They've officially reached "dumber than the phone company" status.

Naah. We had a problem with our phone recently and the hoops we had to go through to get a service call in was ridiculous. There was no tech service number on any of the bills, and the number listed on the web site wasn't a valid number. So we called the billing number (ever noticed how quickly those calls get answered??), explained the situation and asked to be forwarded. The first time they forwarded us to Pizza Hut. So we called back and tried again. This time we got forwarded to directory enquiries. At this point we give up with the phone and go back to the horrendous web site. After hunting through way too many levels to find the tech support page, we enter a problem report. Sure enough, a few minutes later an email arrives. Automated response..."this is your ticket number ### blah blah. We'll try to read your report within 4 business days". Aaarrgh! So we go back to the phone, using the same method as before - via billing. Complained about being forwarded to Pizza Hut and Directory Enquiries before and asked to be put through to the real tech support number this time. The girl explained that although Pizza Hut had been a mistake, the Directory Enquiries hadn't. Apparantly the tech support system is set up to forward calls there when they are overly busy. WTF?!

Anyway, eventually we got though to tech support, and the phone got fixed 2 days later. It still took the best part of a week for anyone to read that online problem report though.

Now I could understand this if I was talking about some small hick-town phone company. But this was Verizon.