Actually, the high level support lady has communicated with the Verizon Internet Technology department and it actually sounds like there may be a fix on the way for me. There is no direct number to call, but the suggestion that I was about to change providers seems to have gotten me escalated. It took almost two hours to get here, though.

They have call centers in places like Murfreesboro, TN. I don't know why they're still off-shored for first contact calls and why it's so difficult to get escalated to somebody who doesn't communicate by script in widely varying states of English communication ability. I ask for somebody who speaks English as a first language and I get a different Tagalog- or Spanish-speaker. It's hard enough to understand the occasional New Yorker I happen to get. And the scripts they use are VERY frustrating. "Hello, valued customer" is not a proper response to "My damned phone isn't working right AGAIN!!!".

End result: They are going to "back out a change they made in October" that removed the reasonable-hour check for sending the messages. Since they do releases monthly and I don't know when they did the last one, I have no idea when this will happen. I'm not hopeful, since my initial complaint was in July, before they made the October change.

*611 or 888 294-6804 options 4-6-4 are what she gave me for tech support to get to a person. That's what I did 1 hour and 31 minutes ago, Before that I spent 8 minutes doing *611, asked for a English-as-a-first-language person and was transferred to another off-shore 4 times and hung up in frustration.

Magic Jack has better service.