Ready! Set! Visit!

Yesterday, we had a little “garden get-together” with a few of our Friday Nighters.  The afternoon was fairly warm, fairly sunny, and we were ready to have a visit.  It didn’t hurt any that, in addition to sheltering, we had been without internet service since Monday night.  Thank goodness for the magic of cell phones, but even so, we felt pretty cut off from the world.

High time to reconnect, we thought!  And it was lovely.  Our usual Friday night visits are from five to seven o’clock which usually feels just about right.  Yesterday we gathered at two and talked non-stop until one of the guests said, “it’s getting to be about seven…”  It wasn’t, of course, but it was nearly five.  Time flies, as they say.

Ernestine the Operator

Meanwhile, we had (of course!) been on the phone to CenturyTel’s robot help service, then to a live voice somewhere in EST, then to a live voice whose English was not even close to a second language and neither Nyel nor I could understand.  Several call-backs and emails over several days and they FINALLY sent a technician! He arrived this morning about ten-thirty.

“I won’t leave until this is resolved,” he said.  And he didn’t!  Bless him! He was here for a couple of hours.  In the end he said it was a “virtual problem.”  I asked him to explain and, if I understood correctly, it went something like this:  First there was a small outage nearby (which the robot had told us there wasn’t and, perhaps we weren’t even involved in it.)  Then, the East Coast live voice located the outage and tried to fix it.  By then, however, it had already been fixed, so the East Coast “fix” screwed us up, even though we might have been fine had he left it alone.  Then when we called the second day, the robot had to check things out again and found the big news:  we had no internet service.  So, finally on Day Three they sent the technician.

“I’m reporting what happened,” he told us, “so, if you want to, you can ask them for credit on your account for the days you were down.  And, next time,” he said, “just call me directly.  I can probably fix it without all that virtual stuff.”

“Precision Wires”

I was absolutely amazed to find that Nyel did, indeed call CenturyTel to see about a refund.  “We’re getting credit for $1.50 plus tax,” he told me a few minutes ago.  Wow!  Three days of internet service comes to 50 cents a day?  Why do I feel there is something wrong with this picture? I looked on my CenturyTel bill, but of course, nothing says “Internet Service.”  And there are no numbers smaller than about a gazillion.

Oh well.  We’ll just have another Garden Gathering.  Misery always loves company.