Verizon Wrangling: An Epic Journey and Trial of the Spirit
Hi! I missed you all! You didn't know I was gone, but I was soooo gone and with no ruby slippers to bring me back!
So Wednesday after work, I went out of my way to bring my old Verizon equipment to the county Verizon store that would accept it back, because all the Verizon stores near me would not, which is just bogus crap, but that's how they do it. It was raining bad and the entrance to the store was hard to find and the clerk I brought it to didn't want to do anything because there was a power outage at the store and wanted me to come back another time, and I wasn't happy with that idea after all the efforts I had made with getting there and being turned away by reasonably near stores. I suggested he use ancient technology and put a post-it note on my box of old equipment with my info and process it when the power was back up, which he agreed was possibly doable, and I left it with his seething self. He got me back good by disconnecting my current service on Friday afternoon while I was teleworking at home and I lost hours of work time.
And I lost not only hours of work time. I was on the cell phone, and on chat on cell phone for 5 hours and much of that time on hold with sounds called music, and talked to a variety of Verizon workers of different departments and map locations who told me lots of things about calling back that didn't happen, some of it wrong, some of it lies, and champion question ignoring on chat, 5 hours went by this way and I had the biggest brain meltdown in years. Wow, did it make me crazy. Good thing I was in the privacy of my own home. I screamed, I cried, I lost my voice, and hated life, the universe, and everything and found my only comfort in Dorothy Parker's poem on the feeling. I put myself to bed early after ibuprofen and a big glass of wine and slept on and off for 12 hours with cuddly cats. Nothing can shoot my sanity out the window and into the stratosphere like dealing with utilities or new computer programs, but with the amount of contradictory info and being on hold I got I dare anyone prone to anxiety to hold onto their brain through that. My fault for my stupid, stupid tenacity to hang on for 5 damned hours of we-don't-care-if-we-keep-your-business-or-not crap, without food or get up and walk breaks. Gandalf should dub me "Will Beyond Sanity". I was so wrecked. Probably not being recovered from the hard move and fretting over how long getting stuff set up here is taking and other stuff didn't help.
Sleeping long, however, was a good idea. And I am so glad my cell phone is a separate account, also with Verizon, or I don't know how I'd have dealt with this. I dealt with them for a couple of hours on Saturday and did other things. Still no reconnection, but my identity verification was complete--because my current cell phone account and old home account with them cut off on Friday was not good enough. Today I went through 3 more Verizon people--I may have spoken to everyone who works at Verizon at this point, and got to a really good technician in New Jersey who pushed tech services and got my line turned on this afternoon. It's a new account, but I was able to forgo them making a home technician appointment and just activate the lines to my phone and internet equipment. And here I am. It was a journey through Shadow and Pain.
The only reason I did not switch to Xfinity is because I have no illusions it would take less crap to get set up with them, and dealing with home service visits, as well as MORE equipment to get back to Verizon. If I had just dumped the old equipment in the trash, I probably wouldn't have gone through this and there's no indication that they were ever intending to ask and bill me for the old equipment or give me a discount, among other things Verizon clerks make up.
But my vet called yesterday with Moo's biopsy results, and the lesion on her head was not cancerous, but it could have developed into cancer if left, so I am glad we had it removed, and that made Saturday better. More of these lesions could develop on her head area, so I will need to keep close watch. Her stitches come out Friday--so far she is not scratching them, thank goodness, and I will get more details on these lesions then. Tomorrow I see my oncologist about the results for the yearly breast MRI I went for last month, but I would have heard something already if the results were iffy, so no worries there. Next up, get the 3 tooth implants that I had put in last year checked and then start getting crowns for them, and get a new pcp and appointment for that.
I look forward to the heat breaking and being able to step into my yard without melting. I would have liked to have gone to see Apollo 11 projected on the Washington Monument, but no way I could in this heat. But I got to see the Apollo Saturn launch on location for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, so I can't complain. If this crap had to happen, at least it did not happen on a weekend with nice weather to miss.
Also posted at https://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/263304.html with
comments
So Wednesday after work, I went out of my way to bring my old Verizon equipment to the county Verizon store that would accept it back, because all the Verizon stores near me would not, which is just bogus crap, but that's how they do it. It was raining bad and the entrance to the store was hard to find and the clerk I brought it to didn't want to do anything because there was a power outage at the store and wanted me to come back another time, and I wasn't happy with that idea after all the efforts I had made with getting there and being turned away by reasonably near stores. I suggested he use ancient technology and put a post-it note on my box of old equipment with my info and process it when the power was back up, which he agreed was possibly doable, and I left it with his seething self. He got me back good by disconnecting my current service on Friday afternoon while I was teleworking at home and I lost hours of work time.
And I lost not only hours of work time. I was on the cell phone, and on chat on cell phone for 5 hours and much of that time on hold with sounds called music, and talked to a variety of Verizon workers of different departments and map locations who told me lots of things about calling back that didn't happen, some of it wrong, some of it lies, and champion question ignoring on chat, 5 hours went by this way and I had the biggest brain meltdown in years. Wow, did it make me crazy. Good thing I was in the privacy of my own home. I screamed, I cried, I lost my voice, and hated life, the universe, and everything and found my only comfort in Dorothy Parker's poem on the feeling. I put myself to bed early after ibuprofen and a big glass of wine and slept on and off for 12 hours with cuddly cats. Nothing can shoot my sanity out the window and into the stratosphere like dealing with utilities or new computer programs, but with the amount of contradictory info and being on hold I got I dare anyone prone to anxiety to hold onto their brain through that. My fault for my stupid, stupid tenacity to hang on for 5 damned hours of we-don't-care-if-we-keep-your-business-or-not crap, without food or get up and walk breaks. Gandalf should dub me "Will Beyond Sanity". I was so wrecked. Probably not being recovered from the hard move and fretting over how long getting stuff set up here is taking and other stuff didn't help.
Sleeping long, however, was a good idea. And I am so glad my cell phone is a separate account, also with Verizon, or I don't know how I'd have dealt with this. I dealt with them for a couple of hours on Saturday and did other things. Still no reconnection, but my identity verification was complete--because my current cell phone account and old home account with them cut off on Friday was not good enough. Today I went through 3 more Verizon people--I may have spoken to everyone who works at Verizon at this point, and got to a really good technician in New Jersey who pushed tech services and got my line turned on this afternoon. It's a new account, but I was able to forgo them making a home technician appointment and just activate the lines to my phone and internet equipment. And here I am. It was a journey through Shadow and Pain.
The only reason I did not switch to Xfinity is because I have no illusions it would take less crap to get set up with them, and dealing with home service visits, as well as MORE equipment to get back to Verizon. If I had just dumped the old equipment in the trash, I probably wouldn't have gone through this and there's no indication that they were ever intending to ask and bill me for the old equipment or give me a discount, among other things Verizon clerks make up.
But my vet called yesterday with Moo's biopsy results, and the lesion on her head was not cancerous, but it could have developed into cancer if left, so I am glad we had it removed, and that made Saturday better. More of these lesions could develop on her head area, so I will need to keep close watch. Her stitches come out Friday--so far she is not scratching them, thank goodness, and I will get more details on these lesions then. Tomorrow I see my oncologist about the results for the yearly breast MRI I went for last month, but I would have heard something already if the results were iffy, so no worries there. Next up, get the 3 tooth implants that I had put in last year checked and then start getting crowns for them, and get a new pcp and appointment for that.
I look forward to the heat breaking and being able to step into my yard without melting. I would have liked to have gone to see Apollo 11 projected on the Washington Monument, but no way I could in this heat. But I got to see the Apollo Saturn launch on location for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, so I can't complain. If this crap had to happen, at least it did not happen on a weekend with nice weather to miss.
Also posted at https://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/263304.html with
comments