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Mac Forum / General / Networking / December 2005Verizon Hates Macs! and Senior Citizens!
Here is my problem (our problem as a country also) my 80yr old Mom is having nightmares with her Verizon DSL hook up - these morons (many! of them in the US and India) have been running her in circles for four+ months! resetting - every setting, each time! and giving new passwords etc bouncing her 30min at a time round and round. I can't believe how rude these people are! and how little they know (and can get away with) about The Mac. She calls me crying saying she is at her whits end with trying to hook it up. This Infuriates Me!! I want to punch Verizon is its corporate collective face.═ All i wanted was to help her research my fathers cancer sickness online and to send her some happy pictures from California - Betty is in Westchester NY. I have tried many times over the phone to get the settings right but to no avail. Granted she is not a computer wiz but she is no dummy, graduating═valedictorian of a NYC High School she is very very sharp. I guess its time to bag the DSL but it has worked═intermittently which makes the process so═frustrating. I saw that someone had mentioned some piece of hardware between the mac and the router which helps it recognize the address better - is this the route of the problem with Verizon DSL and an IMac 1gig running OSX 10.3.9.or is there some other solution? God knows Verizon will never get a soul and actually care about an 80yr. old women trying to help her husband in his last years! I wish i could help her however I'm 3000 miles away and have no way of setting it up for her. Got any ideas how i can straighten this out? Without going postal on Verizon. :censored: * posted via http://www.mymac.ws * please report abuse to http://xinbox.com/mymac > Here is my problem (our problem as a country also) my 80yr old Mom > is having nightmares with her Verizon DSL hook up - these morons [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > Got any ideas how i can straighten this out? Without going postal on > Verizon. I'm not sure how one person's difficulty in getting their DSL line to work is "our problem as a country", however... Try finding a Mac User Group near her. They're usually quite helpful and familiar with local issues such as what it takes to get DSL working around there. You can find one at <http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/>.  SignatureTom "Tom" Harrington Macaroni, Automated System Maintenance for Mac OS X. Version 2.0: Delocalize, Repair Permissions, lots more. See http://www.atomicbird.com/ > Betty is in > Westchester NY. I have tried many times over the phone to get the [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > never get a soul and actually care about an 80yr. old women trying > to help her husband in his last years! First, Verizon's DSL connections have a history of going fluey, especially in parts of NY. With OSX it is possible to go from the DSL modem direct to the OSX Mac. There is no need for a router. If she were on OS 9 I'd say that the router would help but only with respect to certain logon functions and because Verizon no longer supports Mac OS 9. However that never stopped me. Unlike Windows systems, Macs are different and require some assistance in getting hooked up. Verizon's main problem is that its telephony division and internet division are not allowed to talk to each other by law (yes that is stupid but I didn't make the laws). If she is getting voice comminications OK then the voice side is satisfied that it works. if the internet side can 'see' her DSL modem and it says per their tests that it is working OK, then the DSL side is satisfied. They are under no obligation what so ever to make it work with your computer. That is the end user's responsibility. Presuming you can get someone that can talk Mac OS X then maybe that person can perform a courtesy to walk them through it. For one thing, are all the pigtail filters in place? Did you ask? Are there any cheap foreign-make telephones connected to the lines? That can also foul things up. Did she boot the DSL modem first and wait for the green lights then boot the Mac in that order? I can appreciate the frustration but as it stands there is an insufficient amount of information here for a seasoned Verizon DSL user to try to help. > > Betty is in > > Westchester NY. I have tried many times over the phone to get the [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > insufficient amount of information here for a seasoned Verizon DSL > user to try to help. I had only a bit of trouble and a few frustrating days setting up Verizon DSL on a couple of Macs at two different locations and phone lines. Let me say a few things. Computer literacy and computer fluency do not have a direct relationship to academic skills or I.Q. nor are the directly related to age, although there are indications that there are more than casual relationships. I did alright in high school myself, but I'm three quarters your mother's age and I find many of my contemporaries have had a hard time learning to use a computer. A neighbor, your mother's age, has used a computer as a graphics professional and still has problems with every program that's not photoshop or Quark. Verizon's service is bare minimal, but a dozen times as good as it was when it was Bell Atlantic and I tried to deal with them. My guess is that they moved tech support to India since I set up my computer. At that time it was hard to reach the Mac support team. For some dumb reason they wouldn't give out the direct number. Sometimes, I just got a guy who read from the manual and who I was sure never saw a Mac. At other times, I got a real pro. It was the luck of the draw. I go directly from their Westel router, which is wireless as well. I've got three Macs networked via this router. Two are runniing OS 10.4, but were originally hooked up with OS 10.3. The other is running 8.6 in a near zombie state, except when I use my SCSI scanner. It also serves my non-networkable printer via some Apple bridge software whose name I forget. I live in Manhattan. I don't know how much worse service is in Westchester. > Got any ideas how i can straighten this out? Without going postal on > Verizon. I had very good luck with Verizon in Massachusetts, but then I know Mac and I know system management. So it's not systemic in Verizon. Is it possible for your mom to use a cable broadband service instead? SignatureA few minutes ago I attempted to give a flying fsck, but the best I could do was to watch it skitter across the floor. (Anthony de Boer) Anti-Verizon flame / hoax? Typical syntax, at any rate. And how moving, this old lady trying to save her cancerous husband... What DSL company do you work for? -- Fjordur |
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