Sad Degredation of Verizon / Bell

[UncleFred]

I recently terminated my home phone service after an unbroken string of forty years with NJ Bell / Verizon.  My reasons had to do with the poor customer service and ambivalence shown by Verizon over the past few years.  I was reluctant to move to fiber service seeing no reason to discard my old copper service but was essentially bullied into doing so with the gradual but steady non-support as evidence by dwindling numbers of copper technicians and maintenance on local switching stations.  When I switched to fiber, I was immediately without service for a period of 3 weeks as an apparent computer glitch kept signalling to Verizon that I had cancelled service.  It took a call to the central office in New York to resolve this and this too took several weeks.  Apparently Verizon believes that a well thought out labyrinth stream of automated "push 1 for ____,  2 for ____" is the way to build goodwill with customers.  They are great at pestering you for payment and this with a customer who had not missed a monthly payment in 40 years!  I am afraid that Verizon management believes that automation and aggressive collection is a capable substitute for old-fashioned customer service.  It is a pity what has happened to the old Bell system.   Capable and dedicated management have been replaced with ninety-day wonders who imagine themselves as "masters of the universe".  I hope they can make it to retirement before their decisions put their cash cow out of business.