The Qwest saga continues

[tylik]

Monday, I went home to work, service was off. I spent a while on the phone establishing that they couldn't see my modem, they told me a tech would be dispatched Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, I called to see when the tech would be in. I was told between one and five. (Kind of a big window.) I was faithfully home between one and five. At four forty-five, I called in and found out the line had been disconnected. After an hour and a half on the phone, and various lies and attempts to extort money out of me that I was later told still would not have even gotten them to issue an order for restarting the service, I was told that if we'd called in within twenty-four hours of it being disconnected, it could have been connected immediately, but since it was now past that, it wouldn't be until next week. I call M. M calls them and starts to set up a new account.

Wednesday, I call them, and after an hour on the phone have a promise that service will be back up by Friday morning. Service is back up (under the new account) when I get home.

Thursday, service is down. Except it briefly manages to connect twice. I'm thinking this is technical, so I call in again. Am informed that this is not a technical problem, that I'm disconnected and it won't be on until next week. Am informed there is no record of an expedite being put on the order. Spend over an hour on the phone, getting more and more irritated, eventually talk to someone named Bill Baker, who promises that he is putting the expedite order in, gives me his name, number, and the order number, and promises it will be on Friday morning.

This morning, I leave early. Service still not up. Come back at about three thirty. Service still not up. Spend three hours (!!!) on the line with... five people, I think? One of them wants to blame M for everything. (Considering that M has not being lying to me and wasting my time via lying to me, I'm not buying. I explain this in very careful detail.) I eventually get rid of her to go in search of Bill Baker. Next person I talk to is convinced this is entirely a technical problem (I'm not convinced that he's wrong, though he has no explanation for the other stories, which worries me.) He tries to get me talking to tech support. They send me to another person at the business office. She explains that service will be on Monday, and that there is no way on god's green earth that it can be up before then, and indeed no way on god's green earth that it could have been on on Wednesday.

She then refers to the Wednesday onnage as a "freak of nature" through the rest of the conversation. (It was on for at least eight hours, though she also keeps trying to say it managed to connect "for a few seconds".) She also keeps on referring to "the person" who told me it would be on by Friday, though I stop every single time and point out that it was two people. (Does she work for the Bush administration?) I think the high point of this conversation came when she tried to explain to me that they couldn't physically turn on DSL earlier than Monday, because they were still "Conditioning the line". She apparently did not like my suggestion that they drop the conditioner and use an all-in-one. "Conditioning the line". Fuckers. I hate it when non technical people try to lie to me about technical issues. She promises me a couple of weeks credit. I pointed out to her that this will hardly make up for my lost time and aggravation, not will it restore their honor for lying to me and misleading me. I did not point out that I fervently hope that in two weeks I will have seen the last of Qwest. I spent a while pointing out the various logical inconsistencies in what she'd said, and the basic problems with screwing people over and lying to them (whether on not the individuals were lying, the corporation clearly was, and is responsible for providing its employees with valid information.) Hey, I was still far too irritated to get work done. Eventually I give up and get off the phone, resigning myself to connectivity through my cell phone for the weekend.

I read a bit, and make myself dinner.

And then I look up and I'm connected. Since then, I've seen the connection go up and down at least thirty times.

I could come up with so many theories about this. Clearly, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Possibly because the left hand loathes and despises the right hand. I might even have some sympathy for the left hand of Qwest (I mean, afterall, I worked for Microsoft. These things happen.) It could be pure incompetence. It could be that someone turned service on on the sly, and that there is simply a technical problem, but the proper protocals mean that they can't admit it's on, and therefore can't fix the other issue.

It could be demons. (Actually, there are a lot of different places it could be demons. Hm. I start understanding why so many people over the years have believed in demons.)

I was thinking of this, over dinner, in terms of my willingness to continue to engage with people who do not tell the truth or follow through, and who waste my time. And not only to engage, but to get upset with them. This has got to be a character flaw. Though on the other hand, I think it's part of what makes me a good researcher (when the facts don't add up, I will keep whacking them until I feel like I understand what's going on, far past when any reasonable person would have given up. I *hate* thinks that don't make sense.) And it's part of the reason I have a mostly functional body, for that matter. I mean, people told me that I should just give up on having an active life, and it mostly convinced me to step back, consider what I was doing, regroup, strategize, and then fight harder (and, er, smarter, or so I like to think). Still, I ended up in tears over this more than once, which is pretty absurd. (Or maybe I was just generally stressed, and I needed a good cry. It was kind of cathartic. Frustration is the one that gets me, really. Not to say that I never cry otherwise, but frustration is the one that sneaks through without notice.)

Now my service is up and down seemingly aimlessly. In my current mood, I'm tempted to look at this as a demonstration of one more thing that just can't control.

I still think that's basically wrong for DSL service.