Can you call your service tech directly to set up an appointment or do you have to call the company to do that?

I would call the company.
They will inform the technicians (and probably connect you to them).

Here you have to call the company, so they can keep a record of work done at your location and they can send the next available tech. The one you would call might be doing a big job somewhere else and a different tech could come out right away. Plus, here they will work with you over the phone to see if it can be fixed by the customer without having to send out a tech. If working with the customer doesn’t work, they send out the first available tech to do the hard stuff

Call the company, the main office can reset the cable / internet boxes from their computer. They’ll do that first and that maybe all that is required to fix the problem. Also the problem could be the wires on the poles were knocked down two miles away.

With Verizon, you call the company and they put you through to tech (or there may be an automated switch) then they usually will talk you through fixing the problem. They hardly ever make house calls. As Willie said, sometimes they can reset it from the central office.

After a few walk throughs with them, I’ve learned how to reset my internet and router when it goes out from an ordinary issue.

You’ve gotten some pretty good info here so far. The thing that usually fixes my problem is often as simple as shutting down the device, unplug it from the wall, wait about 30 seconds, plug it back in, & then restart the device so it boots from ground zero. This often fixes the problem. In 20 years, I’ve only had to have a tech out once & that was when a stalker jerked the incoming cables away from the connection box. They had to replace almost all the cables to fix the problem & I wasn’t handy enough to do that job. The shutting down, unplugging, waiting, plugging back in & the restart seems to fix 99% of my problems even without having to call the company at all!!!

The tech setting appointments directly, outside of the company’s orders would probably get him fired.

@Darth_Algar I didn’t think of that.

We had a local tech who was stealing cable boxes from the company and then selling them on the side with free installation. He had a word-of-mouth booming business until the company heard of his sideline and set him up with a new customer who was a plant by the company he worked for. They had him on camera doing his sell job and also the installation. He was working his sideline jobs in between his “real work” and was making a fortune. After the set up job, he was called back to the office and fired. Techs like him are the reason we have cable companies keeping their eyes on our cable box serial numbers and also why techs have GPS trackers to show where they’re working