Verizon, the local telco monopoly, decided to stun us today with sheer incompetence. Some background: in December we bought a house three blocks from our present home and started the planning to move. Being a relatively wired couple, we made lots of inquiries to DSL providers and Verizon to ensure that we had a smooth transition. I won't go into the Cloud 9 tale here for now, but Verizon at the outset assured us that we could move our main number to the new house with absolutely no problems. No problems whatsoever. I mean, it's in the same CO. Periodic checks with Verizon (due partially to our over zealous belief we'd move in sooner) continued to confirm that moving the number would be no problem. Yesterday (Friday), through all of the calls Lisa made, not once was it raised as an issue. They couldn't keep the lines straight, but moving the number was a non-issue, after all, for the most part it's simply a software assignment on the switch.

Today? Today we call Verizon, as a followup to yesterday's adventures. This time, just for kicks, they tell us that under no circumstances would it be possible to move the number. Can't be done. Nope, no way. Well, for a "mileage charge" they might consider it. However, it's usually not done. We then began a 90 minute marathon call with a Verizon supervisor. After all, we'd been told repeatedly it'd be no problem, we'd gone off and printed out "we've moved" cards with the number on them, and frankly, were quite upset that the day before our move they suddenly "realize" (decide) it can't be done. I won't go into the details, since there weren't many other than the hold music on the help line is, well, not appealing. By the end of the day, we had both lines at the old house shut down, and moved (in theory) to the new house. No explanation of why it went from possible, to absolutely impossible, to "sure, we can have it done by 5:00".