After my recent story about the problem Verizon FIOS is having with my account, I decided (with the prompting of Chris) to be pro-active and call them. Since I know the problem still is lurking, it is better to get it resolved rather than tempt fate on the next "first of the month."
Just to keep my dear readers (all dozen or so of you) informed, I'm going to post about my progress.
Today while at work I spent 90 minutes trying to get through to someone that could help me.
Attempt 1: The person transfered me to tech support who couldn't help me.
Attempt 2: For some reason I got transfered to billing in a state other than NJ. They couldn't help me but transfered me to the right billing center. (Why is their system not sending me to the right billing center? Could that be a symptom?) When talking with this person I created a 3-way call so he could hear the problem himself. It takes about 5 minutes to get to the point where I get transfered, and right before we got to that last, final prompt he shouted "agent" which made the system stop what it was doing and transfer me to a human. Thus, at this point no Verizon employee has seen the problem demonstrated. I was so frustrated at that point that I said something about being too upset to continue and hung up.
Attempt 3: the person at this billing center took the time to understand my problem but kept repeating that he couldn't change how the phone system works. I would calmly explain that this is triggered by something being wrong with my account, and could he help me with that. He said there is nothing wrong with my account. I agreed and said, "Since we both agree that there is nothing wrong with my account, I shouldn't be transfered, right?" At that point we would repeat our conversation. I literally got him to go in this circle 3 times. I was nearly laughing.
I feel sorry for the guy. He works at a payment center. His job is to take people's credit card info and process payment. Obviously I'm not talking to the right people.
I asked to have this escalated. He took my phone number and said that a manager will call me within 4 hours. That was at 11:30am.
Another data point: I just remembered that when I ordered the service I called from my desk phone in NYC and went to the NYC sales office. There was a problem because New Jersey is sold out of the New Jersey office. She was able to put the order in anyway. I wonder if my account is in some kind of limbo because the order was placed from the NYC sales office but the service was delivered to New Jersey.
Anyway... I've got a lot of work to do today. I'm putting this to rest until they call me back.
Incidentally, how do you record this time according to "The Cycle"? Was this planned time or unplanned? (I'm only half-kidding; this kind of thing doesn't happen frequently, but certainly isn't isolated...)