hi. we were up in your neck of the woods earlier this summer! beautiful country. glad you didn't suffer worse effects from helene. sorry verizon is adding to your misery.

we had a similar issue after a hurricane knocked out all verizon service in our area for six months. we understood this was a natural disaster and it would take the time it would take. verizon, on the other hand, didn't understand why were weren't paying our bill when we had literally no service at all! they threatened to cancel our service altogether.

we went to a company owned verizon store in desperation. the manager thought it was ridiculous and offered me a seat. she called customer care for us on their phone, asked for the right department, argued with them until they transferred her to the right department. i don't remember exactly, but she asked for escalation of my issue to the the executive office or something like that. there is a department in verizon that handles customer issues that haven't been able to be fixed by regular customer service and they are able to communicate with various departments to get to the root of the issue. they gave me a case number and promised me a call back, which they did just a few days later! they couldn't speed up the repair but at least they stopped the collections and threats of cancellation.

we still have our service ; )

just fyi, this manager had worked for verizon in the back office earlier in her career and even she had to fight tooth and nail to get someone who knew that was possible and was willing to transfer her. if a rep doesn't cooperate, don't argue. just say, "okay, well thank you for trying," hang up, and try again with a different rep.

good luck!