Phone: that took long enough

[redbird]

So, George from Verizon came by around noon yesterday. He tested assorted things in the closet, went outside, and confirmed that the problem wasn't in our apartment (meaning I wouldn't have paid for the service call even without the wire maintenance plan). The problem was that the wire we were connected to was going bad, so he went back outside to connect us to a different wire. That took about an hour, and the DSL went out partway through.

George explained that he'd done his part, and now the central office just had to fix the switching on their end so that the system would know what wires our phone line was connected to, and it should be back up by five. It wasn't. I called the repair office again, and after offering me the opportunity to cancel or postpone my appointment for a tech to come by, the automated system let me talk to a person. That person said that they should have it working by eight, and if not, call back. I called back a little after eight. This time I got a quick "We committed to have this fixed by eight o'clock" and then connected to the actual human staff. They told me that they were still working on it, and if it wasn't fixed that night, it would be sometime this morning.

This morning, I called again, which led cattitude to award me a gold star for talking to the phone company before tea. That time, the automated system thought that I'd agreed to be home all day today. I talked to a human, who agreed that I didn't need to be home, because the problem was at the central office. So, after tea, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. There's one forsythia bush fully in bloom, on the corner at Park Terrace West and 217th Street; the bushes just uphill of it are still in bud.

Just after I walked in, the doorbell rang. It was another phone company person, this one named Al. He told me that he had a partner downstairs, came in and verified that I still had no dial tone, then went out and talked to his partner. I don't know what they did, but it worked. We have DSL and the data line again. With DSL up, I was able to pull down lots of email, including a huge amount of junk and a small amount of freelance proofreading, some of which required Web access to do properly (I check URLs for them). On his way out, Al had me sign a form agreeing that they'd been here, and asking me to rate the service quality (same thing as yesterday). He said he was "sure I'd say it was outstanding." I don't like being pressured, but there was nothing actually wrong with the service he provided, so I checked the same "very good" box as yesterday.

The newly repaired 304 line has rung twice this morning. The first person replied to my "Hello" with "I'd like to order a book," so I explained that I'm not Simon and Schuster [1]. She apologized. The second call was George, checking to see if it was working. He was surprised that they'd sent people out again, but glad to hear that it was fixed.

I felt more cut off yesterday than I would have expected; I think part of that was not only missing a chunk of my default connection to the world, but having to stay at home waiting for phone technicians; if I'm at the gym or the library or in the park, I don't expect to be using the net to talk to friends or see the weather forecast or answer any of the million questions I rely on google for.

[1] Someone, years ago, listed the number that is now my data line on the Web as a phone number for Simon and Schuster. I contacted taht person, told them it wasn't, and asked them to fix it. Nonetheless, the misinformation is still out there, and I get these calls occasionally. (Thanks to Dan Hoey for pointing out the missing footnote.)

Comments

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's been a dead line here for a couple days, that someone's supposed to come over and look at tomorrow. I checked the junction box and there was no dial tone there either for that particular line, so this time it's on their end rather than rats chewing wires in the walls.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

All better now. The guy said there had been some corrosion due to all the rain we've been having.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Verizon is one of the things I definitely do not miss about living in New York. Although this sounded like pretty good customer service - by their standards.