Verizon

Verizon Outage Hits Clarendon/Courthouse Area

By ARLnow.com

(Updated at 8:35 p.m.) Hundreds of Verizon landline phone and DSL internet customers in the Courthouse/Clarendon area may be without service after two underground cables were accidentally cut.

According to Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell, a contractor taking a soil sample in the area of Fairfax Drive and N. Barton Street cut through a pair of large underground cables containing 4,500 copper lines. Of those, about 1,600 active lines that carry phone and internet service are affected, Mitchell said.

A tipster tells us the soil sample was being taken in the county’s Rocky Run Park on Monday afternoon, and that Verizon crews have been “working all day and night… since about 9:00 p.m. Monday night.” Entire office buildings in Clarendon have lost phone service, according to another tipster.

Mitchell confirmed that crews are working in two 12-hour shifts to repair the lines. They’ve reached the cables — 20 feet below ground — but are now beginning the “very labor intensive” process of splicing all 1,600 lines together.

Service will gradually be restored to customers “over the next several days,” Mitchell said. Customers affected by the outage are asked to call 1-800-VERIZON or go to www.verizon.com/repair to report it.

Verizon Strike Hits Home for Ballston Condo Dwellers

By ARLnow.com

The strike by Verizon’s landline workers has hit close to home for residents of one Ballston condominium building.

According to a tipster, the Ballston Park Condominiums building at 1050 N. Stuart Street has lost its landline phone service, and no one from Verizon has been available to fix it. The outage has affected residents’ ability to call 911, use the emergency phone system in the elevators and buzz people into the building, according to the tipster.

“Our building manager called Verizon and notified them that this is an emergency situation,” the tipster wrote. “They said they will try and get someone out tomorrow but could be as late as next week some time.”

We called the building management office for confirmation and, unsurprisingly, it went straight to a call waiting system.

Have your phones been affected by the strike?

Verizon and Comcast Reps Respond to Poll

By ARLnow.com

One thing Comcast and Verizon certainly excel at it knowing when people are writing about them on the internet.

In a poll we conducted yesterday, nearly three quarters of respondents rated their overall experience with Comcast “poor” or “very, very bad.” The comments section generally reflected the same sentiment.

In the article that accompanied the poll, we also mentioned Verizon’s FiOS service, saying that it helps protect consumers by giving them a viable alternative to cable.

Within just a few hours of the article being published, representatives from both Comcast and Verizon called and emailed us and left notes in the comments section.

Comcast, to their credit, was solely concerned with looking into the frustrating personal experiences with customer service that were mentioned in the article and in the comments. Kudos to them for that.

Verizon, unsurprisingly, appreciated our words of support for the continued expansion of FiOS service into local apartment and condo buildings.

Local Verizon sales manager Mark Harrington said he personally agreed that “any service provider, including Verizon, has been shown to be more responsive where there is the real option of being fired by our customers.” He shared the following information and advice for anyone who would like to get FiOS service in their community.

We’re trying to get to as much of Arlington as quickly as we can with our Verizon FiOS service. If you live in a condo or apartment building… I generally advise residents to make their voices heard with their board or property manager and have those people contact us.

We’ve reached out to every property we can and have successfully built out many at Verizon’s expense, but with others we have not yet, either because the owners have not yet granted permission, we haven’t been able to contact them, or in some cases we are still working on the fiber build to reach a few areas of Arlington.

Our website with more information for property owners is here…

http://communities.verizon.com/default.aspx?page=ownmulti

Morning Poll: No More White Pages?

By ARLnow.com

How about this for an environmentally-friendly proposition:

A company says it can save 1,600 tons of paper each year by discontinuing a free publication that only 11 percent of recipients actually use.

That company is Verizon, and the publication is all local White Pages directories in Virginia. The company placed an official notice in the Virginia edition of the Washington Post classifieds today, announcing that it’s lobbying the state for permission to stop sending out residential phone books. The Yellow Pages would still be printed.

What do you think?