Hate is a strong word, I rarely use it, and try not to experience it. I don't even hate Scott Walker despite having intense disagreements with everything he does and virtually everything he says. Hate is a raw emotion that robs us of our rationality and reason, the very things needed to overcome a bad situation.
However, today I hate my phone company and all I can do is rant about it to try to get it to dissapate. It's the product of a situation they created and there's no mitigation possible from my side. They have earned the full extent of my raging fury.
This is the time when the power of the plutocracy and corporate ownership of this country becomes apparant on a personal level.
My home phone is busted. Doesn't work. I have phone jacks in every room (except my living room where it would be most convenient). They're all in use, too, but none of them produce a dial tone. No phones off the hook, no cords loose or frayed (necessary to look when there's a cat in the house who see cords as things to play with or bite), nothing to indicate any type of trouble. In fact, I wouldn't have known there was a problem if I hadn't gotten a couple of frantic messages on my pre-paid cell phone that nobody could reach me because my line was "busy" every time they called for days. And they know I don't like to be on the phone much.
It was when I went to call the first person back on my home line that I noticed the problem. I then tried to call my own home number from my prepaid cell and got a busy signal. Uh oh. Checking the other phones and connections, I found none working. So, OK, I needed a repair guy.
So I dig out my last phone bill and call the repair number listed expecting to schedule a visit for a repair. I guess that would have been far too easy.
You see, I wasn't calling during "normal business hours" when they were actually available to take my call and provide, you know, service for the service that I pay for that is now, mysteriously unavailable. So I'm up early the next day (don't ever call me in the morning, I'm a grump who wakes up about noon) making the phone call (on my prepaid 25 cents per minute cell phone) when it's convenient for them during their "normal business hours".
I'm greeted by an automated menu, in fact, layers of menues that seem designed to confuse and conflict with no option for, you know, a real live person to actually tell my troubles to. As the minutes pass (and my 25 cents per minute cost for this call) mount up and I pass through menu after menu after menu after menu making what I'm guessing to be the proper selection off their list of options to get me to an actual repair of my busted phone, I'm growing increasingly frustrated that such a simple problem (my phone doesn't work) has suddenly become as complex as string theory.
Eventually, I pass through all the necessary menues and choices and then I'm offered the "opportunity" to use to their web site to "troubleshoot" my problem. No way. I've already spent more than enough time and money on this call to throw it away and go to a website that, I'm guessing, is just more of the same and lead me to start over the horrendous process I've already been through. I want a person who can get me a repair person.
It's then that the automated voice tells me that all representatives are very busy and I'll have to wait in line for my turn or I could call back at another time. Yeah, sure, I'll call back and replay this nightmare scenario. So I wait. And wait. And wait.
Finally, a voice. A real person. I try to be nice and succeed, patiently explaining that my phone hasn't worked for days, everything is plugged in, none my phone jacks are working, and I just need a repair person to fix my phone.
I didn't want sympathy or the customary "I'm sorry this happened" apology that Customer Service representatives are told to issue regardless of what the problem is. I didn't get any of that. What I got was a condescending tsk tsk because I don't have their very profitable (for them) home wiring repair option (I cancelled it years and years ago because every consumer group says it's a waste of money) on my account. The cost of the repair, she told me solomnly, could be totally billable to me if the problem was my inside telephone wiring.
I didn't care. I just needed the damn phone fixed.
She told me that a repair person would be sent to look into the trouble, but she didn't know when that would happen. So I was told to be available for the rest of the day (Friday) and that if the repair person didn't come then, they would come the next day any time between 8AM and 8 PM. She couldn't give me a day or time frame because she "wasn't the dispatcher", but assured me that I would receive a phone call before they came.
Here's the tricky part - you have to have a working phone number for them to call you before they come to fix your phone that isn't working. If I didn't have a prepaid cell phone for them to call, would that mean they'd never come? Talk abut circular logic or Catch 22!
So there I was, Friday, all day, errands put on hold, stuck in the house, cell phone with me at all times, waiting for the call. It never came. I didn't mind not doing my errands, but I did very much want to join badscience and noiseofrain for Overpass Light Brigade with their brand new RECALLED WALKER and JOHN DOE signs. But no, I was sitting around the house waiting for the phone cavalry to call that Mr. Fix It was on his way.
And here I am today, Saturday, waiting for a call to come that help is on the way.
Cable companies get a bad rap for poor service, but at least they give you a real date and a several hours long time frame as to when they're coming. Ma Bell not so much. Not even a date. So I sit and wait.
Fortunately, I'm retired. If I was working, I'd have to put up with a busted phone or take time off from the job to wait.
I hate them and they deserve it.
Thanks for listening. I feel better having pounded this out.
Phone is still busted.
Update: Thanks for all the comments. The phone is now fixed. Nobody called or stopped by to knock on my door, just one of my friends who didn't know I had a busted phone happened to call. So at some time, without notification, they came, they saw, they fixed. Another thing I'll be letting the Public Service Commission know about. I wonder just how long it's been fixed and how much time I wasted waiting for them.
Thanks for all the tips, but, frankly, repairing phone lines is their job. I'm sore enough today from contorting myself checking all the jacks and lines Thursday night.
There is no way I'm going to climb the steep hill and scramble through bushes on the side of the building to try and find the phone thing. Even the young cable guys gripe about where the utilities are located when they have to connect cable for a new resident, and they're young. Ditto the electric and gas meter readers which is why this building became one of the first to have drive by monitoring installed so meter readers didn't have to climb the hill and jump bushes.
When young people grouse about the safety of going there, how do they expect a 61 year old woman with bad hips and knees for whom stairs are a challenge going to do that? And I'm not safe on a ladder either.
So thanks for the conversation while I waited.