at this moment, i’ve been on hold for 32 minutes waiting for a Verizon “consultant” to help me.

You see, we decided it was time to retire the old phone and get a neat new phone with extra handsets that we could place in our offices upstairs, thus eliminating the need to fish wires through the walls from the main phone box in the basement and save us from running down the stairs just to miss a call. While we were at it, we decided to review the service packages that Verizon offers, in an attempt to save money on regional toll calls.

this all seemed perfectly reasonable to me…

What is unreasonable is the voice mail hell that is Verizon’s customer service system and the obvious lack of respect for their customers’ time. There is no option to opt out of the voice mail maize–you can press zero all you want, it ain’t gonna get you to a “consultant” any faster. It also requires you to speak your info….no pressing 1 for English or 2 for a billing inquiries or 3 to report a problem. No, you have to verbally interact with a recording, which just skeeves me no end. I do not like appliances that speak to me let alone ones that demand I respond in kind.

I did find out by call three that you can interrupt the recording by shouting your answer before the robotic voice finishes the litany of options. I mean, how many times do I have to listen to whether I want to learn about FIOS and direct TV when all I want is to talk to the phone company about my phone? And I know that they are serious about respecting my privacy because the mechanical lady told me 2 minutes into the hold music each time I called. And anyway, if you never get to talk about your account, no one will ever know about it. Simple.

Not only is talking to a customer service consultant an obvious impossibility, but when I attempted to use their website to order this change in service, I found out that Verizon’s content people either don’t know how time works or they must think we are all too dumb to notice the difference between 5 minutes and don’t-hold-your-breath-til-you-turn-blue. The site states that registration will take only 5 minutes, but before you can complete the registration process, they require you to request a “temporary pin number” which they will give you via calling your home phone within 20 minutes.

huh?
Honestly, I DO know how to count. I can add and subtract and I even know what > and < mean.

I proceed anyway, keeping the webpage up so that when they call in 20 minutes (with the added caveat that during "peak" calling times, the wait might be longer) I can quickly plug in the number. After an hour, I assume that they decided that this afternoon was a peak calling time, so with head hung low, I close my computer and dial the customer service number for the sixth time in two days.

Silly me. Maybe I am dumb after all.

HOLD THE PHONE — A HUMAN JUST ASKED IF SHE COULD HELP ME!

So there ya go — after 44 minutes on hold during the sixth phone call of the second day, a real person interrupted the soothing elevator music to ask me if I’d like to talk about high speed internet and direct TV. After I assured her that no, I am not interested in having Verizon rip out our copper (thus making it impossible to ever switch local phone companies if we’re dissatisfied with their service) and no, we’re also not interested in switching long distance providers, it took her all of 3 minutes to complete my request to change our service plan which should save us about $10 a month.

was it worth it?