a good bitch slapping

in life, we must all have a hobby…and for us hyper-minded gemini folk, we must have several…especially with mercury in retrograde and all; that means others aren’t communicating as well (or as often) with us as we’re used to, and our minds tend to get bored and wander. so a hobby, or mental diversion of some sort, is a VERY good thing. we’ve got play hobbies, domestic hobbies, and even little things we do to make the work day just that much more bearable on the occasions it’s going a little TOO dull. one of MY main hobbies, on that latter one, is bitch-slapping ma bell around and making her look REALLY bad.

i’ll warn you, this next paragraph might seem a bit slanderous, and if you DO work for the phone company, understand that i’m only reporting what i had to deal with and how it went down. no personal opinions shall enter into this….

so, a new albertson’s was scheduled to open in south austin, and since all of them (those left still standing, that is) are our ticket outlets, we had to get a phone line installed so our system could dial out. we call sbc and order the line. about four days later, i get a call at the office…

“sean? this is travis from southwestern bell…i’m installing your line in that new grocery store on william cannon…”

“uh-huh…”

“well, anyway, sir, we’ve hit a bit of a snag here. i’ve got the line coming into the d-mark room (the big patch panel of phone lines in any major structure where they all come in from the outside), but i can’t run it up to the courtesy booth like you asked….”

“..and why NOT?”

“well…see….(his voice trailing as he desperately tries to come up with something)..there aren’t any wires running up to the front of the store from here. the cabling just isn’t there. so, rather than do this for the $100 fee we said we would, i’d have to charge you for a ‘time-sensitive’ call, which will run you about $85 an hour with a two hour minimum so i can run fresh cabling through the ceiling, and it should take about six hours”

(do the math – that’s $510 to do what they said they’d do for $100)

“so, you’re telling me that they built a store, brand new, and forgot to put phone lines to their courtesy booth? then why is it that when i CALL the store, they answer the fucking PHONE up there?!?!?”

“well, sir, and i need you to watch your language, these are a different type of line…”

interesting thing is, the phone guy that went out for texas lottery, and the phone guy that went out for moneygram money orders, all said the same thing. that the cabling wasn’t there. that it would have to be a “time sensitive” big money visit. i never use this word, especially after listening to the crack-pots that used to call the hightower show, but i smells me a conspiracy. so, my response….

“fine….just charge me the $74 for your five minutes worth of work, leave it at the d-mark, and i’ll come in tomorrow, do YOUR job, make MY line work, and send MA BELL an invoice, since your ‘trained professional’ self can’t do a simple line hook up…puta BITCH!!!” (okay..got a bit personal there towards the end, didn’t i?)

“sir, you do what you feel you can do, i’m just telling you how it is…”

the next day i went out, and made our line work…and never ran one INCH of cabling. i then did up an invoice, sent it to sbc, and NEVER got paid.

it should be noted, that the day i showed up, i was told an sbc tech was in the back to fix the lotto line; but he wasn’t. he parked his van up front, made this big show of going back there, must have seen some secret coded message on the wall, and snuck out the back door, which is conveniently right by the d-mark. ’cause he, his van, et al, were gone…and the line was still dead up front. an hour later, mine was the only one that worked…

if you go to a restaurant, and order a $12.99 rib eye, they don’t get to come out and say, “well…you know…that steak took a bit longer to grill then we expected, so we’re gonna have to charge you $19.99 instead”…so why on earth does sbc think they can do it?

they’re pulling the same crap with one of my new outlets in san antonio, and me and randy are sick of it; so today, it’s off to sa…we’ll see how that goes. they’ve been making me wait three weeks for this one, so if i make this work, they will SO hear about it…

Replies: 2 Comments

“we don’t care, we don’t have to, we’re the phone company.”

astrofishy said @ 05/23/2002 02:20 PM GMT

they do it because for years they were the only game in town. you had to use them. it’s not the case anymore, but they still have the same attitude because most of the “higher ups” there have worked there since the dark ages before bell was split up. they just don’t care.

josh said @ 05/23/2002 01:37 PM GMT