Off-Grid in West Virginia

Tuesday

Sonny Jobe

For the last several months I have had the most frustration of any period of my life.  I don’t think I have had more torment then this during my entire 22 yrs of active duty while in the U.S. Navy.  Your probably wondering what could it be?  Heart Attack or is Sonny working with NASA to engineer the space race to the moon? No nothing that simple… It is Verizon.  The ridiculous amount of time that I have spent on the phone trying to get service to my house have been Herculean.

Three months ago I called Verizon to start the process getting a telephone for our house.  We are so far back in the boonies we have to drive over 12 miles just to get to an area that has a cell phone signal and we are over a mile past the last house on the road that has electricity.   Anyway, I was asked about internet packages having cable, phone and internet (I just chuckled under my breath), I explained to the person that I live in a very rural area and that there is no chance that service is out there.  They checked and backed away from that line of questioning.

After asking for my address they suddenly realized they could not find my address.  I gave them the Lat/Long and they thought I was talking French or something.  Then I though it was best to give them turn-by-turn directions to my house.  They told me they would submit my request to their engineers and to call back in a month.

I was generous and called them back in a month and ten days.  To my surprise they had absolutely no record of my call and nothing could be done without me submitting everything again.  It was sort of like “Motor Vehicle” department when getting your car registered. “Do what we ask or too dam bad”.

So here we go again. I gave them all the information, explained my off-grid situation etc. To my surprise they said they would be out on Wednesday between 8-5pm.  I explained that there is no phone box around there and only the remnant of a “Green” phone box in a field over an 1/8^th mile away in a field where many years ago there may have been a house.  It was my thoughts that they would have to bury cables and go over a stream etc to get to my place.  The desk jockey at Verizon really had no idea.  On Wednesday I expected to see their truck pull up and watch the installers begin their tap dance about how they couldn’t… blah blah blah. Not a chance, they just didn’t show up.

So the next day I called back. Got a new fresh face on the phone and started my 10 minute dissertation about my situation and asked what was going on with my install.  I got some story about a error code that they couldn’t figure out what it meant and they would have to call me back.  Two days later I called them back, got some other fresh face on the phone and had to explain everything again.  They finally found that same pesky error code and guess what? They had to put me on hold to call someone to figure out what the code meant.  After 5 or 6 times of coming online thanking me for holding I suddenly got a “Dial-Tone” Can you believe it, I was about to lose my mind.

So I called right back and got another new fresh face on the phone and started my 15 minute dissertation once again about my situation and that I had had enough of being handed off to the football team only to get a disconnect.  Finally they seemed to get that darn error code figured out and set me up for the install on the next Thursday, yep your right it was between 8-5 pm.

Thinking I’m going to out smart them this time, I called Verizon promptly at 8:00 am to ensure the install was still on schedule.  Yep, it all was 5×5. That is until 5:30 pm when I called them.  Yep, got a new fresh face and started asking what was going on.  And some dam error code was showing a problem.  Of course they had no idea what the code meant and put me on hold.  Like magic it was disconnected.  I think you have already figured out that I called right back to another “freshling” and went at it once again.  They finally told me they would have to call me back after they figured out what the code meant.  Although I was losing my mind, I made sure they got my work number and my cell number even though I would have to drive back into town to check for messages.

By now you may not be surprised that there were no messages from Verizon.

I would be happy with Indian Smoke signals if we didn’t have a burn ban in the county.  So I pumped my chest up this morning and got ready for battle.  Yep, new fresh face was quickly turned into raw meat. I wasn’t a Chief in the Navy for nothing.  In short asked for their supervisor and again to the Official Complaint Department.  I now have a designated person along with their direct phone number for all further conversations.

I have swallowed the hook again. They will be there between 8-5 pm this Friday.  I made sure I told them I will believe it when I see it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.