Schedule phone line reconnect to pole

[Newstech]

We are having a tree removed on Feb. 22 which requires the phone line to be dropped out of the way. Verizon could not guarantee an early enough appointment on the 22nd, so we made the appointment for late afternoon on the 21st. The problem is that they say they cannot schedule the reconnect for the afternoon of the 22nd. Instead, they say we have to wait until the line is already down to make the service call. This makes no sense, and I'm worried that the reconnect might take days. Any ideas for getting around this?

[LawrenceC]

This issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent.