If breaking up is hard to do, moving a Verizon DSL line is no piece of cake.  Last week we asked for our DSL account to be moved from our old address to our new one.  We had a very nice gentleman who told us it should be ready by Monday but should it not be ready then, we would have a dial up number in the meantime.  Monday is here and my DSL modem is desperately blinking waiting for a signal. 

After spending sometime on hold, I get a gentleman who cheerfully tells me my order was delayed and won’t be ready until the 30th.  That is two weeks without Internet.  This gentleman told me the only thing I could do in the meantime is wait.  Yes, just wait.  He transfers me to the billing department that was so busy it hung up on me.  I called back and had one of these, I call them "attitude-ladies" on the phone, short, hiding behind a cold, factual Verizon lingo mumble-jumble.  Still no satisfaction to be had from them.  I will have to wait.

In the meantime, I get an email that finally Verizon is dropping the infamous Federal Universal Service Fund recovery fee, which it does not have to pass down to its clients BUT that new clients would pay a special fee intended to help offset costs they incur from their network supplier in providing Verizon Online DSL service.  This applies to new and old clients.  And these people want to be in charge of figuring out who gets priority on the Internet.

So in the end, we really are stuck with two big monopolies who really do pretty much what they want.  We finally voted down an old antiquated tax and Verizon replaces it with another fee. 

Switching a service should be handled on the fly.  Why would one have to wait two weeks to have DSL when changing an address is puzzling.  I say all this as I am well aware of the technical difficulties.  However Verizon, don’t wash me with insipid advertising about how great and hip you are.  Replacing a tax with a fee is a typical signature of a monopoly.  And the same goes to the other monopoly in our neighborhood called Charter who still spams me to this day for their mediocre services.

Me mad?  Nah!