Headdesk Times Infinity

Due to a disagreement with Comcast (I fucking loathe-despise-hate-wanna-nuke Comcast), our internet connection went south on Monday morning last. I had already been trying to set up Verizon DSL via a bundle with my DISH Network, which got fubared when the bot choked on some detail it read as an already active line. So on Monday, I called Verizon to expedite the order. I had the phone turned on that very day, and the modem shipped, to arrive by today and with service starting today.

Tuesday, I got a message from a Verizon tech on my cell phone (which never rang cuz it screens any calls not in my book) that he was here to set up our service but couldn’t determine where we lived. Our garage apartment is the only occupied building on this lot, but the entire house was a shambles from the emptying of cabinets and so on to reorganize, and I’m sure if he looked in the window he thought that no one could possibly live here. He did not leave a call back number, so I didn’t call him back.

The modem arrived yesterday but we didn’t discover it til last night, cuz we’ve been backwards on our sleep schedule. So we waited patiently for this morning to arrive so we’d have DSL. Only it never turned on. So I called Verizon again, via two different 800 numbers. I spoke to four different people and went through the automated system at least that many times, to be told my service was scheduled to be turned on next Wednesday, January 28th. This didn’t please me, so I called the local number. They said they couldn’t help me since they had no record of taking my order at their office (which meant I’d called an 800 number), but they showed my service scheduled for February 9th. Wait, what? I called the 800 number again, then another one. I got a guy who told me that my service had been pushed back til Feb. 9 because they were still laying the DSL lines to this neighborhood. I asked why I wasn’t informed when I placed my order that there were no lines here yet. He transferred to a supervisor in India. I cut him short because there’s no way he can do anything but repeat what’s on his screen.

I spent a total of 3 and a half hours on the phone. I called Verizon Customer Relations, which my phone book said was the number to call when speaking to a supervisor still didn’t help you. The girl at that number, upon hearing she was connected from the Customer Relations line, was so stunned she put me on hold to go “OMG” with her co-workers. I told her plainly that I was at my wit’s end, that evidently no one in the entire company of Verizon had supervisors, that the company was run by ghosts and that if she didn’t advocate for me, I was lost. She connected me back to the same 800 number I originally called, but stayed on the line to indicate how much I really needed to be helped – then she and the girl she had on the line both proceeded to tell me that my date of Feb 9 was the original installation date and that no changes had ever been made to it. So in essence they were calling me a liar.

I finally lost my temper with the last girl I spoke to, and raised my voice and demanded that someone who would solve my problem be found, or at least someone who wasn’t just going to repeat “Feb 9″ over and over to me. She put me on hold and never came back. I was so upset I just hung up.

My daughter was very stressed out due to losing contact with her best friend online, who had just come back from almost three weeks offline herself. So I called Comcast and made a payment that immediately slammed my account with an overdraft fee (which I didn’t know cuz, duh, I was offline) so that she could make contact with her friend. First thing she sees when she logs on? A message from her friend that K. has been too selfish and heavy for friend to handle, so friend is going to be out of contact for a while. K. is in tears, and I’m out $200 I can’t afford to spend. However, odds are that Friend is at least partially upset because K. disappeared without warning and Friend took it personally. So maybe we can stave off that problem tonight when she comes online. One can hope that this at least accomplish something.

I thought that trading Comcast for Verizon would be an improvement. I certainly have been given no reason whatsoever to have any faith in Verizon yet, and if I could sue for wasted time and emotional duress, I would seriously consider it at this point.