This is my last rant about Verizon, because I’m done. Finished.

As if this wasn’t enough, on Friday Eric tried to make a phone call from his line and it was dead. He checked other jacks in the house and his line didn’t work anywhere. He called Verizon and they insisted that he go outside and test the line from the box outside the garage. It was raining and we don’t happen to have a standard phone available to plug in.

I called Verizon back, since I had dealt with them the most in all the previous problems, and the moment the CSR opened my account his tone changed. He was rude, accusatory and condescending all at the same time. A neat trick. I can only imagine the friendly notes that are on my account based on all the phone calls I made to them over the last month.

After one rep told Eric that we must check the phone line from the outside before a service call could be scheduled, this Mr. Nasty on the phone with me said that was only optional. A service call was scheduled for Monday between 1-9 pm. An eight hour window. I tell him that Rosh Hashana starts Monday evening so we won’t be home after 6 pm. Him: “Well if you’d go out and test the line we’d know for sure whether you needed to be home or not.” Me: “What difference does it make? If we knew for sure it was an inside problem, could you give me a shorter window?” Him: “No.”

Today (Saturday), mysteriously the second line works again. It’s a miracle!

Shortly after I hung up, I got an email with our first new Verizon bill…$302.84!

Included are a number of mistakes, including some per-minute charges for local calls that were made while the plans were messed up earlier in the month (shouldn’t be billed for any domestic phone calls as part of the Freedom Plan), partial charges for Verizon DSL that was never installed, not to mention Verizon’s ridiculous $6 charge per line for having a nonpublished phone number (not a mistake, but annoys me nonetheless).

Instead of calling Verizon yet again, my next call was to Comcast. I’m switching to their digital voice plan. Enough is enough. There’s only about $12 I can dispute in that Verizon bill, and I should get back a prorated refund after Comcast takes over the numbers. In the meantime, I’m going to pay it and let it go. I will have to be content in the knowledge that when the payment clears and our phone numbers transfer over to Comcast, I’ll be done with them. Life is too short to fight with a service provider this much.

We’re seeing outstanding speeds and reliability with the cable modem in the new house, so I have to hope that we won’t experience the quality problems with Comcast Digital Voice we had years back with Vonage. Both phone numbers will cost us less than one line did with Verizon, and it cuts $20 per month off our cable modem fee.

I’ve had my run-ins with Comcast in the past, but most of that was due to the poor lines in our old condo development. And none of my frustration with Comcast even comes close to what Verizon has put me through in the last month.