I worked for their DSL tech support for 2.5 yrs, actually understood networking and telephony, and was hated by management because I would actually do what the customer needed and not lie to them. I learned how to read the results of testing the DSL line and what kinds of issues that meant, and was told that I couldn't use any of that info to determine course of action without talking to a supervisor. If I tried to get a supervisor to sign off on something based on actual knowledge and testing I would get shot down, they would only sign off if the Verizon Methods and Procedures documentation tells them to, because if they get caught doing otherwise management comes down on them for not following the docs. And becoming a supervisor didn't require any more knowledge than a frontline agent, you just have to have passed either 90 days or 6 months on the floor (the time frame changed all the time and from center to center).

Its a stupid system set up to allow anyone that can pass a basic typing test of ~30 words per minute with 70% accuracy and a basic knowledge test with questions like "is a mouse an input or output device" to become technical support.

Then once you're on the floor, you don't have to actually know what you're doing as long as you read from the docs and your script, you'll make awesome stats and management will love you, but customers won't because you're a moron that doesn't know the difference between a modem and a router.

And one of my favorite things about Verizon was that, while the support for business DSL accounts was all based in either US or Canada, residential support is outsourced to the Phillipines. So if you did get someone who spoke English either the Phillipines center was so backed up in queue that calls were being dumped into the American centers or you got someone who can hide their accent. Not to hate on the people overseas but the company provides them with even less training and incomplete tools to work with. The American agents have much better testing tools than the outsourced ones.

My advice to anyone that has to get Verizon's DSL, when you order the service order a business account, you have to pay like 10 bucks more a month but you get people with a little more training and better testing tools.