no, really

I mean, they can’t be an inherited monopoly without some underhanded crap.

I’ve had FIOS at home for a couple years… pretty much as soon as it was available. I figured - if the choice were between Verizon and Cablevision, I’d pick the one that had the better service. Not exactly the lesser of two evils, but at least I get something out of the deal.

So now (long story I’ll elaborate later) I’m moving. While going through and canceling all the utilities, I get to Verizon and can’t figure out for the life of me how to do it. I look through every page of “My Account” online. Plenty of docs on how to switch to another service, complete with contact numbers and practically home telephone numbers of cancellation agents. But not a peep about how to cancel Verizon.

Then I go to their “email us a question” section. After filling in a few bits of information and getting thoroughly frustrated by how the form keeps reloading, I notice a message that this form will send me an automated response, and that I won’t ever hear from a human.

This blows. I’m terrified to know what’s going to happen when I call on the phone. The old AOL “we’re not going to let you cancel, even if you move to Nairobi” method?

What sucks is that I’m considering yelling at AT&T for the service crap I’ve had lately so they let me out of the contract, and who can I go with that’s any better? Verizon. Just pray I never have any troubles with them…

Okay, now that my childish rant is done…

I’m sure I’ve gone on more than a few tangents about how some of the really good, lightning-strike brain moments in my past have yielded excellent, viable ideas that, having been shared with industry gatekeepers, were rejected - only to show, a year or so later, to not only be great ideas, but industry changing!

Example:

I recall a scorching summer afternoon in 2006 at Pershing Sq. Cafe where I identified a problem and a solution. The idea was challenged. I responded. It was dismissed. Some valiant effort was made by a colleague to implement this idea, to no avail. At the time (as you may have read), I was suffering some crises of a professional nature that sapped a lot of energy out of me, and so I was unable to invest any effort into the idea.

As it turns out, everybody loves my idea. They can’t wait for it to be a reality! People predicted a lot of resistance on the part of big players like Facebook, MySpace, Google… why would they participate? Why would they let it happen and exist? I explained why it’s good for all of them, but nobody believed me. And now this. If things had gotten moving when I thought of this, I’d be poised in a great position to run the market on this. But alas, I’m just another one of the whining “I coulda done that” kids.

Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org