I’m on the Do Not Call list.  I like the list.  I wish it extended to politicians and charities.  I tend to get into deep concentration when I write, and the phone is my enemy.  So imagine my surprise tonight when I got a recorded solicitation.  I was incensed!  Who would dare interrupt me in the middle of watching “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” with a recorded message?  I was already planning to call the phone company and report them.

But it WAS the phone company.  It was Verizon, hawking their high-speed internet access with the most repugnant form of advertising that doesn’t involve tattooing children. My phone company was using the phone, for which I pay them handomely, to pester me in my home at a time when their business office was not even open so I could complain. 

Now, I have a history with Verizon internet service, so let me explain why this really irked me.  A few years ago when I decided to escape the AOL Gulag, I ordered internet service from Verizon. The equipment came promptly and I hooked everything up and patiently waited for the day when they would turn on my magical internets.   The only problem was, that day never came.  Every week, right before the day of my activation date, I’d get an email (via AOL, which I had come to despise) that the date had been delayed another week. 

This went on for six weeks. Finally I called Verizon, and after three tries and four hours on hold, I was told that all the available slots in my area had been taken, and that I was on a waiting list.  I’d get my slot just as soon as somebody who already had Verizon high speed internet service canceled their deal.  After some prying, I learned that there were 36 people ahead of me on that waiting list, and that nobody in my area had canceled their service in 18 months.  I called Charter (now Suddenlink) and had my broadband up and running in three hours.

Essentially, Verizon high speed internet service is not available in my area.  Yet, they call and interrupt me during prime time television viewing hours to offer me a really crappy deal on internet service.  And they do it with the most odious of telemarketing techniques– the recorded message that won’t let you hang up.  I was pissed, and the more I thought about it, the pisseder I got!  So I decided to strike Verizon where it will hurt them most.

I blogged about it.  That’ll show ’em!

I also may switch one of my land lines to Suddenlink.