Sid Mundo Reviews

Labels: BlogCasts

Hey guys How's it going?


Well this is my first Review. It's a written review of the Verizon Fios service. I may add a video later of me maybe just talking about the actually service and my experience with the company.


Background on Verizon
The Verizon Fios Review
Sid.B of Sid Mundo Reviews


We all know Verizon for being one of the most famous phone companies of our time. They started with landlines, and went onto bigger things when the wireless communication industry boomed. Verizon came out with Verizon Wireless. I personally own a Verizon Wireless phone and am quite content with their service. I must say I'd rather have a larger span in phone choice but the service is not bad and their customer support has always been great for me. Every time I called in with a question or a problem I was never put on hold for more than 5 minutes and they were always able to fix my problem or tell me what I should do within 5 minutes.


Now they have unleashed a new service called Verizon Fios. This service would supply you with television, Internet and phone. How would Verizon compete with the traditional Cablevision and dish companies? We'll find out.


Verizon Fios Review

Service –

Lets start out with the service and customer support. When we called in to make the order it was as simple as you'd think. A si mple phone cal and maybe a 10-15 minute conversation would suffice to make an appointment to get the boxes and the materials installed in your house, however, surprisingly that was the only easy part.
Everything else was a hassle. When the gentleman came in I was actually sleeping and my mother had opened the door to let him in. I was actually woken up by this technician's loud voice and argument with my mother. I immediately woke up and went downstairs. My mom had a few questions as far as what he was going to install and this man had no patience with my mother. I came in and told my mom what it was he was doing. She understood but this man still had quite an attitude. HE even had told my mother to "shush" multiple times. That's not acceptable. My mom even responded to the shushing by telling him: "No one shushes me in the morning" , and this man had the arrogance to say: " Well how about at night.


Disregarding his loud and obnoxious nature, he did his job and spent the whole day at our house installing the hardware. I personally know that I could of setup all the boxes and the Internet in maybe an hour. All the wires were routed in our house. All he had to do was place the boxes and do the outside work. I have no idea why he spent such a longtime doing this.


Nearing the end of his time at my house, he showed us the features of the television and insured th at the Internet worked on our laptops. And all seem well until he left and we tried to make a phone call. The phones didn't work. We then spent the next hour trying to get on the phone with Verizon to get the guy to come back and finish the job but were unsuccessful.


The next day we spent maybe a total of 4 hours on the phone with Verizon trying to understand why and when we were going to get the phone. Verizon tried to explain the Optimum voice, which was our prior phone provider, did not want to release our number. In the end we ended up getting stuck with no phone for about a whole week. We switched back to optimum, and cancelled with Verizon Fios. The reason why we switched to Fios first was because it seemed cheaper, however after having contacted Optimum about cancelling their service and the problems we have had with the phone they were able to reduce out monthly payments for another year and gave us a free HD DVR box as well.


** Not 100% sure this works - If you are with Optimum, Call up to cancel and act as though you want to cancel, chances are that they will want to keep you as a customer and reduce what they are charging you for your services. It's worth a try, call them up and say that you are switching to Fios in about a week and ask how to go about cancelling ( while you are talking to the cancellation department), they'll ask you why, and you will say because of the prices, Play with them for a bit.. see what happens, you'll be surprised.. ;)***


The Actual Product


TV -
The TV is outstanding! For the few days that we had Fios Television in our house, I felt like I was in entertainment heaven. I have a 50 inch HD plasma set up downstairs and their HD DVR is crazy. They have cool features such as mini widgets that will show up on the top of the screen giving you information such as the latest news headlines, sport info, and even the weather in your local area. To me it was like TiVo in a Cable box. One thing that I loved, and will truly miss is that they had HD on demand. With cablevision we had the HBO package which allowed us to get HBO movies on demand; however they were all in standard definition. With Verizon Fios, if you get the Starz package, you will be able to get any Starz Movie in HD on Demand as part of the package. That to me was a major plus. I watched "There will be Blood" and the visuals were outstanding. I thought I was watching a BluRay copy of the film. Another thing worth noting is the search function. Having the Verizon box you have the ability to search anything you want and to get related Shows and Movies, either on Demand, Now Playing (live TV), and what is playing in the future. I searched Christopher Walken and I saw that "Catch me if you Can" was playing the next day and all I had to do was press the record button and i was able to watch it 3 days later. The Television Experience for Fios is outstanding. One thing I should mention though is that wherever you choose to have TV, there must be a box, whether it is a Standard box, HD box, or a Convertor box. Each television needs to have a box. This can get a little annoying and maybe pricy in the long run.


Overall for TV-
Fios offers outstanding Features and Visual as well as Audio Quality. It is definitely the best Television Service I have ever experienced.

4.7 out of 5


Internet -
The Internet was a bit of a hassle to get them to install simply because it wasn't a traditional installation where they just install the modem, and then we hook it up to the router etc. The way their internet works is that they give you a wireless and hardwired router which doubles as a modem. It's convenient i guess in a sense that both the router and the modem are both in the same box. But i personally prefer using my own equipment. The internet service they provide is safe, and seems to come with a bunch of protection features. They also install a password on the router to prevent people from stealing your internet access, but, you can't choose what the password is. One cool thing I learned though is that Verizon (according to the technician) refuses to release information about their customer to outside sources. This might be better explained in an Example as to why this is a good thing.


Ex: A friend of mine had received a letter in the mail because his cousin spent the month at his home and he was illegally download movies. The letter was from cablevision telling him that Paramount Pictures was asking for his information in order to get into contact with him and possibly press charges. The letter from cablevision was a warning telling my friend to back off from downloading movies; otherwise Cablevision would forfeit his information to paramount.


Verizon Fios apparently will not release any information about their customers. At least this is what I hear. I do not encourage downloading Movies illegally. I personally want to become a filmmaker and want to be able to make a living off it. So I do respect filmmakers and actors, and always purchase their films.


Overall Internet-
It's a fast connection, and information is kept privately, which is always a good thing.
4 out of 5



Telephone –
The telephone service was not even installed. From what I hear it's a standard Telephone Service, However if you do go for Verizon Wireless Telephone service, make sure you know what you are getting into. I believe it's a good deal for the first year; however you must know that there are charges after the first year for additional services. The prices may shock you! Check it out…

THERSE ARE TAKEN RIGHT OF THE VERIZON FIOS WEBSITE - THESE ARE MONTHLY FEES

Caller ID - $9.00
Call Waiting - $6.25
Home Voicemail with Multiple Mailboxes - $9.45
Call Waiting ( Includes Caller ID) - $9.00

These are only 4 out of Over 20 Features.. All can be seen at :
http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/Phone/Calling+Features/Calling+Features.htm
Under the All Features Tab
-------------------------------------------------

Labels: Written Service Reviews

Hey!

What's up fellas? I just thought I'd catch you guys up and get you guys up to speed as far as what is going to be happening With Sid Mundo Reviews. Well First off I'd like to warn you all of an expected outage with the blogging system. I got a message stating the following:

Scheduled outage at 2:00AM PDT on Monday (5/11)

So, clearly this site will not be fully operational. Also I'm glad to say that the first review is well on its way. I am currently writing up my first review, which is of the Verizon Fios Service. I recently switched over to test their services out, and I think that a lot of people will actually be suprised about what verizon has to offer, But remember guys, it's not all about the products, it's also about the services.

I'm also slowly trying to start up my first video Review. This review will be of the LG Dare for Verizon Wireless. I know it's a tad late to do a review for this phone, but hey, why not? I'll also be giving out a few helpfull hints and tricks about this phone. I'll teach you guy how to put ringtones on your phone free of charge with everything that they supply your phone with!

So keep your eyes open guys!

Also don't forget to subscribe! I will have occascional random prize giveaways. If you are an active member on the site, blog, forum, or social network you may be one of those lucky members!

Labels: Blog Entries

Well....

After quite a few technical tweaks you can now successfully subscribe to this blog! To subscribe simply go to the right hand side. And enter in your email address where it asks for it and just activate it by going to your email, and clicking the activating link.

Now I know you guys out there don’t know that much about this site and what’s coming up in the future but basically, on this site I will be posting reviews for quite a lot of things varying from movies, music, and mainly electronic devices. I will occasionally do reviews and rating of actual services and let you guys know if I find something truly worthwhile.

By subscribing I will keep you guys posted on new reviews and will have access to these as soon as they are released FREE. That’s right, subscribing to this blog you will receive FREE reviews of services and products that I review. You will also be given the opportunity once a month to Request a review. I will take everyone’s requests under consideration and follow through with it. If you guys also want a diy or have questions regarding a certain item I have reviewed please let me know and I’ll be sure to “Hook you guys up!”

Anyway a bit of a news flash on my side. I have quite a plate to do tomorrow, so let me just tell you what I have planned for this week. I plan on doing a review of the LG Dare Touchscreen Phone Provided by Verizon Wireless. If you guys have this phone still be sure to check it out because I’ll also be teaching you guys how to use it to the max and how to go about getting ringtones the right way. I will have to shoot and edit that video hopefully by the end of this week. I will also have to make an intro for all of my videos. A theme song if you will. Things are going to be a little slow for then next 2-3 weeks but after that I promise you guys that this site is going to rocket!

Labels: Blog Entries