What branding lesson did Verizon forget? Namely, that everything is branding.

We recently moved to a new home, new to us and newly built.  As a result of it being a newly built home, it has a brand new, never been used before address.  At our old house, we had been happy Verizon customers.  We had even switched from Comcast to FIOS when we were unable to get good reception on one of our TVs.  So knowing we were about to move, I call Verizon and give them the new address, the rep tells me she can’t find the address in the system and has entered a ticket for engineering to do an assessment of the address which typically takes 72 hours and after the assessment they would give me a call.  That was April 25th.

May 3rd comes along and still no call, so I call back.  The new rep tells me he can see the ticket entered, but he will enter a new ticket again to get the assessment and that Verizon will call me back. Again no call. I go through this process a few more times to no avail.

Finally, I call Comcast.  They send out an engineer within 72 hours, my address is in the system, and the installer comes (on time) 48 hours later.  The thing is, is that the cable pole is in my front yard, Verizon could have invested 5 minutes with me, maintained their brand, and a customer.  Is it the end of the world? Of course not, but Verizon has spent millions branding FIOS, running ads, developing a slick website, and even creating a good product, but all of that was thrown away by not executing on their brand throughout the process.