On August 28th at 4:30 PM my phone service went dead. Along with it went my DSL service from Verizon. Since I'm not an owner of a cell phone and don't care to own one there was little to do at the time. There's been a lot of remodeling going on in my apartment complex and a wire could have gotten accidentally yanked loose.
At work the next day I went online to Verizon to request repair service. The request form is not set up for people who don't have cell phones. It asked me for an alternate phone number so they might call me if they had to. No help there but it wouldn't take my request without some phone number there so I put in the one that's dead. Naturally the dumb machine took the useless number. I was also asked for my e-mail addy. I put it in but without the phone working I've got no DSL and as a result no e-mail. After it tried to see if my line was working it told me they couldn't send out a repairman until Sept 3rd. What! Seven days without service. They got to be kidding!
So now I have to take a day off from work to wait for the repairman because he will be around anywhere between 9AM and 8 PM. Nice of them to be so specific. If I'd had some serious ailment or was an invalid they would have made the effort to get to me right away. Sometimes being healthy is a drawback.
Since I'll be without service for a week do you think Verizon will offer me 25% off my bill this month? Yeah! When pigs fly.
But all is not lost. My new PC that I bought last February has a WiFi connection and it has been telling me of signals it detects in the area every time I turn it on. I've ignored it but now I was interested. I expected to be asked for some password to sign on and I was correct but the machine has detected half a dozen signals so I kept trying and what do you know. One allowed me to connect but it is an unencrypted source. I'm online again. The signal is a little week and drops out at times and I'm not going to be doing any online banking soon. I've got to check out the encrypted provider and see what they want for their service. Unless their transmitter blows up I'm not likely to be without service again. And it works a hell of a lot faster.
At work the next day I went online to Verizon to request repair service. The request form is not set up for people who don't have cell phones. It asked me for an alternate phone number so they might call me if they had to. No help there but it wouldn't take my request without some phone number there so I put in the one that's dead. Naturally the dumb machine took the useless number. I was also asked for my e-mail addy. I put it in but without the phone working I've got no DSL and as a result no e-mail. After it tried to see if my line was working it told me they couldn't send out a repairman until Sept 3rd. What! Seven days without service. They got to be kidding!
So now I have to take a day off from work to wait for the repairman because he will be around anywhere between 9AM and 8 PM. Nice of them to be so specific. If I'd had some serious ailment or was an invalid they would have made the effort to get to me right away. Sometimes being healthy is a drawback.
Since I'll be without service for a week do you think Verizon will offer me 25% off my bill this month? Yeah! When pigs fly.
But all is not lost. My new PC that I bought last February has a WiFi connection and it has been telling me of signals it detects in the area every time I turn it on. I've ignored it but now I was interested. I expected to be asked for some password to sign on and I was correct but the machine has detected half a dozen signals so I kept trying and what do you know. One allowed me to connect but it is an unencrypted source. I'm online again. The signal is a little week and drops out at times and I'm not going to be doing any online banking soon. I've got to check out the encrypted provider and see what they want for their service. Unless their transmitter blows up I'm not likely to be without service again. And it works a hell of a lot faster.
