Can you hear me now?
I thought about writing this blog two weeks ago when the incident occurred but got caught up in more serious stuff and forgot about it. Sunday morning I was listening to the news shows while working around the house trying to clean up Christmas stuff and I noticed that every other commercial was either Verizon or Optimum – each making claims about how their service was better than the other. So let me tell you what happened the following Monday.
My daughter and family are moving into the City (YAY!) and although their furniture had not arrived yet, they made an appointment with Verizon to install FIOS in the new apartment and asked me if I could meet the installer there and let him in. To begin with, NOBODY gets into that building without checking with the doorman and “passing go”. I had no key but the doorman did so Tom had to send an email to the building with a list of names of persons authorized by him to pick up the key and enter the apartment. So what was the window of time Verizon said their installer would arrive? How about anytime between 9am-5pm!!!!
OK, the apartment is near-by and I didn’t have anywhere to go on Monday so I hung around waiting for the 30 minute pre-arrival call – it didn’t come. Sometime around 7pm Tom forwards me an email from Verizon stating they would be there on Tuesday, same time frame, same promise of a phone call. At about 11:30 pm Tom send s a text saying they (Verizon) canceled for tomorrow and what other days am I available. And that was the end of it for now I thought.
But NO – Tuesday morning I’m told it’s back on and the installer has both my cell number and Peter’s. Tuesday mid-morning and I am on the phone with the hospital (with a live person )and am trying to set up an appointment. Another call comes in and I see that it ‘s Peter and ask the woman at the hospital to please wait a moment. I tell him I can’t talk to you now, I’m on the phone withe the hospital and hang up on him. Then my cell phone rings (naturally!), I look at the caller ID and it says private number! I hate “private numbers” so I don’t pick it up. Two minutes later another call comes in on the phone and I ask the hospital to please hold again and I know by the ID that it’s Peter and I scream “What’s the matter with you? Why are you calling me, I’m on the phone with the hospital, I can’t talk”. He yells back and says, “I just got a call from the Verizon installer and he said he could be there in 20 minutes and I told him I had to check with my wife to see if she can meet you because I’m on the West Side. He said ‘call me back ‘but I can’t because it’s a private number”!!! Yeeeee gods!
OK, I’ll just go there. I finish my call with the hospital, look at my cell phone and see there’s no voice mail message and dash off to their apartment. I try to call Verizon – ha, ha, ha!! And soon I’m in voice mail jail. I can’t get to a live person, I try responding to the automated prompts, I mean, after all this is about a new order. BUT I don’t have the order number, I don’t have Tom’s cell phone number, I don’t know if he uses Verizon for any other carrier service!!
I hang up and try again…thinking if I press 0 enough times I’ll reach an operator. And oh by the way, I stopped at Starbucks along the way to pick up a Grande Americano which with every foot step was splashing out of the tiny air hole and spilling very hot coffee on my free hand since the other was attached to my ear.
I tried a third time pounding 0 and a voice on the other end rattled out the following: “Thank you for calling Verizon, all of our operators are busy with other customers, please call back in an hour or go online” -THIS WAS A LIVE PERSON! I scream NO, don’t hang up, I don’t have an hour and I proceed to tell her the chain of events AND how I needed someone to contact that installer and tell him to please go to the address because I ‘ll be there. OF COURSE she can’t facilitate that BUT she would try to transfer me.
By this time, I’ m at the building and I ask the doorman if Verizon has shown up and the answer is no. And now I’ve been connected to an idiot at Verizon. I try to explain what happened and how ridiculous it was for the driver to say call me back when he was calling from a private number!!! The man on the phone wants to know who I am, what is the order number, when was the appointment for. He must have asked me twenty questions, (none of which I could answer) with me constantly interrupting him and yelling “can’t you just call the driver and tell him to come to the appointment”? Apparently not!
He then asked me what email address should they use for a follow-up? I was beside myself and yelled back, ” Follow up email? What are you talking about? We haven’t had the appointment AND all this time you are asking me idiotic questions, you could have been calling the driver”. We’re getting close supervisor time; he (the idiot) says he is trying to reach the dispatcher who might be able to contact the driver. Me: “Great, you’re a communications company and your driver calls with a private number and you think maybe dispatcher can reach him??
By this time Peter has made it diagonally across town and is in the lobby with me and I’m explaining the fiasco to him while I am intermittently put on hold with the promise that “we’re trying to reach him”. Peter goes out into the street and a half a block away he spots a Verizon truck and finds out that this IS the installer and he will come in and do the job.
One more “please hold” and I say to the man on the other end of the line, “Don’t bother we found him ourselves” and I hang up on him! Can you hear me now?
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
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