Oddly I find myself today (and yesterday) on the customer side of a Data Unavailability situation and it seemed to good an opportunity not to reflect upon it. Unlike much of what I write about, I don't know what the "true" story is. In some ways that makes it easier to write - as someone with some amount of inside knowledge I have to be very mindful to be respectful of company secrets and proprietary information. On the other hand, it's somewhat frustrating as it is both an annoyance to me in that it's stopping me from doing something I want to do and also because I'd really like to know what is going on.
Anyway, some background. I'm a techie. I love cycling through new phones, notebooks, tablets, etc. when finances allow and I've gotten good at navigating Gazelle, eBay, Amazon, etc. when it comes to selling my gently used gadgets to get the newest stuff. On the other hand my wife, while far from a technophobe, is perfectly content running a device into the ground, getting every bit of use out of it and upgrading only when she has a genuine need to do so. (Hmm, she's coming out a lot smarter than me...)
Anyways, my wife had finally reached the point that she was finding her phone, a Motorola Droid Razr Max no longer meeting her needs. Given that I'm the family IT department, she gave me her requirements and I came up with a few phones that seemed right for her and she decided on upgrading to a Samsung Galaxy S5. So I went ahead and placed the order on Verizon, even splurging on overnight shipping.
(It's probably worth noting that despite my annoyance with Verizon right now, in general I've been happy with our service from Verizon Wireless - though if they really want to make it up to me they can open up to Nexus phones...)
So the phone arrives yesterday. We try to activate it but no luck. I call Verizon customer support and they tell me they are upgrading their systems and to try again in about an hour. No problem. But an hour later still no luck. Reading about other ways to activate a phone I see there's a way on My Verizon to do so. But then I discover that's not working either. (As you an see by the screen captures.) Some Googling reveals that this had been a problem since yesterday morning around 5 AM-ish. So it had been going on for over 14 hours by this point.
Next morning arrives. Still the same problem. And as I write this it's around 9:30 PM on day 2 of the outage. I did learn a bit more about what's going on, but mainly through pursuing Twitter and other sources - and not from Verizon, which has not issued any statements beyond a note after logging on to "My Verizon" that some services are currently unavailable and a pair of tweets issued quite recently....
We’re working to solve a billing system issue affecting our website & access to some accounts. We apologize for any inconvenience.
— VZW Support (@VZWSupport) June 27, 2014
We're aware customers in NE, MW & South may be exp issues w/ our billing systems. We have identified the issue & are working to resolve.
— Verizon Wireless (@VZWnews) June 28, 2014
The bad thing I've learned about the billing system being down, beyond the obvious inability to pay bills, is one cannot activate a new phone. Similarly people trying to put in insurance claims for broken phones are unable to verify they own Verizon phones.
On one hand, it's a First World Problem. For my family, it's a minor annoyance, delaying our ability to activate a shiny new phone. On the other hand, for some people it is proving a major inconvenience; such as those who use their Verizon phone as important parts of their personal or business lives and are unable to replace a broken phone or perform similar activities. And I've read it is agony on people trying to sell Verizon phones.
What I am observing from the outside is just how frustrating it is not knowing what's going on. Being unable to do what you've paid for (or to even make a payment) is frustrating enough. However, the lack of communication adds to the frustration. The latest tweet (indicating the issue has been identified) is a good communication but similar tweets should have been issued periodically - i.e. "we are working to identify the issue", "we have called in additional support", etc. - I understand there are certain things they are not at liberty to disclose but at the end of the day there is a certain responsibility to paying customers. Indeed it might not even be their "fault" in the sense that it may be an outside vendor's equipment which is failing (and if so I'm crossing fingers that it's nothing I've ever worked on in my career) but at the end of the day (well two days in this case) the service that they provide to their customers is compromised.
I'll also admit I'm super-curious what happened.
[Update - and the services are now back up.]
