Verizon made me cry (almost)

We recently changed our high speed internet from cable to Verizon DSL. Saves us about $10 a month. And it works quite fine, thank you very much.

HOWEVER, we need to move the phone jack. With in the next year, we will be doing a small remodel, which will result with the phone jack being in the bathroom. Rather than in our "office".
So, two weeks ago, I called Verizon Online. Told them the story of how we need to move the jack. They referred me to Verzion (the phone side of things), as V. Online deals only with DSL issues, not hardware issues.

(I should also mention at this point that we have what is known as dry-loop DSL, meaning the line is dedicated to DSL only, as we don't have a land-line phone. Only mobile phones for us. That we are non-land-line-phone consumers becomes a huge problem, as you will soon see.)

The next day, then, I worked on calling Verizon. What a nightmare. It took me FOUR tries to navigate through their automated system. I kept arriving at 'dead ends', being offer options I knew I didn't want (Is this for a new account? Is this about billing? Do you just want to go in a corner and cry yet?) FINALLY, I was able to talk with an actually human being, and I described our situation with the jack.

Apparently, I didn't initially get the right department, though I'm not surprised as I kept pushing random buttons until a "customer service representative was able to assist me." I ended up being transfered to 3 different departments, as NO ONE seemed to know who I needed to talk to about having a new phone jack install. It's like no one ever had be assisted in this way before!

Enter my conversation with the rep. from dept. no. 3. He heard the situation and was about to transfer me back to Verizon Online (after all, this has to do with DSL, right?), when I interrupted with a "No, no, no. V. Online is where I started. They directed me to Verizon as this is a hardware issue." And the guy finally realized that he could actually set up the service call. It was to be a week later, on a Wednesday.

This whole process of getting a service call set up took 40 minutes. No exaggeration.

Fast forward to Tuesday, the day before the appointment. I hadn't received the friendly automated appointment reminder from Verizon, so I decided to give them a call. After all, if I was going to take the afternoon off of work for this venture, I wanted to be sure they were showing up.

So I called Verizon. "Navigated" my way through the automated system to talk with a real person. Which, again, is not the person I was really needing to talk to. Transferred to person Number 2. This person finds no record of my appointment, and feels I should really be talking to person Number 3. Person Number 3, in combination with person Number 4, is finally able to give me an answer.

And what might that be? They can't help me. Neither Verizon nor Verizon Online are able to come out to our house and install a new phone jack. "You'll just need to find someone."

At this point I was about to blow a gasket. And cry. I expressed great displeasure and frustration with this whole situation. Without swearing (out loud), I used phrases like:

• "I feel like I am a person with a third arm and you don't know what to do with me"
• "I know this isn't your fault, but I'm very frustrated with the situation"
• "I hope you pass along my complaints and frustrations up the chain of command"
• "This is RIDICULOUS"

Why can't/ won't they help? It boils down to us not having a land-line phone. Because of this, we don't have an account with the billing department with the Verizon phone side of things. And it's the Verizon phone people that do phone jacks. And apparently, they can't talk to the Verizon Online billing. So since they can't figure out how to bill us, we're screwed.

To make sure I understood why they couldn't help us, I said, "So let me repeat this back, to make sure I'm clear for when I'm telling all my friends about this."

You would think that someone else in the known Verizon DSL universe would have been in a similar situation. Apparently not.

This particular round of talking with Verizon took 36 minutes (according to the cell phone).

But wait, there's more! On Wednesday, I'm shopping at Fred Meyer (instead of waiting for the non-existent service call) when I get a call. It's a service guy from Verizon saying he just pulled up my order on the schedule. I laughed a derisive laugh and explained to him the whole situation. We both bemoaned this aspect of telephone regulations.

And the original phone jack still remains.