The only calling out I can do
VERIZON — an ancient Aramaic word for “Screw You!” — is shoving it to us again.
Processing information for this daily NYC newspaper requires I have multiple telephone lines at home. None has worked. Not just one’s off. All have been off. All five have not worked for the past week.
No dial tone. They either crackle, buzz, create static or remain useless — as one less gracious than myself might say — the same as do Verizon’s officers.
It has caused an additional hardship. Other appliances geared to this system also now lay dead.
I am not the only one inconvenienced. Neighbors are without service. The building intercom system also stopped operating.
This is over and over. Not new. Or sudden. It’s for lengthy periods. Continual. I have complained about this before, last year and the year before. But it has happened several times in addition to that.
Once only this entire week did a single number ring. And who was it? The robotic recorded chirp: “This is Verizon. We’re sorry you’re having trouble.”
The company has answers. Solutions, no. Just answers: “We’re busy trying to fix it ... it’s the copper wires which are getting old . . . we’re trying to replace with Fios . . . there’s lots of traffic in your area, and that’s where the majority of the lines meet.”
Whatever the hell that means. All I want is a dial tone.
Modern structures, new buildings, come with technology’s Fios. However, certain Upper East Side corridors are older. As are the apartments. As are the tenants. Their structures were built when connections snaked through underground copper wires.
A new world
COMMUNICATION has widened. Telephoning’s exploded. Life is more, more. People, usage, weather, aging, traffic, busses, cars, trucks over manholes and roads. And copper wire has gone the way of the penny. One of Earth’s largest public telecom companies doesn’t care to invest effort, money, manpower to shore up what’s old.
It’s the same thinking as better to warehouse your grandma in some health-care nursing home so as to shove her out of the way. Same thing.
Understand, you should not do this to a populace that includes invalids. Frail elderly. Seniors living alone. Surviving fearfully. Frightened.
A letter from a dressmaker who, lacking communication, cannot service clients. A simple jeweler, powerless against this giant provider, is distraught. A known attorney — who maybe forgot what’s called class action — requested I help his similar problem. I have stacks of such correspondence. ONE thing they process with alacrity is their monthly bill. They haven’t — so far — suggested a credit for time their operation was inoperable. Limiting citizens’ ability to survive, why aren’t city fathers doing something? Where’s the FCC? Attorney general? Maybe Public Advocate Letitia James thumps for underachievers. Well, how about the East Side’s overachievers getting underserved? Listen, try calling the CEO. You won’t get him on the phone. Maybe his isn’t working, either.