mfidelman, you may very well have seen replies from Verizon Staff on these boards. It is quite common for companies that provide forums to have "Admins" to monitor the messages, provide help in directing the poster to the proper support channels and otherwise enforce the rules of decorum for the forum.
However, these people are not the entire support staff who, I would guess, do not use these forums at all. An Admin or Moderator may be the conduit to the actual support center(s) when appropriate but they are not really here to *be* the support desk. This happens to be the case in several forums I use and people often do confuse the fact that the company hosts a "support forum" that it is, in fact, a place to get support.