You are making a mistake in thinking you are the customer. You are the product.
...doubt it.
Was escalation as simple as "I would like to speak to a supervisor, please," or was there a more complicated incantation?
Verizon in particular is amazing in their priorities from an operational perspective are getting rid traditional phone business at all costs and spiting the CWA.
I think it's a reasonable assumption that most people here are devs or interested in software/programming/etc. Marketers aren't going to be the ones who are actually interested in making better products, they're practically premature-optimisation-in-user-hostile-directions personified, so someone else has to at least propose these ideas.