The new AT&T, the saga continues

One morning last week I woke up out of a dead sleep and looked at the clock . . . 6:00. Someone was knocking on our door. It wasn't quite light out so I popped on the porch light and opened the door with the safety chain still on. A county police officer stood in front of me and scared me half to death. He immediately said "This isn't an emergency, but we had a 911 call that your mom's phone is out. I just left her house and she asked me to stop here and let you know."

I think I thanked him, but since I never really function until after 1:00 p.m. I am not sure what I said. I do know I wouldn't recommend being awakened in that manner to anyone with a weak heart.

After I rallied a little I threw some clothes on and went down to check on my mom. She was in the same shape as I was, since my dad is in the nursing home we both had the same thoughts when we saw the officer. What I couldn't figure out at the time was who called 911, so thinking it might be the nursing home trying to reach my mom I made a quick trip down the highway to check on my dad. He was fine.

I had been up exactly 30 minutes when I returned home to make my call to the AT&T repair service. It wasn't a pretty picture I can tell you that (see previous blog for prelude). When the rep told me the phone would be fixed by 7:00 p.m. I lost it. I actually said an eight letter word that isn't in my vocabulary, but I told her I was tired of them screwing with us and I wanted to speak to a supervisor RIGHT NOW!! And, I got a supervisor . . . right now.

I went through the entire last six months of my mom's phone problems with the supervisor. I know my tone of voice showed my anger, and my frustration. The supervisor promised to get the repair tech out before noon.

Living in a small town does have its advantages. I hopped in my car and chased down the repairman at our local sub-station. I confronted him with the "squirrel eating through the wire" theory and told him I didn't believe it. I have to say he was really nice, so I tried to calm down.

I told him "if" it were squirrels causing all the trouble that we can't possibly be the only place in the nation with this problem, there has to be a solution. The repairman admitted there are protective guards (expensive he said) that can be installed, but for the first time he also said it is strange that they only eat on my mother's line. He promised he would call his boss right away and check into a solution.

About 45 minutes later he arrived in his repair truck with great news!!! AT&T is going to replace all the wires on our hill and the main one that crosses the valley to the top of the hill. This . . . he says will surely fix the problem because our set up is old. For right now he was going to put a band aid (my word, not his) on things so my mom would have service.

You bet our wires are old. Nothing has been upgraded in at least 35 years. My friend Nancy hit the nail on the head when she said they let things go on our hill so long because there are only four houses.

When I left for the office I couldn't believe it wasn't even 8:00 yet, I felt like I had been up half a day. I actually ended up coming home early . . . I felt like I had been run over by a semi. A combination of the shock knock and my anger.

Not that I will ever make excuses for the new AT&T, but I asked the repairman how he liked working for them. He said they were good to work for, he actually had started out with AT&T years ago and then got caught in the split and had to stay with Southwestern Bell. He had been working for the phone company for 20 years.

I don't think it was my fit throwing that solved all of this, I think that the repairman just finally stood up to whomever and told them things had to be fixed right. For that I am very appreciative.

Interestingly enough I asked our chief of police how we could find out who made the original 911 call and he said that in some instances when a line is out of order the phone company's computers generate the 911 call and 911 contacts the local police to follow-up. That's kind of nice to know.

I hope this is the last time you see anything on my blog about the new AT&T . . . and I'm thinking you hope so, too.