Well, it seems I have to mark one of the helpful replies as a Solution and consider this thread as Resolved. In mind there is no real resolution because it seems we have all pretty much agreed that, although there is a place for serious outages, it isn't often updated and does not include known system problems (which was actually my major concern, that we have to go through hoops just to get to the point where there is a known problem that we and the technical support folks could have easily read in the first place).
So -- back to why I have to mark this thread as Resolved -- I have received emails from Verizon marking my thread as ABUSE because I haven't selected a reply as a solution. Here's the text in the email, it's pretty rude (IMHO):
Hello djb,
Your topic recently received a reply.
Topic: [ABUSE] By: djb / Board: FiOS_TV (44717) Date: Wed Jul 03 09:37:58 PDT 2013
Did it solve your problem?
Click here to view the reply and mark one as an Accepted Solution.
This helps others find helpful answers in the community too!
And then, to add insult to injury, when I click as indicated to review the reply, I get this nice message:
Sorry, you do not have sufficient privileges for that action.
Please click the Back button on your browser.