Posted on 01/26/2010 7:24:47 AM PST by tcrlaf
Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. phone company, plans to cut more than 10,000 jobs at its fixed-line unit this year after posting fourth- quarter sales that missed analysts’ estimates.
The company plan to keep cuts at the same level as last year, when it reduced 13,000 positions, or about 9 percent of the unit’s workforce, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call today. The business had about 117,000 workers at year-end.
Sales rose 9.9 percent to $27.1 billion, missing the $27.3 billion average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue at Verizon’s fixed-line service dropped 3.9 percent, muting mobile- customer gains that beat some analysts’ projections. High unemployment hurt sales to companies and damped growth at Verizon’s FiOS Internet and TV service, said Christopher King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
“The economy, first and foremost, we really see no signs of improvement there,” said Baltimore-based King, who advises investors to buy the shares and doesn’t own any. “I would have expected to see a little bit more signs of stabilization in the fourth quarter.”
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
HEY OBAMA....CAN YOU HEAR US NOW ????!!!!
Sometimes I get good service from Verizon, or from Verizon wireless.
However, when something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong, they are horrendous.
I’ve spent hours being transferred around their phone tree back and forth to departments who keep telling you oh that’s not their area, they will transfer you to the right dept. Literally that can go on for hours. And yes, I yell at them etc and they promise this time it will be resolved, and it isn’t.
I said that I wouldn’t try their other services because of my experience with their wireless division. The actual wireless product is fine, it’s the customer service that is lacking. Maybe I’m old school, but customer service-the relationship with the person-is just as important as the actual product.
I have rarely had reason to contact Verizon concerning my service in the last 4 years. But, on those occasions, the interaction was very poor because of detached or unprepared staff. Their website-billing, etc.-is consistently so slow and antagonizing that I avoid visiting it at all costs. If they can’t get their website to function properly, why would I buy internet service from them?
That has always been a feast and famine job. 12+ hour days in the summer and 3 hour days in the winter. (down south) Just save for the lean months.
If he's not in the south, he needs to move there and if he does not have VoTech training, get it. There is no such thing as a good service tech being unemployed long. Failing that, start a company.
Just like Obama with the military, a down economy and Verizon does their job right with fewer people but misses a target of $27.3 billion by $200 million, and they punish the employees. Again. Something tells me the CFO should be taking a severe recession and dipstick at the helm into his estimates.
Just like Obama with the military, a down economy and Verizon does their job right with fewer people but misses a target of $27.3 billion by $200 million, and they punish the employees. Again. Something tells me the CFO should be taking a severe recession and dipstick at the helm into his estimates.
I’m glad that has been your experience. I’ve been with them for four years and I have yet to have a good experience with them, except when I’m buying something. They’re nice when they see dollar bills. When cash ain’t gonna flow, the reps have been unable and unfriendly. (I’m not one of those customers who goes over, then expects them to wave the charges, btw. I use about half of my minutes each month and I pay my bill on time.)
Our area only has the big black sign “Authorized Dealers”. As we were wrapping up my wife’s phone upgrade two weeks ago, I asked the rep if she had transferred the contact info. She said no, and that she could do it for $10. She said Verizon removed all but one transfer device in each store and that they were to encourage customers to do it themselves. That requires the old phone to be activated.
So, instead of taking 60 seconds to hook up the two devices and transferring the contacts directly, she had to call, reactivate my wife’s old phone, upload the contacts to Verizon’s website, hang up, then call again to reactivate my wife’s new phone a second time. That took her an extra 23 minutes.
When I got home I had to download my wife’s contacts via CSV from Verizon’s website to my computer, then transfer that file to her phone via USB. No problem for me. But, for people who are not initiated with transferring files, etc., the process is probably overwhelming and they’ll just give up and pay the fee. She gave me some “legal liability” issue with their new policy. Maybe that’s true, but it just ends up looking like another money grab for a service that should be included with the purchase (which was last year when I got a new phone).
Like I said before, Verizon’s cellular product has been better than AT&T’s GSM, but the customer service has been much, much worse. At least at AT&T I felt like they wanted me as a customer. I was with them for 6 years before Verizon. During that time my bill went from $40/month to $25/month, and I had more minutes than I get from Verizon now. They sent me a new phone free every 18 months and the customer service reps were always congenial on the phone. With great apprehension I moved to Verizon to get better coverage.
Anyway, that’s just one of my long-winded reasons for avoiding any of Verizon’s other products. I’m glad you’re happy with them. Maybe I should move to where you live.
I just added a line to my Verizon wireless plan for my son last month and was very careful to be sure the phone I got for him did not require a data plan. I actually got this phone at one of the Verizon 3rd party “dealers”.
Imagine my surprise when I got my first bill a couple of weeks ago and they charged me for a data plan on that new phone. I was FURIOUS! I called their customer support and they told me that data plans were required on that phone as of November 2009 and there was nothing he could do about it. He suggested I go back to the 3rd party dealer and see if they could give me a different phone!!!! I WAS PISSED! This phone was a birthday gift for my son and he absolutely loves the phone. After I gave this customer service guy the “what for” and had to listen to his weak excuse that they require it because too many people get burned by data usage on their new phones, I marched down to the local 3rd party Verizon dealer. The guy I bought the phone from actually remembered me and remembered the “no data plan” requirement I requested. He was PISSED at Verizon at that point. Long story short, he told me the Verizon CS Rep lied to me about the Nov. 2009 date and showed me the Verizon memo that said the phone required a data plan if purchased after January 18th, 2010!!! He got his Verizon Rep involved and I will be credited the billed data plan and the data plan will be removed from this phone. That’s why I go through this 3rd party dealer, they have great Customer Service whereas the Verizon guy lied through his teeth to me.
Based on what? Obama speeches?
Our landline here is ATT. (horrible service). Dropped them and went cable triple play - voice/Internet/TV.
Works great. Very rare internet outages.
Verizon wireless cellular has great coverage and network quality. Cust service is so so at best.
We will see.He is good.
Nah, they're just trying to find the unemployment office.
Here’s the problem with Verizon’s landline logic.
DSL works over those same lines and you can have the DSL without the landline. But they don’t count the rise in DSL revenue as landline revenue. So the workload remains static but they trim the force.
We don’t have landlines. No use in paying another $50 bill every month when cell phones do just fine.
I love Verizon Wireless. I’ve had here and there experiences with bad CSR’s, but I’ve had that with utility companies, banks, computer techs, Comcast folks...
The people at Verizon stores are about useless, but they are paid to sell you something or repair your phone. The customer service lines have always been efficient in answering my questions politely and are actually American.
Plus I just upgraded to an HTC Droid and LOVE it. They’ve definately upgraded their smart phones since iPhone has been out.
Couldn’t happen to a better company.
Why is it that hotmail is FREE, gives you all the space you could ever want/need, is easy to use, and is almost always up and running, yet VERIZON has a nightmare of a home page, is DOWN at least 10% of the time, limits your space AND CHARGES YOU OUT THE WAZZOO FOR THIS?
It’s because sales and service reps for telecoms switched from a per hour guaranteed wage to a leveraged wage. Then sales requirements were lumped in. Then on top of that they don’t monitor complaints over fraudulent sales activity because it causes reps to be too reluctant to lie.. oops I mean sell beyond the customers’ expectations.
They figure if they can lie just enough to sell you 5-10$ a month, you’ll accept it and they make their quotas. They then get to keep their job and perhaps make a few thousand more that year.
What’s really bad is how they outright steal and create orders whole cloth. I’ve seen cases where a customer had 5 or 6 orders for DSL because sales reps would hold the nae of a customer that ordered DSL before it was available. Then when it became available and realized that other reps had submitted the sale, they’d cancel the order and resubmit it. End result is the customer had conflicts in the ordering system which caused them to have problems right out of the gate. The reps who submitted it first lost their sales and the rep who got it last made a few bucks.
And management at the telecoms wonder why the field techs don’t want to become salesmen.
I had to call Verizon tech support for my DSL last month. I got cut off after going through about 7 minutes of the call (BEFORE reaching the tech in India), I called the 2nd time, the tech began troubleshooting, put me on hold, and the next thing I know, I was transferred to a phone sex line! I phoned the next day to the billing dept, and they credited me for a month of free service (I’ve been a DSL customer for 8 years).
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