Verizon Sucks

Ever since last Tuesday, my voice mail has been screwed up. People either can or can't leave a message for me; I have the constant interrupted dial tone; when I call the access number on my own phone, I don't get into my voice mail directly but have to punch in my phone again.

I assumed it was the storm, and didn't report it feeling that this was so minor in comparison to other problems people were having. Ov3er the weekend, I started thinking maybe this problem has nothing to do with the storm and maybe it's just plain broken.

So I go to the web site and just go on this wild goose chase of clicking things on that would turn out to be dead ends. And back I'd go clicking something else. I was essentially looking for something that said yes, we're having voice mail problems.

Somehow I landed on a page that had "contact us" and I called. Ok, fast forward through the annoyance of the phone tree and I'm trying to have a meaningful conversation with voice recognition software.  When it came my turn to state simply what my "techical issue" is, I said plainly "Problem with voicemail." That was easy... oh no, it wasn't... didn't quite recognizre "problem with voice mail" and the automated voice said, "I believe you are saying there is an issue with your voice mail... is that correct?"

For the love of god, yes.

So the automated voice told me that Verizon would attempt to fix it from there, and I should check my voice mail after 30 minutes to see if it's fixed.

OK.

She assured me that if it weren't fixed, and I had to call back, that the notes about the first call would be in my record.

Sure they will.

Of course, the problem wasn't fixed. I gave it more like 90 minutes -- even called my voice mail again just to make sure I didn't have to "clear it" or something -- well, it made sense to me at the time.

I call back. Same effing phone tree. Finally get Alphonso who KNOWS I'm calling about voice mail. He asks me to describe the issue. I do and then he  calmly says, "Well, voice mail is out in all of New York State."

WTF?

Now, you would think that would be in big letters somewhere on Verizon's website. I could have gone there, read the notice and saved some time. When the automated lady heard me say voice mail, she could have told me. Alphonso wasn't even fun to argue with. I pointed these things out to him and all I got was a bland apology.

So if you call me, and if you get that generic Verizon voice mail, you can still leave a message. You just have to re-enter my phone number.

How long until it's fixed? Who knows?

By the way, one of the links I clicked was something like "Updates on Service Impacted by Hurricane Sandy" -- and it was a page of news release headline type announcements. Oh yeah, that's quite helpful. Let me review news releases going back a week to see if they mention my voice mail.