The Lesser of Two Utility Evils

One of my grandmother’s favorite hobbies is calling her utility companies and demanding better rates. When she gets an offer from AT&T for unlimited long distance at a few dollars less than Verizon, she calls her current provider up and tells them she’s jumping ship unless they make her a comparable offer. Chris Matthews looks like a pussycat after you watch my grandmother play hardball.

She must be in heaven right now. It seems that Comcast and Verizon are fighting over how much is too much in the battle to win customers.

If we have a couple more months of bad economic news, we expect the companies will start leaving horse heads in our beds.

Comcast’s complaint says that when Verizon is notified by a service request that customers are switching their home phone number to another provider, the company illegally bombards customers with express delivery letters, e-mails, and phone calls offering better deals as the customers wait for the switch.

Not only that, but Verizon also offers cash rewards to stay with their service. Since Comcast is used to being the monopoly on the block, they’re none too happy with this “anticompetitive” behavior and complained to the FCC.

We don’t take the time to demand cheaper rates from our utility companies because it seems like a waste of time. (Also, we don’t have all day like our retired elders.) Verizon is expensive. You know how we feel about Comcast. Whoever can reliably bring us the Red Sox in HD for the least amount of money is fine with us.