A little bit unclear on the concept
posted in Miscellaneous |When we moved in, we signed up for the local cable company’s Super Duper Way-Kewl Ultra Deluxe Combo Package with SCREAMING INTERNET (INTERNET…Internet…internet…internet!) (that’s meant to be read in the way that the “SCREAMING U.S. 30 DRAGSTRIP!” echoes sound on those radio ads).
The SDWKUDC package included local phone service.
But local phone service wasn’t available here yet. (Though it was coming! Soon!)
So I signed us up for local phone service with the local phone cooperative.
Then, in late October, after weeks of intermittent droppage of internet connections while the cable company upgraded all the cable lines between here and Big City, I got a call from the cable company. To wit: local phone service was now available, and did we want to start it up?
Well, yeah, considering that the local phone cooperative is incredibly expensive. Incredibly.
So the nice gal set up a day and time to do the switchover, and I had to confirm it with her supervisor, repeating everything I had just said to gal #1, and then had to confirm it with an outside contracting company, repeating yet again the stuff I had said to gal #1. I do understand why it’s necessary. Really, I do. I had friends and family who were automagically switched from one phone company to another without their knowledge during the era of those aggressive telecomm company tactics, and it’s a scummy thing to do. But do we really need the customer to repeat the same information three times? How about recording the conversation, playing it back to Joe Customer, and asking Joe Customer, “Did you say this of your own free will and are you sure you want to switch?” Much simpler. I was forcibly reminded, in any case, of the tendency of computer programs to repeatedly ask, “Are you really, really sure you want to do this??”
The day of the switch comes and goes, and even though I’m totally devoid of phone networking savvy and still wonder how it got switched over from phone company cabling to cable company cabling without some nice hunky young technician coming to the door and having to switch cabling doodads, it seems to have worked.
I just got a phone call.
“Hello? Mrs. OmegaMom? This is Polly from ABC Cable?”
“Hi, Polly…”
“I’m just calling to be sure everything is okay with your phone service since we switched you over?”
Now. Just let that particular sentence stew around in your head for a moment.
She just called me on the phone to see if everything is working okay…with my phone.
Hello?!
Does this strike anyone else as just a bit non-functional?
Like, how are they going to know if I didn’t answer the phone because I was in the bathroom or out of the house or–gasp!–the phone isn’t working?!
Gah.
