Why I'm no longer a Verizon subscriber...

Dear Verizon,

Go fuck yourselves.

So, this weekend, I see a commercial you’re running telling me I can “double my internet speed” for “just a few extra bucks a month” by signing up for something called FIOS Quantum.

Thanks, assholes. Thanks for that. You’re about to lose a customer. Here’s why.

When I signed up for your service, you told me I was getting the fastest internet service in existence. Your ads and your paperwork said this so often that you convinced me this was fact. Despite the God-awful outsourced customer service that came with your DSL internet, I bought your entire package—including your premium FIOS TV service and a landline I never use. And although I know your wireless service is unrelated, I’m contracted with you for multiple cell phones—for which you also constantly tell me you’re providing the best service in the world, despite having some sort of bullshit computer glitch that calls my landline on the first of every month telling me a balance is due immediately, even though my payment date is always the 15^th. Assholes. Stop that.

Verizon, I can go two ways with this. The first way is the car company model, which is good for you. Let’s say I buy a 2012 Ferrari and drive it for a year. When Ferrari makes improvements to their 2013 models, they’re not obligated to give me a new car for free simply because it’s faster and better than the one I already have. Even though a car is a good, as opposed to a service, you’ll probably use a similar defense to justify offering me this new and improved service at an additional cost. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. This justification makes perfect sense.

But, see, when you’re offering a service, as opposed to a good, what you’re doing, to me, is in bad faith. You essentially sold me the “best service in the world,” but instead of taking my level of service and improving it, you improved it on a parallel plane, where my “best service” is now only half as good as this inaccessible-to-me “best, best service,” for which you’re asking me to pay extra. You took the so-called “best service” and left it exactly the same—to the point where it’s no longer the “best service” and you’re offering something else that you’re saying is twice as good.

So how, as a loyal customer of yours for years now, does this benefit me? Years ago, I started out as a DSL guy. When you told me you had this FIOS shit, I upgraded and let you staple wires all over my fucking floors and walls. One of your technicians even mounted that big white box on the outside of a house I was renting, and it took me nearly a month to get you fuckers back there to install it in the garage—where it was supposed to go in the first place. I’ve done this with you multiple times in multiple places, convinced—by you—that your service was the absolute best I could get. I came to you looking for the best, and that’s what you promised me, but instead of improving my service and keeping “the best” the best, you’re now telling me I have to pay extra for the privilege of still having “the best.”

I don’t even care whether I’m right or wrong. My first instinct as a longtime customer of yours, when I saw your new FIOS Quantum commercial, was to become enraged. Your Quantum service is like one of those rule-bending things that happen in courtrooms and sporting arenas all the time where people say, “What that guy did wasn’t technically outside the lines of decorum, but it didn’t make him any friends.” I can’t think of any good examples right now, but I heard someone say that the other day, and it applies perfectly here.

What you’re doing here isn’t unethical or against the rules in any way, but it’s bullshit, and I don’t want to be your customer any longer.

Nice knowing you, dicks.

Robert