Along with countless people, my email account with Verizon has been down for two days now. I have spent a lot of time on the phone in India talking with people who have absolutely no ability to do anything except tell me that I am talking to the wrong people.

My problem is that I have dialup Internet service with Verizon, and they aren't set up to provide technical support for dialup, but they won't admit it. Sure, they give you a voicemail option to press for dialup, but it makes absolutely no difference; your call gets put on hold and is automatically placed in the same pool as high speed customers. Which means that after a considerable wait, you will get someone in India who will tell you that his job is to answer the phone and provide technical support for high speed and not dialup. He will then give you the dialup number (which is of course the same number you called) and tell you to select the dialup option). I did this repeatedly. Of course, on two of the occasions, I was dropped after being on hold. (I suspect they enjoy doing that at random.) And when finally I did get through, I was told that there is an system-wide email outage problem which would be resolved by 6:00 p.m. last night.

Well guess what? It wasn't!

To say that there is no accountability would be understatement. This company does not even reach the state of even theoretical accountability. It is pure bureaucratic anarchy, run amok.

Fortunately, I'm still online (I don't have Verizon as my Internet service provider), and as Verizon email has been down for two days now, it occurred to me to Google the news sites. Sure enough, the problem is bad enough to have been written up as a story.

If you are a Verizon user, you might be wondering what has happened with your Verizon email. Well, at the time of writing, it seems many people are reporting Verizon email problems, being unable to sign in to their account due to time out.

Verizon has used their Twitter account to let their users know they are aware of the problem and working on it:

"Some Verizon Online customers are unable to access email today. We are working to isolate and resolve this problem"

UPDATE!! Verizon apparently has resolved the problem, in the Twitter account they posted:

"Verizon Online email access completely restored at www.verizon.net"

Is the problem resolved for you?

No, of course the problem is not resolved, and Verizon damned well knows it. At least, someone, somewhere at Verizon knows it. The company is so large that there is absolutely no accountability anywhere. They lie by rote and there is no way to call them on it. They are not people, they have no titles, they have no country, and there is no there there. Almost reminds me of the golden days of The Telephone Company:

...you're dealing with the telephone company. We are not subject to city, state, or federal legislation. We are omnipotent.

No more. Now they won't admit to anything being broken. Instead, they issue official lies, and only if you go through an elaborate ritual called technical "support" might you be lucky enough to glean an admission that something is wrong.

Not that they're fooling anyone. The commenters certainly know.

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joan says:
April 21, 2010 at 3:11 pm

Nope. Webmail is back - sometimes but not e-mail. 7 pm east coast - just live chatted and they said they are still working on it
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joan says:
April 22, 2010 at 4:51 am

8:51 a.m. east coast - still not working.
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joan says:
April 22, 2010 at 5:01 am

Just called and got a recording: There is an e-mail outage in your area. We are committed to resolving the problem by Friday April 23.

YIKES.

I can't be sure, but I did find the Official Lie here, and as Twitters are notorious for disappearing, I thought I would take a screen shot.

Not that this would in any way hold them accountable, for I know such a thing is impossible. But because I think it's actually funny to see an official corporate lie on Twitter. I also think it's funny to read that my email has been "completely restored." (And I find it especially touching that even though they apparently can't fix their email service, and have to lie about it, they're still not too busy to wish their customers a Happy Earth Day!)

In what was a sort of mini-triumph this morning, I managed to get an online chat person to make an admission of sorts:

there is an outage going on in Verizon so please wait until it is resolved.

I saved my chat room dialogue for those who are into such kinky things, and if you're interested, you can read it below.

UPDATE: Just got an email from a friend:

no wonder some of my emails to you failed! What a nightmare.

MORE: The Examiner has a story of the outage too. It's major.

Verizon DSL customers across the country, including here in New York, are reporting an email outage. POP access is down completely. It appears the servers have crashed. Webmail access is sporadic at best and even the Verizon.net page is having load issues.

AND MORE: Bad as this is, it only underlines how much worse things could be, as Glenn Reynolds explains in this book review.

AND EVEN MORE: If this mess sounds familiar, it is.

As a report from last year illustrates, it's
nothing new!

Yep, it looks like their server crashed and died! As I am a Verizon customer myself I called their tech support to find out what the story was. The rep insisted everything was fine and blamed it on my computer. Uh, no don't think so. When your website is telling people there's no server to connect to, you have definite problems!

As of 6:30am EDT POP mail was restored while website access is intermittent at best. Slow, poorly formatted pages alternate with the APACHE failure message quoted above. Mail on the POP side is trickling in and is delayed. Users up and down the East Coast have been flooding DSLReports.com with outage reports, so the problem seems to be fairly widespread.

Mail and server outages seem to be a fairly regular occurrence these days yet Verizon refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the downtime. The last update on their System Status page is from January. What gives, Verizon? Why don't you want to communicate with your customers?

UPDATE (Friday, April 23, 2010): Email is still down, there is an interminable waiting period for customer support and the Verizon chat line people say they have no idea how long it will last. From my earlier chat this morning:

Chat Subject: Other
Your Question: For three days I have been unable to access my email, and unable to login. It will not accept my password, and when I try to reset, I get this: "The tool is currently unavailable."
A Verizon eCenter Representative will be with you shortly. Thank you. (10:04:07)
Agent Kayci has joined. (10:04:07)
Kayci : Chat ID for this session is 04231027682. (10:04:07)
Kayci(10:04:32): Hello. Thank you for visiting our chat service. I will be happy to help you today.
Eric Scheie(10:04:38): Helo
Eric Scheie(10:05:17): No email for three days. It's a problem.
Kayci(10:05:52): I apologize, the POP server has gone down and Tech Support is aware of this issue. You can call them directly at 800/567-6789 if you would like further information. There is not an estimated time that this issue will be resolved.
Eric Scheie(10:06:26): I called four times, and I don't want to call them again. How long should I wait?
Kayci(10:06:51): We do not have an estimated time of repair, I apologize.
Eric Scheie(10:07:04): OK thanks, I realize this is not your fault.
Kayci(10:07:29): You are welcome, and again, I apologize for this inconvenience.
Eric Scheie(10:07:50): OK, I'll just keep checking. Thanks. Signing off now.

That's progress.

UPDATE (April 24, 2010): After being told this morning that the problem was solved, my email still didn't work, and I was still unable to login, it would not accept my password, nor could I delete or change the password. So I called tech support again, and they were able to change my password account and bring my account back. Which means the problem is solved for now. Thank God.