Phone Maddness

I get to work this morning to find an e-mail saying that when the staff tries a long distance call they get a recording that says, "Your long distance service has been disconnected. Please call customer service. 48111".

Yikes, Have we not paid our bill? Carol, who pays the bills, was not available, so I called AT&T customer service. They check our balance and say it is 0.00. Well, that's good, What now? They tell me to call Tech support. I call them and they check things and say that they don't know what the problem is! The have me to try a call and listen in. When they hear the recording, they say, "That's not our recording! That must be another provider." I tell them that we have no other carrier. They give me a 700 number that I can call on all three lines. Well I do that and find that everything is AT&T except line 2. I call them back and they say they don't have a clue. They tell me to call their number to investigate "slamming" where another company takes over service. I call them and they say they can't help. "Why don't you call the fraud department. Fraud says, "Why are you calling us? Call Customer Service!"

I set there having now wasted 2 hours. I get a call from AT&T and they tell me that they figured out that it is Sprint who has taken our line 2, but I will have to get Sprint to release it before they can restore service. I call Sprint after 2 different calls (actually more than that because the computer wanted a phone number before I could talk to humans, and they did not recognize the number!). Any who, I talk to a human who says Sprint has no record of my line.

I gave up.

That afternoon I turn the problem over to Carol. She works it again and late in the day e-mails me that AT&T decided that they could fix the problem.

At least the e-mail works! They death of land lines is not far away.