>I am sure there are thousands of just causes for concern of jobs in the United States. I heard this on television last night.
>
>http://www.cwa-union.org/fairnessatverizon/Pledge/index.asp?

Accidentally, when I moved here two months ago, I had no choice but to take Verizon for local and broadband. The experience is worse than awful. Not the service itself - phone works, DSL speed is fine - but with their online services and all the situations when I had to talk with them.

First, the service number they give for Virginia (yes, one for all Virginia - it's in Richmond) is easy to dial, and after you go through a bunch of menu options, it either hangs up, or leaves you waiting indefinitely. On other numbers they have they usually pass you to the next - next - next 'associate' (is 'worker' politically incorrect?). You then explain what you want for the nth time and get patched back to this Richmond number. Sounds like old Basic code: "10 GOTO 10". Sometimes you get where you should go, but that's not easy.

How I got the phone line? I ordered it through their web site. Except that it got nowhere. They had my data alright, and the confirmation number I got served only to save me from spelling my name another ten times - the online order created no workorder, still had to do it on the phone, which took two hours. Then they wanted two picture documents from me - no fingerprints nor DNA samples so far - which I faxed, and then waited four hours they required for "processing" of these documents. Four hours later I was on the phone with someone again, and she asked whether I had faxed those and when. So much for processing - she found them while she spoke with me, and said they were OK. This took only half an hour on the phone. My phone line came up within an hour - except that my phone number was not what they gave me online, and nobody told me which number I got. Found it out later when someone read my caller ID and told me.

DSL was a special case - there was no way to order it together with the phone line - you have to have a live line first. This took about two weeks and four hours on the phone.

When the first bill arrived I discovered that the "comprehensive package" which includes regional calling and a few free services was not a "comprehensive package", but rather an optional package charged on top of the base package. Analyzing its content I concluded that I am not using any of these optional things, and wanted to cancel. Online - no way, there's only and "add Verizon Freedom" option button (should be a checkbox, but we're not discussing GUI here), while for everything else there's "add or change". Of course, the pages are written in a way that there's no possibility to choose nothing - that doesn't pass validation.

So I tried calling them, got nowhere. I emailed them, and got this:

Thank you for your recent email. We appreciate your inquiry and understand 
your concerns. Your email has reached the Verizon Online Internet Services billing 
department. Your local Verizon Phone Office can provide the information that you 
require. In order to assist you, we request that you please contact your Residential 
Phone Billing office. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and look forward 
to helping resolve your issue.

Should you have any additional questions regarding your Verizon Online service, please 
do not hesitate to contact us. We appreciate your business and value you as a customer. 
Thank you for choosing Verizon Online as your Internet Service Provider.

...except there's no address, no local phone numbers - nothing. Where the hell is my local phone office? There's Verizon Wireless, but I visited them once and they denied any connection with land lines and broadband. They didn't even know whether those had an office around here.

I never expected I'd say "Sprint, come back, everything's forgiven", but I did, several times.