Around the Ass to Get to the Elbow

Have you ever been working with a company to attain a product or a service, and the representative of that company can't seem to get the computer system to understand what's wanted, so you spend more than an hour trying every damn thing, only to find that the system isn't having it and now you have to start over and instead of just using the old account, you have to create a whole new one and instant gratification is denied?

No?

Just me then...

As I mentioned recently, we at Casa de Crazy have been without land line, cell phone, TV, and Internet for a while. We were managing to keep the land line on sporadically, but eventually AT&T decided that they were tired of our sporadicality (is too a word!) and decided that we couldn't turn the house phone back on until we paid them ALL of what we owed them. Imagine!

A few tears, a phone call or three, and another chunk of debt added to the pile I already owe my Mum, and things are slowly coming back on.

We could not just turn our cells back on - something about being deadbeats for so long that the numbers were now back in circulation, no longer ours. We had to get new cell phones, but once they arrived I could, if I liked, have the new number transferred to the old phone. I wondered why that couldn't just happen without the new phone, but apparently some mystical force won't let the computer do that sort of thing.

Once the cells and house phone (which is still the same number, thank goodness) were restored, I set to work on the Internet. In theory, it should have been on when the house phone came on, but for some reason their computer didn't recognize that the bill was paid and so would not turn on the modem. No matter what we did, it wouldn't work...so we had to open an entirely new account, get a new number for the modem, and are now waiting for new cables because they are apparently a greater power than the AT&T computers can resist and will magically make the modem work again as soon as they are in the house - we don't even have to use them!

Today is the projected "your modem will now work" day. I am running the children to the Pediatrician for their annual poke and prod, and then have rehearsal, so I won't know if it's on until I get home.

With all the things that can be done remotely, we still have to go around our ass to get to our elbow...hopefully this time we can reach, because I really would like to avoid jumping through any more hoops for a while. I'm exhausted...