It ends up I didn't have to do much convincing after all. The Verizon technician arrived about 3 pm (safely inside his appointment time between 8 am and 5 pm) and promptly started to run the telephone line from the pole to the house. I arrived on the scene a little late. By the time I arrived, the technician had already pulled the telephone line through the conduit from the pole to the house (using the pull cord) and had gone in search of the main telephone junction so he could hook us up!
An hour later, the technician returned. Apparently, he had had a hard time finding the main junction and then after he found the junction, he realized he did not have enough gas to get back to the house so he had to go on a search for a gas station. It appears that hooking up a phone is truly a difficult task!
But he has found the main telephone junction so he can hook up our line today. I also asked him if he was going to install the 3 jacks inside today as well. He is not; that item is not on his work order for today. I find it very interesting that the operator who set up this appointment said that the only thing the technician would do today was to install the jacks but not the line, and today, the work order states to install the line but not the jacks. The technician cannot do both today because the line installation is free and the jack installation is a billable event. My head is spinning. But in the end, all I really wanted was for Verizon to run the physical phone line from the pole so I should be happy that the work order has ended up to only have this item on it today. I am sure that Peter can install the jacks and then we don't have to pay anyone!
Anyway, I left the Verizon tech hanging on the telephone pole trying to connect our telephone line. I decided that since he was not installing the jacks, he did not need access to the house, so I locked up and left. When we returned later, we found that the technician must have been successful with the hook up as we had a brand new telephone box installed in the underhouse water tank storage area. And all three telephone lines have been connected.
Peter counts them and gives them a little tug to make sure they are actually connected and not just stuck into the box.
We don't own a land line telephone yet so we can't test the line today. All we can do is hope that the installation is complete because I have no idea how to explain our current situation to Verizon if we are not hooked up correctly.......