Doing battle with Comcast and Verizon

My con­test with the twin pterodactyls of Phila­del­phia has not been pret­ty. They have bloodied me. My wife, Libby, was ripped apart, too. My ad­vice for fu­ture combatants: Lie down, as­sume the fe­tal po­si­tion, and hope for the best. And make sure your children are safe.

Com­cast and Ve­ri­zon are a for­mi­da­ble cor­po­rate tag team. They beat you with scripted ap­o­lo­gies, in­com­pe­tence, and broken promises.

Here is what happened:

We have Ve­ri­zon for phone and In­ter­net ser­vice and Com­cast for the tele­vi­sion. We were not hap­py with any­one's prices and es­pe­cial­ly with our In­ter­net speed, re­li­abil­i­ty, and ser­vice.

So Libby contacted Com­cast about its In­ter­net and phone ser­vice. It began with a Goo­gle search and then a phone call to a Com­cast rep­re­sen­ta­tive for in­for­ma­tion. Looking back, it's hard to tell if the wom­an was an in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor or a Com­cast em­ploy­ee. The prices quoted were higher than we expected. She said she'd call Libby back. She didn't.

Next, Libby searched for in­for­ma­tion on Com­cast's site, ul­ti­mate­ly "talking" on­line with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive. It was a long and tortured e-mail con­ver­sa­tion. Ul­ti­mate­ly, Libby thought that the em­ploy­ee was not answering her questions and asked to speak to a su­per­vi­sor.

The Com­cast guy ignored her and the con­ver­sa­tion stopped. Libby end­ed with: "You just lost a cus­tom­er."

Two days later, on Fri­day, May 18, our phones didn't work. In­com­ing callers were told that our service had been dis­con­nect­ed.

We called Ve­ri­zon and were told that we had switched to an­oth­er car­ri­er. No, we didn't, we said. Give us our phones back.

Ve­ri­zon said it had received an of­fi­cial no­ti­fi­ca­tion from an­oth­er car­ri­er that we had changed ser­vice. We hast­i­ly told Ve­ri­zon about our inquiries to Com­cast.

We asked whether our phone ser­vice could be restored im­me­di­ate­ly if we called Com­cast and straightened this out.

No.

The mat­ter could not be handled that day or over the week­end, the Ve­ri­zon guy said. Per­haps an or­der could be placed to re­store our ser­vice on Tues­day or Wednes­day. I huffed and puffed, he talked to a su­per­vi­sor and re­lented. Mon­day or Tues­day — may­be.

Libby called Com­cast and ac­tu­al­ly got some­one to ad­mit that this should not have happened to us and that employees needed more train­ing. Service should not have been switched with­out our OK.

I won't re­peat every blow we have received in the nu­mer­ous calls to Ve­ri­zon and Com­cast, but here are some that hurt the worst: the shot across the face by Com­cast, "We have sent Ve­ri­zon the elec­tron­ic sig­nal so that you can get your phone back," or the kick in the stom­ach by Ve­ri­zon, "I know you're frustrated, but …"

Just a few hours af­ter I decided to con­tact the news­pa­per — can the pterodactyls read our minds as well? — I had walked out of the house and Libby was at home when the "frozen" phone rang.

Sur­prised and speech­less, Libby answered. It had been 5½ days since ei­ther of us had heard the phone ring. Our last con­tact with Ve­ri­zon and Com­cast that af­ter­noon had been the dreaded "It will take 24 hours," which we had heard be­fore.

A wom­an from Ve­ri­zon announced that the phone was work­ing. She added that it would have been fixed the day be­fore, but she was not at work.

Now we'll see if they charge us for turn­ing it back on.