Verizon once again....

planner

.............. ?
Sep 23, 2002
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Well once again we are having HUGE service issues in the Puerto Plata area.

Cell phones - dropped calls, no access to voice mail, text messages not being relayed.

Land lines - no access to voice mail.

Internet - connections being dropped routinely, the speed you pay for is not necessarily the speed you get.

Over the past weekend it appeared to be as bad as I had seen it in some time. Tuesday I was in Cabarete on business - I called business lines, Verizon cell phones, Orange cell phones - I made at least 60 attempts to reach someone and could not get thruough anywhere!

What the heck is up with Verizon???

Are the problems widespread???

Today I have internet (sometimes) but my neighbours have none. It appears the cell phones are working but I wonder for how long..........
 

Andy B

Bronze
Jan 1, 2002
774
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www.elmarinique.com
Here in Las Galeras we also had problems the past 3 days starting with one of our lines going dead and the internet service going to h-ll. This is the 4th or 5th time in the past 6 months this has happened and although the technico won't tell me, and by the way he is a rude person, from the way the laptop acted and what I heard on the line while it was dialing was a dead giveaway that a piece of equipment at the toll room (local exchange equipment room) went down. You could hear it die. The last time this happened about a month ago we were without our second line for 10 days. You should have heard the runaround I got when calling service in Santo Domingo.

I think they are not spending a peso on anything that is not ultra critical while the sale to the Mex tel company is pending. It's obvious its a case of maximize last minute profit. With an Orange tower not 100 yards away from us I'm starting to get tempted to consider telling Verizon where to put it.
 

Robert

Stay Frosty!
Jan 2, 1999
20,574
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dr1.com
I think it's called applying pressure over the tax issue. I hear they blocked all calls to Orange phones for a while last week.
 

jrf

Bronze
Jan 9, 2005
1,020
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I'm sorry I forget-who are the providers there for internet. Thought it was just verizon anyway.
Scarry
 

planner

.............. ?
Sep 23, 2002
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Thanks Robert. That would make sense. I also was told that they were not putting any more money into anything they could ignore for awhile! It is frustrating.
 

MrMike

Silver
Mar 2, 2003
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www.azconatechnologies.com
I have recently (This month) opened two new business accounts with Verizon and got the internet Flash.

One of the accounts I applied for manually by going down to the office and the other I talked to one of their business reps (Wilton Fermin) and had him set up the contract.

The one I applied for manually got set up with phone service right away (within 2 days) but it took over a month to get the internet installed.

Finally turned out that they didn't have any of the "good" Cisco routers that are supposed to come with the premium service and tried to change my work order to give me a crappy little speedstream. (Which works fine btw) a month later when they came to install with a speedstream modem I refused to sign the receiver for the crappy modem and so the tech told me he couldn't leave it with me. I said fine, I'll go down to the office and buy my own for 1200 pesos and you'll still owe me the expensive router.

I did exactly that and it works fine. A few days later they delivered the Cisco but the speedstream is working so well. I haven't bothered to switch them.

The other account was handled by a this Wilton guy and he had his own way around the issue which was fairly frustrating but it got the job done.

I told Wilton about 5 times that I wanted their fastest DSL service, 1.5 up and 764 down. He said "sure no problem" ten when he brought me the contract he was kind of in a hurry so I signed it real quick (without going over it with a fine-tooth comb) and he ran off.

The very next day they installed phone and internet practically simultaneously but again they showed up with a crappy speedstream router. I started making a fuss and called Wilton's cell phone. He said "check the contract you signed" and surprise surprise, he had bait-and-switched me into signing a request for a slower service that does not qualify for the better router.

I accepted that I have been scammed, and was not too upset because I realize he did it in the interest of getting me connected right away, if I had signed for the better service I might have waited a month for it because Verizon has a shortage of those routers in the country right now.

What really got me ****ed was when I tried to ping to check my latency from the new connections and pretty much everything timed out.

I called customer service and was told that PINGING HAS BEEN DISABLED ON A NATIONAL ISP LEVEL. I could not believe it. I asked HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF LATENCY I AM GETTING? I was told "if you want to know you speed, download a file and see how long it takes, we don't support VOIP."

This is really wierd. I still cannot ping anything from my two new Verizon connections, but my older ones can, with identical hardware.

In any case the service has been pretty good, frustrations aside.

On the bright side, the latency actually seems to be pretty good, though I don't have any way of knowing HOW good.
 

Chris

Gold
Oct 21, 2002
7,951
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www.caribbetech.com
I called customer service and was told that PINGING HAS BEEN DISABLED ON A NATIONAL ISP LEVEL. I could not believe it. I asked HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF LATENCY I AM GETTING? I was told "if you want to know you speed, download a file and see how long it takes, we don't support VOIP."

Pinging is disabled eh? Crazy ... How does a tech get his work done without being able to ping?
 

MrMike

Silver
Mar 2, 2003
2,586
100
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www.azconatechnologies.com
Well that was my question, and the guy I talked to was too pig-headed to understand the difference between bandwidth and latency. He kept saying "download a file if you want to know how fast it is". The thing is he knew I was setting up a call center and wanted it clear that he wasn't going to help me with that.

I have since heard conflicting stories about whether the Ping ban is true or not, but it still works from my house (Verizon) and doesn't work from either of my 2 offices (also Verizon)
 

Chirimoya

Well-known member
Dec 9, 2002
17,850
982
113
My volume of spam has increased ten-fold overnight. Can I blame it on Verizon or is it a question of my e-mail address having fallen into the wrong hands through something I did, like not ticking the opt out box?
 

Squat

Tropical geek in Las Terrenas
Jan 1, 2002
2,239
168
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Las Terrenas : Verizon is fast, no problem whatsoever (I am touching wood). I don't use the landline except for the internet-flash...
All our cell phones are Orange, but sometimes the network is down... Orange behaves funny...

To answer the matter of receiving more spam : indeed, all my emails (yahoo, hotmail, gmail) are flooded, but the webmail filters are doing a good job of separating spam and good emails. I would say that Yahoo & Gmail are doing an outstanding job, versus Hotmail, which confuses often a good email for spam and vice-versa... I almost never use my Verizon email account, so I can't comment.

But spam seems to increase worldwide, according to every other folks I have been talking to...

:)
 
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Chris

Gold
Oct 21, 2002
7,951
28
0
www.caribbetech.com
I have since heard conflicting stories about whether the Ping ban is true or not, but it still works from my house (Verizon) and doesn't work from either of my 2 offices (also Verizon)

Well, if you want to pm me the ip's, I would be happy to ping you :knockedou and send you the results - if anything comes back. I've just pinged a dsl router we have at a customer in La Vega and the pings come back.
 

Chirimoya

Well-known member
Dec 9, 2002
17,850
982
113
I use Gmail and used to receive maybe 3 to 6 spam messages overnight. This morning there were 40!
 

anitaemma

New member
Aug 25, 2006
134
4
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Can anyone explain me howcome it seems that often the original spam post has been send from my own address and couple of weeks later I receive it like an answer ??????