Where to start? You all know that I’ve been pissed at and been head-to-head with:

• Verizon: all kinds of crazy stuff
• My mother’s assisted living facility in Florida: rodents
• Natura, a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, cat food recalls  
• oh, right, Monsanto is killing us but I am here for now to write this post and hoping that all the GMO’s I have ingested in my life don’t attack me before I am finished

Today’s rant will pick up where I left off with Verizon.

At the beginning of last week I spoke to Ann Marie at the Verizon escalation department after having reported Verizon to the Public Service Commission.  Believe me, Verizon started jumping after I made that call. There are so many issues that still haven’t been resolved that should have been resolved last week. That very long story just begins here. I was promised a call-back in a day or two. Never received it. On Friday I tried to call Ann Marie to see what was going on. No luck: the phone was constantly busy … as it was today … and then I received the message: the number was not in service.  Do you see the irony here? The woman is an executive at Verizon and HER PHONE DOESN’T WORK.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Ironically my mother’s phone in Florida was out as well, but that was AT&T’s problem. Does this ever end?

“So what did you do?” you ask.

I called the New York State Public Service Commission again and got the same nice lady who helped me initially and who gave me my case number. I explained the story yet again … supposed to get a call-back, never did … the phone doesn’t work, isn’t that funny? (Believe me the ridiculousness of the whole thing is nuts.) I went on to chat with her: about Verizon, my mother’s assisted living with the rats, the pet food re-call, and went on to say that it never seems to end. That I feel like all I do is fight with corporations. To which she responded as she commiserated:

“They don’t expect you to fight.”

That’s right. These corporations don’t expect you to call them on anything. They think you’ll just lie down and take it. Be bullied and accept it. In short, they want us to wimp out. TO GIVE UP AND GO AWAY.

DON’T.

We can’t give up. We have to stand up for what is right or we will be devoured and end up like more bupkis on the floor.

“I don’t know if this will help seeing as you already have a complaint in and Verizon now must answer it in writing at this point, to US not you, but here is the number of Verizon’s President’s Helpline.”

I called. The first time my call was “dropped.” The second time Miss Mitchell picked up. Undoubtedly she was reading over my records. (I was on “hold” for at least five minutes). But before she did that I did my “isn’t-it-ironic-that-the-Verizon-corporate-executive-in-the-escalations-department-doesn’t-have-a-working-number? observation. Then Miss Mitchell put her “colleague” on. “This is Becky from the Albany office.” As the story goes, “Ann Marie wasn’t in and her substitute has been working on the case, blah-blah and something didn’t go through, blah-blah, and I see you called the Public Service Commission again and someone from Verizon will be calling you and you can tell them allllll about it.”

And again I asked: “isn’t it ridiculous that the executive in escalations at Verizon doesn’t have a working phone?”

As for me, my second phone line still isn’t working nor has it been restored to copper wire. My primary phone line was moved to digital voice and will answer with a message if my phone is on the hook or not. It will also intercept my answering machine and tell the caller I don’t have an account set up (which they will construe as a phone account not a voice mail account–something that should have been resolved immediately last week).

” … someone from Verizon will be calling you and you can tell them alllllll about it.”

You bet I will. For the one hundredth time.

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