On my second attempt, I finally got to a live person at Verizon customer service and was able to cancel our landline phone. The first time, I gave up after being on hold a half-hour or so, because I’m impatient like that.
So this will save us about $30 a month. I also dropped down the newspaper delivery to two days a week.
I expected a fight from the representatives on both calls, at least a pitch of some sort, but I was met with no resistance and got nothing but pleasant assistance. Wow, I rhymed. Being a poet is not up there as a backup career choice, that’s for sure.
The Verizon rep only asked why I wanted to disconnect our phone service, and I truthfully told her it was because we get maybe one or two calls a week and hardly make calls out. Why bother when we have plenty of minutes on our Verizon Wireless plans and can call out of area without additional charge — unlike landline service, where there are charges for “local toll calls” and a monthly fee for long distance (which is NEVER used).
I have to admit that I saw this as a microcosm of the national economy. It’s like these companies have just given up — or, at least, their customer service reps have. Or perhaps they felt they were just fighting a losing battle and gave up trying to coerce Americans already on tight budgets into keeping their services as is.
