Verizon FiOS modem replacement — way slow!!

I’ve had some of my customers ask me about whether they should switch to Verizon FiOS from Comcast.  I posted a comparison earlier.

Today I got a phone call from a customer that their internet was down.  She told me the only light on the Verizon FiOS Actiontec modem (MI424WR) was the power light.  I had her pull the power and the plug it back in, but then no lights came on.

I went on-site and found the the power adapter/transformer for the modem had a green light and it was blinking.  I didn’t have my multimeter on me, but decided this was a bad sign.  I called the FiOS support line.  It was fully automated asking me what my problems were.  When asked whether the lights came back on for the modem, I replied, “no.”  It then told me it would have someone call me back and disconnected.  Disgusted, I went on the hunt for a power adapter to replace the original.  I went to Radio Shack first.  He looked at it and immediately said they didn’t have any as high as 5 Amps and that he had my customers come in looking for FiOS modem adapters and he knew they didn’t have any.

Undeterred, I went to Batteries Plus, a very cool battery store that is usually very helpful.  They didn’t have any power adapters, except for laptops and cell phones.  I then went to Home Depot, but I didn’t come close there either.  When I got back to the customer’s site, I plugged in the adapter again, and the light stayed solid this time.  I plugged it into the modem and most of the lights came on, but the power was amber, not green, and I couldn’t get any of the 4 LAN ports to light up, so I decided the modem was fried.

I called FiOS support, and this time the automated system said I had an open trouble ticket and that it would transfer to an agent.  It then disconnected me.  Nice.  I called again, went through all the prompts again and talked to a real person.  That person couldn’t figure out what kind of trouble ticket was setup, he hadn’t seen an automated ticket like it before.  He said he would ship out a replacement modem and we would have it by Saturday.  Wait — it’s Tuesday.  I insisted that I needed it faster — how about overnight shipping?  Nope.  How about going to a store?  He suggested calling a Verizon Wireless store.   I called the closest store and they didn’t stock modems at all, but suggested calling the Pittsburgh FiOS office.  I called there and they  didn’t have any either.  She comforted me by telling me that the Support folks would ship it to me within 2 or 3 days.  I told her that I could go pick up a Comcast modem immediately if I wanted and with FiOS I had to wait 2-3 days??

With Comcast, they will usually send a technician the next day to replace your modem.  Verizon will ship you a modem in 2-3 days and you have the privilege of doing it yourself!

UPDATE 11/10/08: Verizon did ship out an A/C adapter only.  When it arrived, it was an empty bubble mailer.  Nice.  I called about that, the tech told me that I don’t even need the modem/router, that I could just plug directly into the computer.  WHY DIDN’T THE OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME THAT!  My customer actually used a router behind the FiOS router, so I just ditched the Verizon router anyway.  All that pain for nothing.  The Verizon router did come a few days later and I shipped the old one back.

In one more interesting twist, a member of my family has the same router and they received an unsolicited AC adapter from Verizon for that router.  It included a letter:  (I will scan and attach)