Verizon

We were recently visited at our office by a representative of telephone giant Verizon who wanted to review our current plan and see if she could save us some money. Basically she recommended we consolidate our telephone lines, long distance and Internet connections into a single reduced monthly fee. It sounded good and we went along with it. When our next bill came, we discovered that our fees had actually gone up as opposed to down (it almost doubled). "Strike one."

Obviously irritated with the bill, we wanted to find out exactly what was going on and endeavored to contact Verizon about our billing. Ever try to call Verizon lately? They have taken "Voice Mail Jail" to a whole new level. You are asked a series of questions by a preprogrammed voice that theoretically is to expedite your problem and take care of you. Wrong. No matter how we tried to work within their voice mail system we were never able to get the answers we were looking for. Even worse, our frustration level arose to a new level as we were never allowed to talk to a human being about our problem. It seems the only time you can communicate with Verizon is when they want something from you, not when you want something from them. "Strike Two."

VERIZON

Whoever thought Verizon's voice mail system improved customer service should be taken out and horse whipped. Actually, I got the impression there isn't a breathing person at Verizon; that everything is being run by computers and the executives are lying on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. I guess its not a bad gig if you can set your company up this way and you really do not care about customer service.

Verizon

I'm just wondering how many other customers they have been able to alienate or are we the only ones left using Verizon? We better get this problem resolved soon or it will be "Strike Three" and they're out of here.

Verizon