Another Exasperating Day -- Reconnecting to the Internet (Part Four -- and last?)

Okay, so here's the next update.

1) After placing an order "upgrade" on Friday and not getting any increase in service as of last night, I called Verizon again today. I get to customer service. "Oh, let's see what happened. I see you here as you supposed to have 15/5 speed on your records. Let's transfer you to tech support to see why you're not getting it. We don't even offer 10/2."

2) Tech support: "You're only provisioned for 10/2. I can't change anything without an order." "I have an order number from Friday". "Hmm. I can't see that order in the system. Let me put you back to the order department".

3) The order department. "You don't need a new order. You're supposed to be getting 15/5, so I can't even put in a new order. They need to technically get you up to speed." "Yes, but they said I'm only showing up in their system as being allowed 10/2." "Oh dear, let me talk to them". (many, many, many minutes on hold, but Cheery Verizon Service Woman probably pops back in every two minutes to apologize for that). "Okay dear, it should be sorted. Here's the tech support people".

4) Tech support: "I can't do anything about this. You're only provisioned for 10/2. They'll have to place a new order". After one hour and 12 minutes of being polite, I completely lost it. "Look, I will NOT be transferred back to orders. I've already spoken to them twice today. Their system is showing I'm allowed 15/5. I have other order numbers for that that you can't seem to see. You may not transfer me back to them so I can go through this drill a third time today, and about the 15th time since I started to switch internet service almost two months ago. I can't help it if your systems don't communicate. Don't tell me what you're not allowed to do. Either I don't need another order, like the second customer service lady said, or I need an order number which I have, and I don't care that you can't see it. Fix it now". He starts going on about being provisioned for 10/2, and I said, "I want your supervisor now and I want a conference call between you and orders so you idiots can all talk to each other." He finally gets an order person on the conference call. She says "hmm, I can't make this go through. Let me change something manually."

5) So here's the solution boys and girls. Even though Verizon doesn't offer 10/2 any more, but only 15/5, 25/15, and 50/20 plans for FIOS, apparently in my physical area, they can only send you 10/2 or 20/5 service. They don't have any of the speeds they sell, and they don't sell the speeds they have. (I'm still not sure why you can't put 15/5 down a path that can go up to 20/5, but I must be really stupid or something). So she's giving me the 'bonus' 20/5, but she's charging me the higher price but will place a credit for the difference on my account each month. (Why do I think I'm going to be putting up another blog on this later? Does anyone think this is going to go smoothly?). But as of tonight, I'm getting something like 15/4, so it's where it's supposed to be. My poor little computer is having fits, as it's old and doesn't like all this speed-- "Slow down< you whippersnappers!". At some point I'm probably going to copy all these blogs into an e-mail to the CEOs of Verizon and Earthlink.

And on another note -- today I went to the Post Office to get holiday stamps. After waiting on line for 15 minutes, I was told there was not a holiday stamp to be had -- no holiday, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza or even Eid stamps. One would think the holiday season caught them by surprise or something. I"m also completely amazed at how stupid people are at the post office. Some woman was mailing two random boxes of crap to New Jersey in those flat rate bozes. The guy does his typical upsell "so, do you want insurance on that? Delivery confirmation?" It turned into a seven minute discussion on how insurance works ("so, if it gets lost, I get money back?"), how delivery confirmation works ("so, I go on the internet and it tells me if they got it? But it will tell me if it's delivered, will it also tell me if they got it?"), and basically, how the post office works. The woman didn't look completely stupid, but apparently looks can be deceiving. And then there's the people who don't know how many boxes they have, where they want to ship them to, who's supposed to get them and all that other stuff that's really incidental to the post office.

My head hurts.