Can you hear me now?

No wonder people in this country suffer from high blood pressure. I'm pretty sure the surge can be traced to the busting up of Ma Bell and allowing "competition" to enter the free marketplace of communication industries.

I guess you can tell from this tirade that I have either been dealing with (a) Verizon or (b) Comcast, the two "choices" allowed by Baltimore County commissioners. This time it's Verizon. This company bills me for both my landline and my ISP. And even the billing hasn't been easy.

Two months ago, Verizon decided it could no longer bill me via my credit card. Funny, since it had been paid that way for seven years. But I'm accustomed to Verizon changing -- usually to my detriment. That modem that came with the sign up? Sorry, but you get to replace it at your cost now. That antivirus program that was supposed to keep you safe? You get to pay extra for that now. Little by little, they take away from the big promises of the shiny brochures. Why? Because they want me to sign up for Fios! So they can promise me even more and in a year or two, deliver even less.

I tried calling to straighten out this problem. I encountered two very large problems. One, a representative who thought she already knew what my problem was and proceeded to read from her customer service manual. And two, an apathetic attitude that reached the conclusion the fault must lie with me or my bank. Verizon is godlike. It too, like the Pope, is infallible. (I'm just waiting for them to start issuing bulls.)

After another phone call with no resolution, I decided to choose the IM chat format. This went nowhere as well. I particularly like the way the representatives "dance" around straightforward questions. Apparently, mambo lessons are part of the training at Verizon. So I invoked a name that appears scrawled across every Fios letter I get -- Geoff Walls, Executive Director of Consumer Marketing. Now, Verizon was calling me. However, I was in no forgiving mood.

My largest complaint with Verizon is not the outrageous charges, the dropped connections, the smarmy ads, or the deforestation of Brazil issued through Fios Channel lineup brochures. No, the reason Verizon boils my blood pressure is that they are supposed to be a COMMUNICATIONS BUSINESS and they don't possess a miniscule clue as to how to communicate. They don't communicate well with their customers or with each other.

I don't think they should be allowed to be called a communications business. No, I think they should be called something more like Monopolistic moneylaunderers posing as a service industry. Too long? How about Laissez-faire phagocytosis, since Verizon seems to engulf the industries surrounding it. Too difficult to remember? Maybe CAA, Con Artists of America, since they've been scamming us for quite some time.