{"id":362,"date":"2004-09-20T00:19:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-19T19:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=362"},"modified":"2004-09-20T00:19:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-19T19:19:00","slug":"chores-and-why-i-hate-verizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=362","title":{"rendered":"Chores, and why I hate verizon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today was a day of chores and no, the pictures aren&#8217;t online yet.  Doing the big-org on the train tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>We bought a new refrigerator.  Ended up going with the 21.7 cubic foot one because I get irritable and nasty when I have to play tetris to get at my veggie BBQ wings.  Splurged on the EnergyStar compliant model (++ $200) but did without the brushed steel finish (&#8211; $300).  All told, $800 to prevent the explosions of rage that happen when my freezer pizzas settle all down in the bottom of their boxes because they&#8217;re not frozen.  I tell you, I can cope with serious pain-in-the-butt for long periods of time, but tiny little things like a freezer-pizza that doesn&#8217;t work out right and KABOOM.  <\/p>\n<p><!--more Why I hate Verizon-->Extracted a new phone from those bastards at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.verizon.com\">Verizon<\/a>.  Jen&#8217;s phone freaked out and the display stopped working.  We&#8217;ve been paying $3.99 a month for the past 11 months to purchase their &#8220;insurance&#8221; policy.  When we got to the store, the first line was &#8220;oh, you broke it, that&#8217;s not covered.&#8221;  I said &#8220;wrong.&#8221;  Then they shifted to &#8220;It&#8217;s outside warrantee because it&#8217;s more than a year old.&#8221;  This was why I brought the receipt dated September 29, 2003 (nyah nyah).  Then it was &#8220;oh, well, there&#8217;s a $50 deductible.&#8221;  &#8220;No,&#8221; I said, there isn&#8217;t.  The phone crapped out.  You will replace it.  now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The next line was my personal favorite from Verizon:  &#8220;We don&#8217;t have that phone right now, but we&#8217;ll get more in stock in a week or two.&#8221;  Sorry guys, I&#8217;ve fallen for that before.  My new policy on dealing with Verizon is that you fix it while I&#8217;m here talking to you.  In fact, Jen had tried to get a replacement a couple of weeks back, and fell for that line at that time.  Every single time that a Verizon rep has promised to do something for me, be it DSL, land-line, or wireless&#8230;it has not happened unless I stayed on the phone \/ in their face.  No chance.  &#8220;We&#8217;re going to walk out of here with a working cell phone.  Whatever has to be done for that to happen, do it now.&#8221;  He said &#8220;do you want to talk to a manager?&#8221;  I said &#8220;sure.&#8221;  At that point, he caved and gave me a new phone. I never even saw the manager.  Poor bluffing fool.  I wonder how many people back down at that point.  &#8220;A manager?  Oh goodness no, don&#8217;t bring the manager, here&#8217;s MORE money for you!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then he offered to up my bill by $2 a month for some sort of Verizon warrantee plus action.  This program, as I asked questions about it, provides ZERO benefits that are not part of the insurance for which I pay $3.99 a month.  None.  Nada.  Zero.  In fact, it covers fewer failures, and ALL of these failures are also covered by the insurance.  No thank you. <\/p>\n<p>I hate Verizon so much.  June of 2005, We&#8217;re out of the contract with them and I&#8217;m gone.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, I was on the phone with them about my screwed up bill.  When we moved the phone numbers to a Rhode Island area code, they reset our contract (&#8220;It&#8217;s a new number, so it&#8217;s a new contract!&#8221;  &#8220;Have I defaulted on the old one?&#8221; &#8220;Ummm, no&#8221; &#8220;So I&#8217;m still bound by the old one?&#8221;  &#8220;Ummm, I&#8217;ll fix it, sir.&#8221;) and set us up as two independent 800 minute plans rather than a single shared 1200 minute (&#8220;I can change that for you effective today!&#8221; &#8220;Since there&#8217;s no chance of my paying $250 for service I didn&#8217;t order, you better make that retroactive.&#8221;  &#8220;Okay.&#8221;)  Plus, I still couldn&#8217;t call internationally (&#8220;You need a 90 day history with the company, and this new contract was just set up this month&#8221; &#8220;YEEAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!&#8221;  &#8220;Sorry sir, I&#8217;ll fix that too.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, and I have puddles of water in my basement.  No idea where they come from since they&#8217;ve flowed to the low spots jn the floor.  Grrrrrrr.<\/p>\n<p>I was a little bummed by my low email levels over the last week.  Only 719 messages to wade through, and at least 50 of those were content bearing (non-spam).  That&#8217;s nothing to whine about, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today was a day of chores and no, the pictures aren&#8217;t online yet. Doing the big-org on the train tomorrow. We bought a new refrigerator. Ended up going with the 21.7 cubic foot one because I get irritable and nasty when I have to play tetris to get at my veggie BBQ wings. Splurged on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}