Verizon ISP Review & Reader Survey Results

[kewlguy239]

We asked readers to rate their Internet service provider based on price, performance, reliability and support. Here are the results for the only ISP in our series with mainstream availability of fiber-optic networks for high-speed Internet: Verizon.

Verizon ISP Review & Reader Survey Results : Read more

 

[The original Derfman]

What? No Google fiber review?

 

[okcnaline]

How the **** did Verizon get top notch scores?!!! Their phone bootloader unlock policy and dirty CS practices should make them the worst!!!

 

[c0rr0sive]

Wait, did Toms forget to mention that Verizon was forced to deploy fiber since they refused to repair the aged copper lines that they had neglected for years? This looks more and more like an advertisement campaign.

 

[burtzum]

I was paying $50 a month for 25/25 FIOS about two years ago. It has gradually raised to $67 now. I saw on their page that even 50/50 should be less, at $55, so I was about to call them and ask for my speed to be raised since I am apparently already paying for it. Then I decided against it, as I noticed an additional $10 a month modem rental fee in the fine print. Tack on that, taxes, and all the other BS add-on fees and I'm sure it would come out to over $70 a month for the 50/50 plan in actuality. And I don't even want 50/50, I'm fine with 25/25. But they don't offer 25/25 anymore, and I'm sure jacking up my price is an attempt to get me to accept the new 50/50 plan with its higher price.

I also remember when I was still fairly new with them they were constantly trying to get me to sign up for automatic billing. I was reluctant because they had overcharged me at one point. Eventually I ended up with automatic billing anyway, as it was apparently a requirement in order to switch to paperless billing. Things go smoothly for a couple years, then one day I get something in the mail saying I haven't paid for 3 months and owe a bunch of late fees. Their automatic billing system broke down and they expected me to pay late fees over it. Guess it serves me right, not looking out for and paying close attention to my Verizon bill every month, given my past experience. Since then I've been paying manually every month like I wanted to in the first place. So automatic billing wasn't a requirement after all, as they claimed. Or they've changed their policy since then. *shrug* At least they haven't yet tried to charge me for a modem that I returned, claiming to have no record of it, I guess... as Comcast did years ago.

All cable companies are absolute garbage. Sometimes I wish the government would seize it all and take over, but our government is so incompetent it would probably end up worse.

 

[razor512]

If you are ever charged a rental fee, then buy your own equipment, it will pay for its self within a year.

Your location also highly influences your performance. If you have the choice between fios and time Warner, then you get around 5-10 more performance than advertised. if there is no alternative, then you get 5-15% under what you pay for, with additional slowdowns during prime time (with speeds as low ad 2mbit/s on a 100mbit plan).
When there is a lack of competition, any ISO will take that as an opportunity to screw you over.

 

[xvegan]

I've been around the USA enough to know that in any market, the lack of competition will raise prices and cause a condescending attitude from the carrier's billing depts and help desks. This applies to all of them. Some are so ridiculous as to charge almost $100 for a help desk inquiry regarding a service outage.

Competition is the name of the game. When there are alternatives it's amazing how nice they become and will likely lower your monthly bill to keep you as a customer.

 

[Anders235]

Those prices for Fios look about $20 low, at least for Texas. $65 p/m for 50-50 was all I could get, then 75/75 (not shown in this article), and up.

Which seems high.

Quality of the service is excellent 100% throughput up and down is normal and reliability is outstanding.

Customer Service is extremely poor. It takes hours to get ahold of tech support and the disconnect between Verizon Central and your local Verizon Fios center is near total so its very hard to get them to agree on the phone that there might be a problem in your area. Luckily, problems are very rare...

The only alternative to the service is Time Warner, which is terrible in every single respect and therefore not an alternative.

 

[wussupi83]

Really Toms, an Ad between every section of the SAME article. That's an A**hole move, especially when they are sound producing videos. I will note related to the article - I do find Verizons networks pretty reliable for Internet. Although a few years ago I had FIOS 150Mbps service and Youtube was without a doubt throttled, as every other video service was fine except Youtube, it didn't matter if you chose 240p or 1080p, you had to wait for buffering. That was certainly intentional. I read recently that you could update the DNS to a 3rd party and it solved the problem but I no longer have the service to verify.

 

[dennphill]

Poor review. How do you compare one provider? C'mon now! I was up in Alexandria, VA when they were putting fiber in the neighborhood..but moved away before I could dump Cox Cable and see how FIOS was. (I was told it would be better/cheaper, etc.) So now I'm in Panhandle, FL and (again) with Cox the only show in town (unless I want Dish or DirecTV and phone line Centruy Link). Worthless article, because it will be a while before fiber gets to my neighborhood....and Cox is reliably giving me "Preferred" access (promising up to 50 Mbps d/l (and 6.5 u/l) and Ookla says I get upwards of nearly 60 Mbps and nearly 7 Mbps. Century Link, OOTH, promises me only 6 MBPS d/l (and says that's all I really need)! Sos - though I hate it - I stick with Cox - the devil I already know.

 

[rayden54]

I do wonder how much these results are skewed by availability.

For example, back when we had Verizon, speeds were terrible, prices were terrible (the up to 3 Mbps plan cost something like $50 a month), and support was terrible, but since they were the only ISP around, that's what we had. Only reason we're not still with Verizon is that they sold our area to Frontier.

It's pretty much the same deal with Frontier too except the Up to 3, 5, and 7 Mbps plans are gone and everyone gets the 1 Mbps plan. I don't think they can offer more without redoing the cables--which of course they won't do.

 

[DrPlanarian]

I am a long-time Verizon FiOS subscriber and I am COMPLETELY satisfied with all of the technical aspects of the service, including speed, consistency, technical customer service and reliability. I am a bit less satisfied with price, but you do get what you pay for. I am only marginally satisfied with their administrative/billing customer support, which screws things up as frequently as they solve problems, but lately they have improved in that aspect.

I pay for 75/75, but when I do the Ookla speed test I consistently, and I mean ALL THE TIME no matter what time of day or week, get speeds between 82 and 86 in both directions. Can't help but be satisfied with THAT!

 

[Martell1977]

I started with FIOS 7 years ago, so half way through my current(4th) contract and I have to say that I'm very happy with the service itself. In the 7 years I've only had maybe 3 outages and they were never more than 4 to 6 hours. I've only had to call their tech support twice and ended up getting a free replacement router, but I don't rent it, it's part of my plan. (I do have to rent my FIOS TV STB's though...)

I have the 25/25 service and have had it since the beginning and I usually get about 30/31 on speedtest. With that said, I have had to fight Verizon each renewal to maintain my 25/25 package, as they decided not to offer it any longer. However, I have been able to get them to renew it each time. But they have raised the price on me twice now. I don't need the 50/50 and while it says it's "only" $10 a month, that doesn't include the addition taxes or the $12 a month router rental fee (my current router apparently can't handle it).

Other than the contract fight every 2 years, he service has been great, even the billing has been Ok, though my actual bill totals fluctuate about $2-$5 each month(not cumulatively).

 

[toadhammer]

This is the problem with "grading on the curve." Just because Verizon seems to be the best of a bad bunch of ISPs does not automatically mean they are excellent. I would overall rate them as "acceptable," or "not as complete a failure as the others."

 

[drtweak]

How the **** did Verizon get top notch scores?!!! Their phone bootloader unlock policy and dirty CS practices should make them the worst!!!

As i agree with you on the bootloader thing (which honestly almost all US carries do. At least the big ones like Verizon and ATT) this is about INTERNET NOT CELL SERVICE.

I'm a big Verizon fan. I pay a lot a month for cell service but NO ONE has been able to either 1) top my speeds i get or 2) have as good of a coverage as I get. I broke down on a highway in the moutains here in SoCal where NO ONE ever gets reception. I had just enough reception to get a call out to AAA. My GF use to have ATT then T-Mobile before i put her on my plan and she NEVER got reception ever in that area and now with Verizon she does. Plus I'm a Moto fan and Verizon always has the best moto phones.

That being said for that.

I also have 25/25 at home. I'm good with it. Love it. It use to be 25/5 but now all of FiOS is symetrical speeds. I can stream multiple videos from my server at home and not have an issue. Not too many others do that.

Also I only see two people on here. WTH? Where is Comcast? TW? ATT? Charter (or what ever it is called now). I know Toms is know for making stuff like this and NOT including EVERYTHING. As one person said what about google fiber? Well google fiber is as big out there as everyone else is right now but should still be on the list.

How about you take this article, take it down, go back, get at LEAST 1000 reviews FROM EVERY ISP YOU CAN FIND, then come back.

 

[okcnaline]

As i agree with you on the bootloader thing (which honestly almost all US carries do. At least the big ones like Verizon and ATT) this is about INTERNET NOT CELL SERVICE.

Not true. T-Mobile and Spring does unlocked bootloaders now. Verizon and AT&T does the same. But what pissed me off is that they should be allowing unlocks after the device gets off their network.

this is about INTERNET NOT CELL SERVICE.

I guess... But my point is the quality of their service using the cell service as part of the example.

Also I only see two people on here. WTH? Where is Comcast? TW? ATT? Charter (or what ever it is called now). I know Toms is know for making stuff like this and NOT including EVERYTHING. As one person said what about google fiber? Well google fiber is as big out there as everyone else is right now but should still be on the list.

It'll slowly be polled and released.

 

[drtweak]

As i agree with you on the bootloader thing (which honestly almost all US carries do. At least the big ones like Verizon and ATT) this is about INTERNET NOT CELL SERVICE.

Not true. T-Mobile and Spring does unlocked bootloaders now. Verizon and AT&T does the same. But what pissed me off is that they should be allowing unlocks after the device gets off their network.

this is about INTERNET NOT CELL SERVICE.

I guess... But my point is the quality of their service using the cell service as part of the example.

Also I only see two people on here. WTH? Where is Comcast? TW? ATT? Charter (or what ever it is called now). I know Toms is know for making stuff like this and NOT including EVERYTHING. As one person said what about google fiber? Well google fiber is as big out there as everyone else is right now but should still be on the list.

It'll slowly be polled and released.

I haven't heard of Verizon letting people unlock their Bootloaders.

Unlocking a Bootloader and unlocking it for us on another network are TWO TOTALLY different things.

The new samsung phones, at least last time i checked, will be bricked if you unlock the bootloader.

I have the Motorola Droid Turbo which just recently got a Bootloader unlock thanks to a man name JCase who is HUGE is the Android Developement world. Verizon for sure is trying to lock ALL of their bootloaders down because they do NOT want 3rd party Firmware on their. Having an unlocked bootloader means access to root which they do not want. It allows people with unlimited data to use teathering and other things. I don't know of any US Carrier that is like "Yea sure unlock your bootloader". They all want them locked down.

And as far as their quality of services. You won't see me on any other carrier as of right now lol

 

[okcnaline]

Verizon SHOULD at least let the phones that are off contract to unlock bootloader... And Jcase is only able to unlock phones with OSes under 4.4.4.

 

[drtweak]

Well ever since 5.0 unlocking bootloaders have become next to impossible for a lot of devices especially Verizon devices.

 

[jimmysmitty]

How the **** did Verizon get top notch scores?!!! Their phone bootloader unlock policy and dirty CS practices should make them the worst!!!

Wrong Verizon. This is Landline, you are thinking of Wireless. Two different companies under the same Verizon umbrella. Their actions have no affects on Landline. Did you notice that Landline has no data cap? Well they do but it is pretty insane:

http://tinyurl.com/na82e7w

And that wasn't the cap. The guy just used that much.

I remember working for the tech support for Landline. Wish I had it here. The consistent speeds and fiber based system is years beyond the best cable company. Even Coxs Gigablast is still just fiber to the hub then coax to the homes and shared.

 

[MSCHEIN]

fios is epic. yeah its costs to much, but its never ever down the speeds are always reliable there is no other service available that come close. Sure id love some google fiber but no one can even get it. fios charges waaay to much for tv