Worst Phone Company Ever

[UnhappyinCA]

Haven't had a marketing call for a while so I decided to check the voice mail.  No dial tone!  No dial tone at the Network Interface Device.  (Yes, I know exactly where it is and have a corded phone set aside just for testing.  This happens a lot.) 

So again my phone is inoperable.  But I keep getting better in dealing with the Verizon, "We don't want you talking to a real person" phone and computer system.  (Hint: just keep pressing 0 until a person answers.)  Got the technician date changed from 7 days away to only 2 days away.  Like I said, I'm getting better.

Last time, a year ago, they connected someone else's "last mile" to my phone number.  The phone would ring, just not at my house.  It was someone else's new fax machine line.  So I sent them fax, got thier address, and told Verizon where their problem was.  Meanwhile, Verizon kept saying the problem was fixed because the phone would ring.  Even after I told them where the problem was, it took them several days to fix it.

Before that it was a problem in the junction box which wasn't the one listed for my phone number.  Took them a while to find that one.

Before that, the junction box had filled with water because the drain holes had not been opened when it was installed.

Before that it was a problem at a neighbor's house.

Before that it was broken wires that were bypassed with wires at a neighbor's house.

And on and on and on.  About once a year, I can expect my phone to be down.  That's why I have two lines!

In the old days of Ma Bell, telephone reliability was 99.999% (Five Nines).  For the time I have been in my current house, that amounts to just 20 hours of down time in 28 years.  Seeing that my current problem started 17 DAYS ago, it seems like that kind of reliability is long gone.  And why didn't Verizon detect that they had a problem during those 17 days???

And they want me to buy one of their cell phones?

[gborn]

We were told that our junction box was filled with water.  Service had gone out completely on 8/25.  After it was resolved with new box, service went out again on 8/27...waiting for resolution now...