Dance of a Thousand Transfers.

The phone company lost my long distance. I went to make a call this weekend and I got the curious message that I needed a code to dial long distance. I have no code, therefore I have no long distance. For those keeping score that's 7 weeks for a fios install followed by 2 phone outages the most recent for 4 days and now no long distance. It's a damn good thing that I love, love, love having high speed internet.

So I called the nice service rep who looked at my account and said the problem was that I have no designated long distance. That's funny I said, I haven't changed it since August when I went from the provider at the front of the alphabet to the provide of my local phone service down near the bottom. They must have neglected to transfer it over when the switched you to fios, he said (bullshit, I say I called long distance since then). The problem is, he says I can't fix it because of federal regulations that require us to have 3rd party verification of long distance changes. Wonderful. I grabbed my cellphone and made my call.

This morning I called the number he provided. They, of course, couldn't help me but they could transfer me. And the helpfully gave me the number they were sending me to. The fios service people did the order then transfered me to verification. And I got disconnected.

I called the number they gave me and the message said they were closed and their hours were 8-5 EST despite it being nearly 9 EST. I called the first number again, got transfered again, and after much hold music got dropped again.

This time I pulled a number off their web page, and called again. Once again they couldn't help me but they transfered me. The very nice lady couldn't find my order so she put in a new one. Then she tried to transfer me to verification but their lines were busy. I asked for the number in case of issues and got the we're closed number from before. I mentioned the closed thing she said their switch must be bad (I think bullshit really loudly).

The nice lady tries to tranfer me again, still busy. Then she tries to sell me fios tv. I allow as how I'd prefer to get all my original services working consistently before I add more. Then I tick off the litany of woe. She says "did you get anything for your trouble?" Nope, so off she goes and gets me a month of local service free for my troubles. Then she sends me to verification where the nice lady records me saying yes set up my long distance.

I can't wait to find out if it actually works. I wonder what else I can get free if it doesn't?