Verizon Is In The Process Of Screwing Us Over

I don't usually rant about things as if this were a diary because I hate reading about such matters at other blogs. But this is impacting me in the biggest way since I started doing this, even more than our big pick-up-and-move-to-the -Southwest.

The Mrs and I got a two year account with Alltel when we first moved down here. Verizon gobbled them up a few months later and all hell broke loose. You see we bought a mobile antenna device from Alltel, which we still try to use, but right from the first Verizon started to degrade the signal as if all these pesky grandfathered contracts needed to be done away with by making them barely serviceable, and then try to convince the account holders to upgrade and pay them a whole lot more money.
I can barely connect with the internet at all now; all communication with the corporation winds up them giving me the big pitch to upgrade. The connection isn't just weak - most of the time it's flatlined.

I'm going to gather up all our machines and bring them to a network specialist on Monday to configure them for enhanced network connectivity, and then I'm going to the Verizon orifice to scorch the company drones because I know exactly what they're doing - making our connection unusable so we'll fork over a lot more money.
Basically the proof is this: how can a telecommunications behemoth rationalize a degraded tech capacity over time unless they want it to be that way?
Meanwhile I can barely do a thing, even getting up at 3 in the morning.