On The Beach Blog

Used to have 'phone service from Verizon... gave it up about a dozen years ago for the attractive [warning! warning! warning!] Triple Play offer from Cablevision (since rebranded as Optimum).

Aside from the occasional musing about FiOS, about which a friend in Putnam County is most enthusiastic, I haven't given Verizon1 much of a thought until we were cleaning up after Superstorm Sandy in November.

First that monster Acer saccharinum was cleared away...

...then, on Day 12, LIPA finally showed up and hooked up our power again.

Over the next ten days, Cablevision/Optimum reconnected us, then LIPA returned to correct the prior repairs2.

Where we were singularly unsuccessful was in getting Veri­zon to address the problem of their line3 which kept sagging lower and lower until it was barely 28-inches off the lawn!

We called and called the indicated Verizon number (1-800-837-4966) and left multiple voice mail message.

No response... neither return 'phone call nor visit.

And it's not like all of Verizon's resources were deployed to Linderhurst or Long Beach... there were trucks in the area, but they didn't particularly care to be flagged down in case I was going to ask them for assistance.

Finally, more than three months later, a Verizon person showed up and, after crossing the front yard from the street to the porch along side the dangerous wire, rang the door bell and inquired as to the nature of our problem.

(I don't see a Detective's Gold Shield in his future!)

I directed his attention to the sagging wire.

"Do you want me to put it back up?" he asked.

I pointed out that I had not been a Verizon customer since early in the past decade, so was no reason to repair it.

"It's just as easy to put it back up," he persisted.

"Just get it out of here!"

"Are you sure?" he almost pleaded. "It's no problem to just put it back up."

The look on my face settled the matter.

Retrieving a ladder from his truck, he set to his task and left 15-20 minutes later.

That evening I discovered that three of our telephones had stopped working, and by first light the following morn­ing, I set about to track down the cause4.

No joy!

Sunday evening I sent Rick Bookamier a short text, the first such I'd ever sent anyone not a family member!

Rick showed up first thing the following morning and after tracking the interior connections and confirming what I already was confident of, he was perplexed since two of the upstairs 'phones worked jus' fine... until I mentioned the Verizon matter.

He went straight to where the junction box had once been.

"When you told them to remove the wire, they took the junction box as well," Rick explained. "It was their equip­ment in the first place."

Fine! But Verizon guy might've explained the consequences of my decision which led to him ripping out the junction box so I could have addressed the problem 70 hours sooner!

O, well...

Now, if we could just get the Village to replace the street light in front of numbers 256 and 262....

Special thanks...

...to Christian Carter from Westhampton Agency for the "morning after" photo above.