FIOS is coming to town. I remember a few years ago when I first heard about this Verizon project. I said immediately that when they bring fiber to my house I will definitely climb on board. Last week we got an offer to switch to FIOS. I compared the costs with what we pay now, and sure enough we will save between $40 and $50 a month.
There has been a lot of talk on the internet about problems from FIOS, but it seems to be dying down. I have read a lot of great reviews over the past few days which has lead me to order the service. They are at my house now doing the installation. In this and perhaps one or two more posts I will talk about the experience and hopefully give a review of the service which may help others make decisions in the future.
I called Verizon on Monday to discuss the offer we got in the mail. The offer was for $89.99 per month on a one year contract. This would include Phone, Internet and Television (bundled with our existing cell service on the same bill). Sounds good so far. The woman on the phone told me that we would actually get $15 extra off per month because we were doing what they call the Quad Play (bundling everything on the same bill) and we will get a $150 per-paid Visa card, 3 months free home media DVR service ($19.99 per month after). The sales rep said she would call me back the next day so I could talk it over with Marsha.
Next morning, I get no call back. I was not yet ready to order anyway, as I had a few questions. I needed to know what the costs would be after the 1 year contract was up, will we get to keep our current email addresses (from Verizon DSL service) and how does this all work if we have a power failure. So I call back and get a different woman on the phone. She tells me that the first person got the costs a bit wrong. The regular cost for this is $99.99 but we will get $15 off per month for doing the Quad Play so that brings us down to $84.99. A little more than before, but still ok. The great thing is that this is a one year contract BUT a two year guarantee in pricing, so after the first year we will still get the same rate without being tied to the contract. If they come up with a better plan, we will be able to switch with no penalty. We still get the three months free on the DVR and the $150 Viso card, so all total a decent deal.
After deciding with Marsha that we will do this later that night, I went online to order there, and found that by placing the order online, I get an additional $5 off per month for 12 months! Not bad. So I order and I find that they can come on Thursday (today) to install! Very fast! I placed the order and then called them the next day to tell them that the 8am – 5 pm block of time is a problem because no one can be at our house between 8 and 11 most days. The person I spoke to called the installation department and they said that they will come at 11 and be able to start working on the outside of the house first, so that by the time Marsha gets home at noon we should be good to go.
I can only assume that they are working on it now. The installation process has them removing the copper cables to our house and running new fiber form the street to our house. When I called home a short while ago, I did not get our answering machine so I believe they are working. We did have Verizon answer call as well which is their voice mail. I had recorded an outgoing message there which was now gone, so I am not sure what is happening, but when it is all over later I am sure we will figure it all out.
So now I just wait. Tomorrow I will post on the rest of the install experience and what happens right after that.