Squeaky wheel may get the most grease

Question

To Verizon customers using this Forum:
I've learned that if you do not open a trouble ticket or post in this forum everytime you have a problem with your phone service, you are not believed when you tell Verizon support that your phone service is constantly affected with line noise, dropped calls or no dial tone whenever there is heavy rains.
We have had issues for years.  We live in a rural area and were told years ago by a house guest who was a former telephone company employee that the lines on the road are sub-standard.  He could not believe that the wire used on the poles was of the same quality that you would use for interior wiring in a building.  And that was over 10 years ago.  We figured we had to deal with the line noise issues and only reported problem when  dial tone outage lasted more than a day or two.  I'd have to wait until I could get to a working phone anyway to call in the problem.    
Now that my husband is home during the day, we are finding that our phone service is interrupted more often than we thought.  He has trouble during the day making calls or will get disconnected in the middle of a call and then not be able to call the person back because there is no dial tone.   The weather has been particularly bad this year ... snow storms that knock out power (we now lose phone service (yes, I have a corded phone, when I thought landlines were immune to this) and heavy rains with flooding.  Since there are people in our county who have lost their homes or businesses, we didn't immediately report the issues that are occurring figuring Verizon had their hands full with trying to restore service to damaged areas.
Then we started having the issue of our line dialing 911 without our knowledge and getting a knock at the door late at night because troopers or sheriff's deputy has to follow up to make sure you are okay.  Last month, we had erroneous charges for use of directory assistance calls that we didn't make ... could this be line calling 411 instead of 911?   The only other option for these directory assistance calls is someone trespassing onto our property and using our telephone without our knowledge.  So I've asked and am waiting for Verizon to provide details call history for the period so I can see if there are phone #s we didn't call either.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that you need to keep reporting and complaining if you have phone service issues.  You can't let them slide figuring they weill self-resolve.  The automatic attendant process that you have to deal with on the phone reporting method is frustrating to use.  Sometimes you can screw with it by swearing or not giving one or the other answer it is seeking to a question ... it will sometimes give up and you'll get routed to a human ... depending on the time of the day.
If you have regular internet access, the Chat feature on this site works pretty good.   I've found the person on the other end is always polite and tries their best to assist you, even if you can't get the answers you are seeking.  Posting in this forum seems to get a lot of attention,  However, make sure you monitor your postings or click the 'subscription' box for email notifications.    Otherwise, if you don't respond back to their postings within a day, your 'case is closed'.  And have fun trying to find 'My Support Cases' link.  Sometimes it appears in your profile and sometimes it doesn't.   Doesn't work on mobile devices.   Maybe it only appears if you have an active 'in process' case opened with Verizon not when you just want to check history of your reported issues.
Good Luck!

Answer 1

Holy cow! Are we neighbors? We have this same exact problem-to the letter. The last time the actual Verizon repair employee told us that the line was no good. He said he does the same thing every time we have this problem-goes to the junction box down the road and unplugs our line and searches for a good line and plugs us into that line. Total craziness! Replace the stupid line for crying out loud! Jeez!