their attempt to change the brand image and get away from the Comcast bashing.

I have had excellent service with comcast, and now with Verizon just finishing up with Fios throughout town, (i have never seen so many verizon trucks t once) we live just south of Boston Ma, and we have always been the first to receive comcast new features, apparently it is a test area for them, so my dealings with them have been good for 15 years now, but i will be torn when it comes to FIOS,

Just waiting for verizon to make its way over here,comcast sucks but its a better choice than AT&T as far as speeds go..

I cannot say their programming sucks as they kind of have to carry what is available. (they do have choices, but the top ones are pretty much set by consumer demand).

I agree with the rest of your statements however.

Yes, Boston is one of their test markets, so like Davebax, you guys have it good!  But I am curious.  I thought you had a different baby Bell up there?  I know Verizon is in California (my SIL works for them out there) as they bought FTE, but I thought you had Nynex?

Or is Verizon now becoming what AT&T used to be?

I got 384 DSL back in 1999, and thought it was the cat's meow!  but today with Cable going to 50mb and FIOS at 35mb, DSL just does not cut it.  AT&T pulled out of our market about 5 years ago.  But they were not doing that well before then anyway.

Bummer, Verizon FIOS not available here. 

It is not available next to here either (just a mile down the road)!  I talked to a guy who used to work for Bell Atlantic (he has been retired awhile) who still has friends at the company.  And his sources tell him that Verizon appears to be pulling back from FIOS!  I sure hope not.  It is nice competition to cable regardless of experiences (and vice versa).

Yea, reports are that development will be halted for fios (hopefully temporarily) after the current locations are finished with installing. 

DG I had to chuckle when you mention the break up of Ma Bell. Everyone hated the big monopoly, but I'll tell you my phone bill was <9 dollars a month just prior to the break up. It just went up from there, currently $35 a month for a land line I barely use, just incoming calls. I'd lose it completely if it wasn't for the home security system.

I use cable for the internet now (Cox), I like it. It's been pretty reliable. We have Verizon FIOS available, I just haven't seen the need (yet) to switch 

Did they give any reasons for that (my source was not in that end of the business, so he only related what his friends told him, and none of the technical stuff)?

I use to have phone bills of about $14/mn.  But then there was a lot less taxes back then too (like the tax for the internet).  I am in your boat and if not for my wife's need for fax, I would not have one at all either.  We rarely use it except to get spam calls (even though we are on the DNC list).

As for Cox, it is near here - oh yea!  In your area!  Actually it comes up to New Kent - which is next to my county.  But I have no history with them so do not know if they are better than Comcast or not.  When my cable worked - it was great!  It just broke often, and when there was a problem, the techs were clueless.

I used to have sporadic issues (connection would drop for a few minutes once or twice a week), until I bought a new cable modem, a Motorola (the old one, a Toshiba, was getting on in age). So that was on my end.

They (Cox) just raised their fee 3 bucks a month. One would think there isn't a recession going on the way bills are increasing.

They want more taxpayer money for buildouts (In other words, they want far more then they will ever pay to build out, as usual).

That is what Comcast did to me in January. Even though I supposedly had a 2 year "contract" with them.  It was not a great deal, but enough to piss me off and ensure I would switch to FIOS. I doubt they learn their lesson, unless there are a lot of "mes" out there.

As for the Modem, since I had the triple play, I had to use theirs.  And it worked great!  Just the service went down about once or twice a month (and usually for several hours).

Welllll.......with everyone getting handouts from the government, i can understand that!

In fact, you jogged my mind about a similar situation that I will blog about. 

As a completely out of the blue aside, the fix was restarting the router / modem thing. You may want to save the settings, because it will probably hickup once a year or so, might as well keep the settings around so you don't forget them.

My company (Over in europe) has basically increase performance for free every now and then instead of increasing the bills. I can live with that.

(Looses internet about once every year for a short period, I can live with that too.).

That was one part.  I think.  She (the tech) also indicated she was resetting the FIOS conversion box (separate from the router/modem).  But I have saved the settings on the parts I can get into.  I have too many things to remember to trust myself to remember what I did on that one.

The Cable company was doing that as well.  That is what I love about FIOS is that they are making sure the cable company keeps increasing speed, because they are (and vice versa)!  The price does not come down, but when you have to switch to a hard wire cable to get the maximum bandwidth out of your internet connection (because the choke point becomes the wireless connection), that is pure cream for me!

Update:  Another irksome issue last night (the Caller ID was not showing on the TV).  Lady was nice, and sounded bored.  Had it fixed in about 5 minutes.  I guess she has done that a lot.  But it sure is spoiling me to call tech support and have them fix things!  Go Verizon!