Name:
Location: Palm Beach County, Florida, United States

Recently have been told I look like Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island. I hadn't heard that in years, but that is a good place to start as to what I look like, although she had a better bod. I have three boys and have been married for 13 years. Born of a Navy family, in Hawaii, one Mom, one Dad, one sister and one brother. The eldest of three children. BS in Applied Mathematics. Consider Pensacola my home town although I moved every 2-3 years of my life growing up. Currently work in the aerospace industry in an engineering position while being a Mom. Of Celtic heritage and very proud of it.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Waiting for No Dial Tone

We are having a terrible time at the school with our phone service provider, who shall remain nameless, except for this hint: Their name starts with Bell and ends in South. It’s all a convoluted twisted story within our ‘School was Destroyed by Two Hurricanes’ saga. It started way before the hurricane fiasco when we ‘attempted’ to change our computer lines from said company to a competitor, and has only gotten worse.

Without going into any detail, I have to tell you, being the wholly objective person, having inherited this enormous mess, and having to wade through it, knee deep in bureaucracy and paperwork, I have never, in my life, ever dealt with such incompetency. It truly scares me, folks. I would be ashamed, ASHAMED I SAY, to be a hard working employee of that company, as I KNOW the average person is, and know that I have so much bad bad bad going on within the group that writes my paycheck. I would be flat out pissed.

The bills are mounting, we’re trying to make them see where their bookkeeping errors are, they keep sending us notification and I keep telling the front office I’m expecting some jack booted thugs to show up one morning to break my kneecaps while I’m paying the school’s bills.

The conversation this morning between the principal and me went something like this:

Me: “Mr. H., this MUST be resolved with the phone company. Some dork is going to turn off our phones otherwise.”

Mr. H.: “Hmm. Mrs. L, we didn’t have a phone for many weeks after the last hurricane. It was rather nice. (grin) Don’t sweat it. I’m not.”

7 Comments:

Blogger Amanda said...

Hi Bou, I have been reading your blog for the past few days, very enjoyable I must say. I even have a recipe that I will post this week to the Carnival of Recipes!
Bad phone service is worldwide it seems. There was an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald about how our providers are able to alter the terms and conditions of our contracts (mostly for mobile phones) after sign-up.
"The main source of concern is the imbalance in power between the provider and consumer. Consumers don't like being told the provider can change terms and conditions whenever they want, but the consumer is unable to exit,"
What joy!

10:20 PM  
Blogger Bou said...

Amanda- Please do post with our Carnival! I'll be posting the gmail address on Wednesday probably. Just post it on your blog then send the gmail address your permalink.

I have yet to decide who is worse, our phone company or our cable company who I refer to as 'The ENRON of Cable Companies'. They make me nuts.

10:28 PM  
Blogger Amanda said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

1:18 AM  
Blogger vw bug said...

{snicker snicker} Oh come on Bou... relax, why in the world would a SCHOOL need the ability to have phone access? Just because you have a ton of kids and parents and teachers who may want to reach someone else? Bah ha ha (read above in Sarcasm).

Give'm h.ll Bou.

6:48 AM  
Blogger Ogre said...

That unnamed phone company has quite a history of incompetence in my area (NC) as well. And they are the most expensive monopolistic company, too. They are having a lot of trouble now that cell phones are expanding, and I can now get a cell phone cheaper than I can get basic service from them so guess what? No more land line for me!

8:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I say cut the cord..go wireless.

3:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmm - got any lawyers among the parents of the student body? Usually just the mention of the word lawyer gets you instant and gratifying results... *sigh*

My boss likes to switch phone companies like crazy - once he went with a phone company that was supposed to do all of our long distance only. Well, they took over the local too and we ended up in a huge mess. Took about a year to clear up and I (since I work at home) kept getting nastygrams from them every month. Finally, after about a year of this and calling every single month, the last time I called them (saying exactly the same thing I'd said the last 12 times...) it was like a light went on! Bingo! They figured out I was part of a company, that the bill was part of a company dispute that had been settled and that was that. Made me want to bash some heads there...

-- Teresa

12:09 PM  

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