Domain purchase of e-mail address

[Coyote54]

Looking for some assistance with a similar problem as posted by ANGRYELF on 1-22-15.  My situation came about by moving to an area that is on the fringe of all carrier zones.  Prior to moving I contacted Verizon to see if they had equipment to sell that would allow me to keep my DSL and home phone with them.  They looked at their coverage map and said I was out of any coverage area.  I then contacted Verizon Moving folks.  They could not even find my address and had to send it to engineering to add the address in and would contact me in 2 weeks.  They never called back and as my hard wire phone lines ends 1/2 mile from the new house, I called back to ask that if I had the hard wire line extended, could I get DSL.  They again checked and said that DSL was not available in this area.  Net result was No phone and No internet thru Verizon.  Finally found a work around to get phone and internet with different providers and when I installed the equipment, I ported my Verizon number as I'd had it for a number of years and everyone has it.  Received a call from the new provided stating that Verizon had contacted them and my phone would be released in 3 days.  Not being a computer tech type, I never realized that an e-mail address could be ported or purchased/rented on an annual basis to keep it active.  Nowhere on the Verizon web site do they mention this fact nor do they bother to send out any notification that the customer can keep their same e-mail account for a fee.  Zip as for information.  I figured I may lose my DSL when the phone ported but since they are 2 different functions, I expected a notice that my DSL access would be discontinued in X-days and options presented at that time.  Nothing.  When I tried to log in after porting the phone over, I received a message saying my account has been suspended and to contact Tech Support.  I spent the next 2.5 hours talking to customer service, tech support twice, sales, domain management and all to no purpose.  Since the account had been closed, there was nothing that could be done to even temporarily reinstate it to allow me to submit a work requet to buy/rent the account on an annual basis.  Are any Verizon customers aware that there is a whole segment that deals with just internet, domains, and e-mails for residential and business customers?  I wasn't until I called tech support trying to get my account re-activated.  They transferred me to them.  Several options exist thru them such as repairmyemail.com or KEEPMYEMAIL.COM.  Best kept secret in the world.  Option 3 allows you to put in a work request to allow the customer to buy and keep their existing e-mail for about $20 per year.  Since mine had been active for several years and like ANGRYELF, 90% of my dealings referenced this address.  The bottom line in talking with everyone at Verizon (other than the failure to present options prior to closing the phone account) was that since the account had been closed by billing, there was no way to re-activate the DSL portion long enough to submit the work request under the keepmyemail.com screen.  I am very surprised that a communications company of this size with the number to customers they have would be so callused to just drop a former long term customer cold with no regard or options especially after they were unable to provide the requested  transfer of services.  I also don't beleive they are incapable of making this happen - everything that pertains to an account - setup, activation, billing, fixing problems, closure- is under their control.  It is just a matter of putting the right infomation in the right box and hitting enter.  Just like past experience with my hard wire phone line problems.