I am currently on the 100/100Mbps plan and have no complaints, but while I was upgrading my router I decided to explore a speed upgrade. My ONT is on the interior of the house and my Verizon gateway sits about three feet away. It was connected with coax and in order to upgrade to my new Ubiquiti wireless system, I had to switch the connection over to ethernet. Chatted with tech support, they did the ONT port switch and I was then able to switch over to my new non-Verizon router. No problems and they told me I was all set for a speed upgrade.
Tech support transferred me back to sales (customer support) where I was informed after price negotiation that my gigabit plan upgrade absolutely required an on-site tech visit. Why I asked. To change out the coax connection on my ONT. After trying to explain that this was already done, I was informed the "system" would not let an upgrade happen without a tech appointment. The rep offered me a $100 gift card to offset the cost, I agreed but was still frustrated I would have to wait a week for the appointment (my busy schedule to blame).
After the chat had ended, I took another look at my order confirmation and found that the gift card was a Verizon Wireless gift card that I would get about 3 months after my new service started. This led to another chat session.
This time I went back to tech support and went through the whole setup again. Once again, I was told I was good to go, the provisioning just had to be done on the back end, but there was no need for a tech visit. "Let me just transfer you over to customer support to finalize the work order." That's when it all ground to a halt again.
Customer support once again told me I needed a $100 tech visit, but I was lucky, it was normally $150. I asked why again. This time the rep tried to tell me my ONT was the old BPON style which was not capable of gigabit speeds. Wrong, because I had already checked the model against Verizon's hardware list and it is the newer GPON style. No change needed. Time to escalate, I asked for a supervisor. I was informed the supervisor was unable to do anything to change the situation, but I still waited.
The supervisor was sympathetic, but in the end was more interested in finding out if it was true the previous rep had really not told me about the 90-day wait on the gift card. As far as the disparity between what tech support and the customer service team were telling me, he said their tech support people usually have a better grasp on what is going on, but the system is designed to work for the customer who is not knowledgeable about networking. Who is the customer ordering gigabit service that doesn't know about networking?
So after hours (yes, hours) of chatting with Verizon, I still have an appointment scheduled for next week where I can wait for a tech to pretty much do nothing. The ONT connection is done. The tech isn't going to work on my non-Verizon router. I'll be out $100 for 90 days or so, but it mainly the loss of time and frustration at being lied to that has me truly disappointed in Fios since I got the service 5 years ago.