icarusancalion

I'm sure you all heard (world-wide) about the short little storm here that knocked out the entire DC area power grid (okay, okay, large portions of it) for, well ... where I live, 48 hours. Enough to cancel most of the 4th of July celebrations hereabouts.

But I bet you didn't know about the quirk of Verizon's super-ultra-high-speed FIOS where, if the power's out for more than 24 hours, it doesn't come back on.

In my case, I'm going to be without internet -- or phones! Let's not forget the phones! -- until July 11th.

That's the result of a conversation with Verizon that went something like this:

My aunt: My power's back on but my internet's still out. It blinked on for a moment and then it was gone.
Verizon: Give us your account number and we can help you.
My aunt: You switched me to online billing only without my permission, so I don't have my account number.
Verizon: That's no problem. Just look it up online.
My aunt: *steam coming out of her ears*

...except make the conversation much longer, more confusing, involve a couple of Verizon reps, and have all of them repeat the look-it-up-online comment. She may, just possibly, have threatened to cancel our service.

Four days later they still hadn't done anything about our service, so she called them again. This time they tried to walk her through a fix. When two wires came out of the battery as she worked, they decided to schedule a service call. That's when they discovered her threat to cancel the service in their records. Now they're refusing to come out to solve the problem.

Comcast will be here on the 11th.