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I got the phone lines shut off from That Damned Clusterfuck as part of shutting it down since we sold it. We had to send a fax on company letterhead (like this proves anything? A twelve-year-old with a computer can make "company letterhead".) and then the telco called and insisted that they speak to Dad, who is the official contact on the account.



I only got to hear one side of the conversation with the telco and dad didn't have much to offer besides "yes" and "okay". The upshot of the conversation was that the telco is shutting off our phone lines as requested. Also, in their review of our billing stuff, it turns out that they've been charging us for things that we'd had shut off some time ago. So, uhm, we have a credit on our account. According to the Embarq supervisor with whom Dad spoke, the credit is allegedly in the amount of forty-six thousand dollars (that's $46,000.00 for the people who have trouble with zeros.)

I'll believe it when I see it.

My personal theory is that they mixed up the difference between $4600 and $46000. We'd be due about a $4600 credit because we paid the Aug. 22 - Sept. 22 bill (around 7K) and cancelled pretty early in September. But... wouldn't a telco supervisor know the difference between forty-six hundred and forty-six thousand? You'd hope for that, anyway. Besides, isn't that shit all computerized? I don't reckon they *let* flunkies in the accounting department decide to give away Embarq money to customers (the general flow of money is FROM the customer TO Embarq) without a bit of freaking oversight.

It's possible, outside chance, that we cancelled a couple of PRIs or a point-to-point circuit that they kept charging us for. Apparently that's what the Embarq person told Dad. To be fair, the bill never made sense, it ran to twenty pages, and was between 12K and 5K per month for about eight years. An extra thousand dollars for four years or so -- hell, we wouldn't have noticed it. Repeated calls to Embarq/Sprint to straighten out the telco bill were useless so we just gave up and paid the bill that they sent.

And, just for fun, I'll get a third of this pretend money, less taxes. If I walk away with 10K, I'll be doing well.

Date: 2007-09-08 07:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brni.livejournal.com

Just a brief question: don't you ever miss playing with the boxes with the pretty blinky lights?

Date: 2007-09-08 07:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] electroweak.livejournal.com
That's like asking if one misses dealing with end users. Boxes with blinky lights are just containers for magic blue smoke, and they're nothing but trouble. People who enjoy the company of the blinky-light boxes are the first ones I will whack when the robots rebel against us and attempt to destroy mankind. They're natural turncoats to the robot cause.

Date: 2007-09-08 08:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brni.livejournal.com

good to be forewarned...

*makes entry in Giant Alien Robots database*

Date: 2007-09-09 11:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] which-chick.livejournal.com
Building it was fun. For the last five or so years, I've been slowly *unbuilding* it and that has not been fun.

Instead of servers and networks that fail unexpectedly and fuck up my life, I now have toilets and furnaces that fail unexpectedly and fuck up my life. The general effect of the failures is very similar and the timing of these low-tech disasters is amazingly inconvenient, just like the high-tech ones.

I still troubleshoot systems. Instead of being able to sit at a keyboard and troubleshoot, I do have to go look at the system in person, but on the plus side, there are tools. I like tools.

And, best of all, I still get to deal with the stupid. It's not like there's a shortage of that, ever, but I will still get my RDA... tenants are a lot like users.

So, no. I don't much miss the boxes with the pretty blinky lights. I haven't missed them since 2002 or so when they started quietly blinking out, one by one.

Date: 2007-09-10 02:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brni.livejournal.com

Ah yes, the unbuilding. Been there, and yes, I can understand your feelings wholeheartedly.

And I also understand the satisfaction of taking tools and stuff and adding labor and ending up with something accomplished.

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