Phone fun

Well, just lost the better part of two days, thanks to TPC.

"Did you know even the stock holders of 'The Phone Company' hate the phone company?"

And by that I mean Qwest.

Yesterday – well, Tuesday – I fought with them over a fraudulent collect call charge. A delightful mélange of incompetence and rudeness until the final conversation. A supposed superintendent insisted, very belligerently, that Federal law required them to pass along third-party charges, no questions asked. Which, if true, would appear to make them fat pickings for scammers, as the outfit trying to charge me seemed to be.

(Their website brags about providing collect-call services to inmates. Reassuring, yes?)

At last, after trying to email the collect-call company (after 48 hours, the message still hasn’t been delivered) and twice calling their phone support in India (from which I was twice mysteriously disconnected as soon as I made my actual problem clear) I got somebody named Tia/Thea at TPC who was actually friendly and helpful. She even paid a visit to the website in question, and apparently had about the same reaction I did. This paragon said she’d credit me; she said she was adding a note that I disclaimed any knowledge of the call, and was “adamant.” (I complimented her on both choice of word and vocabulary.)

Despite her apparent helpfulness, I confess I was suspicious. Until today (Wednesday), when I called TPC back because my dial tone was out. Again. And in the course of that fandango, which ate up way too many minutes off my Tracfone, I at least learned I had been credited back. All $7.51 worth. (It was the principle.)

Odd thing about that dial tone. Just remembered I blogged about when it first died on me last month. It’s been going out sporadically; calling my landline on my cell usually woke it up again.

Does anybody have any idea why that should be so? Laughing Boy in Mumbai seemed to regard it as a common problem/fix.

When it didn’t, waiting a little while and trying again worked. Not what I consider, you know, adequate service.

But today when it died it stayed dead. Nothing worked. So eventually I set up a repair call for tomorrow. Which, coincidentally, is the day my DSL’s supposed to be hooked up.

I went about my business. And in the midst of something else I heard the phone ring.

The tone was back. As you can probably infer, it still is.

I went ahead and canceled the call. Supposedly they run some kind of line tests when activating DSL. I figured I’d let them do that and see how that worked out.

Along with all this almost unbearable merriment I had a weird, broken-up sleep last night, and woke with a scratchy, persistent cough. Which fortunately went away, although I never felt at my best today.

*Sigh* I need to get a lot of writing done tomorrow to compensate for the time lost to hassling (and the attendant unresourceful state) of the last two days.

If nothing else, I should within hours be free of the Heartbreak of Dialup. Fingers crossed.

Note: The image, with attendant quote, come from the 1967 James Coburn film, The President’s Analyst. It’s reputed to be a classic: I should watch it. If you’re inclined to do the same, please think about buying it by clicking on the image above.