Land of all things Moskwaesque

So my roomate is moving out this month and he happened to be the one with our house FiOS account. We call Verizon thinking it will be this simple procedure of getting it moved out of his name into one of the other roomate's names. Hmmm, not so much. Seems that's not possible with a bleeding edge technology like FiOS. Apparently, the process of crossing off one person's name and inserting another person's name in the same place has become incredibly convoluted with the advent of fiber.

Here's what Verizon idiocy dictates we do. We have to cancel the service under the leaving John Doe's name. We then have to wait until that service cancels out and frees up the mystical "port" back at Verizon's palace at the end of the yellow brick road. Then we have to call back once said service is canceled and the port is free to tell them, oh by the way, can you give me back the service I had already been paying you for, only Joe Smith is on the hook for it now.

This is with out a doubt, one of the most ridiculous things I've encountered in some time. What brain drain at Verizon thought the brilliant way to keep customers paying was to make us jump through crazy hoops (while not having internet) just to maintain the service we already have? And force us unfortunates trying to keep our service to call multiple times and go without service in between these magical port freeing and unfreeing dates. The port should not need to be freed, it should be instantly and easily transferable to a different name.

Similar experiences with Verizon wireless is exactly why I jumped on the iPhone band wagon. Shame to see their customer service sadism continues with FiOS as well.