I was in DSL hell for a couple of days, complements of Verizon. I needed to switch the credit card that automatically paid the account each month at the turn of the year. Since the website didn’t allow for the option I needed, I called in the change only to discover that their systems were down. That was before I had to head out on my trip to California. I’ve been playing catch-up on my work since I got back and hadn’t gotten around to retrying that particular item when, on Wednesday, I lost my service. No email warning, no letter of warning, nada. That took only about ten minutes to clear up over the phone, but I was told that it would take 24 to 48 hours for the service to come back on. I was, I noted, not a happy camper. It’s a sign that back-end systems are not linked together electronically that this doesn’t happen automatically. And that is always a bad sign. But, I was told, it often happens faster. So I waited. And waited. And waited. After the 48 hour marked ticked past, I got to spend three solid hours talking with various technical and billing people & supervisors before, finally, a supervisor in the “customer advocacy” office finally got me back on. If I had any hair left – as my son notes, I only have hair in Jim Behrle cartoons – I’d’ve ripped it out over this one.