Of all the technical challenges facing a freelancer, phone trouble has been my toughest. My Verizon voice land lines are usually reliable, and I’m thankful for that. However, whenever there is a problem, I brace myself for another adventure with Verizon’s novel approaches to customer service.

Stretching the technology, and the truth. When I set up my home office in 1998, I ordered two regular phones lines plus an ISDN line for my Internet connection. When setting up the order, the Verizon rep assured me that I was within the ISDN distance limits of Verizon’s central office. When my ISDN line explicably and routinely went down, technicians regularly called to my house were stumped. Then one day an unusually competent tech casually mentioned that I was located right on the cusp of the distance limits. After I got done screaming, I cancelled my ISDN line and got a cable modem.

Tag-team ducking. This is when Verizon sends one crew – the inside crew – to diagnose the problem. That crew quickly determines that it’s an outside problem, so the outside crew is called in. When the outside crew arrives, it can’t find the problem and insists that the inside crew return. This continues until the customer meets the Verizon crew at the front door with a shotgun.

Maintenance of pure profit. My latest Verizon fiasco was just last week. I’m renovating my office and while the drywall is off I called Verizon to check the condition of the phone wiring. Two technicians showed up. One’s job was apparently to chat me up while the other expertly wielded a screwdriver to remove the faceplate in an effort to look like he was doing something. (The wall was wide open.) The verdict was that the wiring was OK but was vulnerable because it was not enclosed by a gauge box. Great, I said, go ahead and do it. Verizon, however, doesn’t do gauge boxes. For the $12 per month I’ve been paying for more than 10 years for Verizon to maintain my inside wiring (that’s over $1,500), I don’t get a $5 plastic gauge box that will probably help avoid another service call.

I’d switch to the Comcast triple play, but its technical service is on a par with Verizon’s. (More to come in a future post.) I’m looking for a third option. Voice over IP? Drop the land lines and go totally mobile? I’ve heard great things about FIOS, a fiber-to-the-curb service rumored to be coming to my neighborhood any day now for the last year. And who provides FIOS? You guessed it – Verizon. If it comes, I’ll probably give it a try. Maybe, just maybe, I stand a chance of becoming that rare and endangered breed: a satisfied Verizon customer.