Verizon contacted us looking to solve the mystery of the “full” DSL and now reader Laurel has an update:

I emailed the person who contacted you. He forwarded me to Kimberly W., a senior CSR at Verizon. She gave me her direct-dial number – essentially she became a CSR specifically assigned to me to fix the problem. After I explained the issue to her, she said she would talk to Engineering and confirm whether anything could be done. Later that day, she called to let me know that, in fact, Engineering had found a solution and we would be able to get DSL at our new home. (I didn’t press for details about how they found space for us. I’m guessing they reserve a few connections for emergencies or situations like this one.)

Naturally, this being Verizon, the switch was not error-free. Verizon did manage to switch over our phone service but not DSL. When I called Kimberly, she looked up the order and discovered that whoever put the order in forgot to also order DSL transferred. (Sigh.) She asked me to call the tier 1 order people to get them to make the change, then call her back. Tier 1 told me that it would not be able to switch DSL for another week – when I called Kimberly and told her about this, she escalated the order so that it only took two days to switch.

Following this, we got spontaneous calls from engineering CSR people who said that they’d tested our line and found we weren’t getting the speed we were supposed to. They dispatched technicians to upgrade some “older equipment” they said was causing the problem. They also determined that our DSL modem is out of date, and overnighted us a new modem to arrive tomorrow.

So, not without a few bumps along the way, but we went from ‘sorry, no DSL for you’ to ‘not only will you get DSL but it will be better than what you had before’. Thanks, Consumerist!

Well, we’re still not sure we fully understand why the DSL was full, but we’re glad that it worked out! Verizon really snatched you from the jaws of Comcast at the last minute, didn’t they?

(Photo: Maulleigh )

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