I finally got fed up enough and called Verizon today. I am switching my phone and internet service to Verizon and my cable TV service to DirectTV. Unfortunately, FIOS is not yet available in our area. The only bad part is that my new TiVo HD won’t work with the DirectTV service. The TiVo will work with FIOS, however, so I may just hold onto it to see if FIOS happens sometime in the relatively near future.

I’ll be saving about $60/month and will be getting totally reliable service for everything. No more dropped phone calls. No more internet shutting down. No more not being able to watch HD channels because…well who knows why. This was triggered today after my TV service turned to garbled mush yesterday for hours on end. Then today, I got my cable bill and saw where they charged me $45 for a service call last month when my phone service went out for an entire day. I got them to reverse the charge after spending 20+ minutes on the phone with someone in their billing department. Come on, though. I shouldn’t have been billed for this in the first place!

Ah well. Only 2 more weeks and I’ll be rid of Charter forever!