Service technician stopping appointment without notice

[taz_patsfan]

A few days ago my FIOS box crapped out so I am without internet, phone, and tv.  I took the earliest available appointment time and the day before got the appointment confirmation call on my cell number.  All looked good.  Next day comes and I go across town to work where I can get internet with cell phone in hand.  My time window was 8am to 11am and at 10am I was worried that I hadnt received a phone call yet.  I check online and there is no record of an appointment.  Getting into an online chat got me the answer that the service technician tried to call and with no response cancelled the appointment.  Problem is that he didn't actually call.  If in my five minute drive from home I hit a cell coverage dead zone, he certainly did not try again to call or leave a voice message.  It smells of the situation where he probably was running late from one call to the next and just decided to bail out on mine.  After much complaining the best that they could do was to schedule for the next day, better than the 4 days it started out as.  However, 4 days or 1 day, both are incredibly irritating because the cancellation was due to the technician's self-made decision to cancel the appointment, not because I was not actually available.

Since this was an obvious ditch effort on part of the technician, I don't understand why he couldn't be forced to honor the call by the dispatcher.  I was complaining about this during my time window he was supposed to be there.  Somehow there was no time left in the schedule, but how could that be if I was already scheduled and he didn't do the work.  He had an hour or two extra in hand.  I'm sure the technicians have some kind of policy that all scheduled appointments must be honored unless the customer is not available.  I would love to see the technician's cell phone log to see my phone number listed there.  My call log (both on phone and at Verizon Wireless) does not show him calling me.

I wish there was another option for service as I would leave Verizon for this kind of treatment in an instant.  Xfinity is always trying to convince me to switch with all kinds of deals, but just can't compare with internet, and that's really what I need.  I will have to think about this long and hard because ultimately I don't like to reward poor service with my wallet.