Phones and Email, Oh My!

What a stressful week's end.

Monday or Tuesday we began getting calls because emails sent to us were not getting through. I called our internet tech support and was told that my outgoing emails were not affected but that emails being sent to me were. I might receive a couple but the rest were lost in that black space continuum we call the "internet". A couple of days to get that back up and running, "sorry for the inconvenience sir".

So I figured that an email I had sent to a customer to clarify an order, had been received, but if she had replied then that reply was gone to that afore mentioned black space continuum.

It was in the evening when I discovered this but rather then wait until that customer would be in the office, I called and left a message explaining that we weren't receiving any emails.

So I'm sitting at my computer for a day or so, minding my own business, happy as a lark when Nancy comes and gets me because another customer had arrived to pick up a book case that she had me customize in a primitive manner. This customer told Nancy that she had been calling all morning but always got a busy signal, figured if it was busy it meant we were home, so she came on out to pick up the finished piece.

Well that meant another call to QWest this time. They scheduled someone to come out the next day between 9 am and 1 pm. Of course I began to think that this customer I had emailed, then called, was going to wonder why she couldn't get in touch with us.

QWest came out the next day as promised, but he couldn't fix the problem so he arranged for someone else to come out. Two guys in two separate trucks show up a couple of hours later who had the "right equipment" and after a couple of hours came to the door with some wires and connections in their hands that they had replaced. I checked the phone and internet and all seemed to work just fine. Yay!

A couple of hours later, our daughter calls and during her call, the telephone reverted back to what it was doing that necessitated the QWest techs to come out. It alternated between no dial tone, to a recording telling us to hang up and dial again to horrible beeping noises like you get when you leave a phone off the hook.

But I'd already gone through removing all the phones for the two lines and then hooking them up individually to see if it was an in the house problem. It wasn't.

So another call to QWest. The guy on the other end tried to tell me the techs had been out and had fixed the problem. I repeatedly assured him that the problem was still existing and that they needed to come back out. So he told me he had scheduled the tech to be out the next day between 9 am and 1 pm.

The next day, when the time the tech was supposed to be out was almost gone, I called back in and the young lady that I spoke to told me there was no record of a tech to come back out to my house. Of course, only the realization that Santa is watching and would soon be coming to my house kept me from becoming a snarling gnarly grinch!

She agreed to set up another tech call, but of course, this wouldn't be able to be done until the next day. I understand the need to schedule but by now, I'm feeling like, "Houston, we have a problem".

Shortly after we scheduled this next tech, the one that I had been expecting showed up and after a couple of hours told me he couldn't fix the problem but thought it was something to do with our internet dsl. So he arranged for another tech to come out, not the same day, to late, but the next day, today, Sunday.

The tech shows up and puts in a temp line so we can receive and make calls but tomorrow someone else is coming out to dig in a new line to correct the problem.

So our incommunication time lasted about 5 days. How nice to hear the phone ring again and to be able to send and receive emails. Now hopefully the line laying will go well tomorrow and I'll go back to being happy as a lark.

By the way, the customer's email answering my question about her order finally did arrive and we were able to get that taken care of.

Have a great week!