CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I had never heard of or spoken to Amy before, but once I reached her, I explained situation in adequate detail for her to understand that there was an ongoing saga at work here, and that for unknown reasons it had gone critical today. I told her that mission number one for me today was to determine who currently had my long distance. Mission number two was to determine what they had done to it as I was, at the moment, effectively out of business.
Mission number three was to change that.
Amy checked what she could from her end and told me their records showed that PNG was carrying our long distance, and that given the recordings being produced, logic says that whatever is going on has to be the result of something done by AT&T. I assume she is about to tell me to call them. To my surprise, and gratitude, she instead said, “Let’s get them on the line, see if we can conference them into a conversation with both of us.”
Amy put me on hold for a few minutes, then came back on the line and announced that she had an AT&T representative named Walter on the line. One little wrinkle though, Amy advised me. “Walter says he is unable to speak to you while I am on the line.”
I don’t recall my exact response, but it was something in the general neighborhood of “Why the hell not?” I actually had more to say, and said it, but the rest of my response was not audible. AT&T isn’t the only one who can hoist finger salutes.
“It’s our policy,” Walter responded, as if that’s all we needed to know.
That was worth two salutes. He got them both.
“Amy,” I said, “I don’t trust AT&T as far as I can throw them. How do I get back in touch with you if I get cut off or blown off?”
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” she responded, no hesitation in her voice.
Whereupon Walter, who was mister imperious just a moment ago, suddenly decided, and announced, that upon further consideration, he may not have the expertise required to assist us after all. “Let me get you in touch with a department that might be better suited to help you,” he back-peddled with a swiftness that spoke of roots in public office.
Coward.
I was put back on hold.
A few minutes went by.
Amy then came back on the line and announced, “I have another AT&T rep that should be able to help us out. Wanda, are you there?”
Yep. Believe it?
For a fleeting second I dared to hope it might be a different Wanda. After all, the AT&T global customer support department has to have at least, what?……nine or ten English speaking people in it?…..so there were measurable odds on the possibility that two of them, at least theoretically, could be named Wanda.
Right?
Nope. No luck there. It was the same one. Ms. Wanda “I’ll Get Back to You” Devereaux.
And she remembered me, although probably not as well as I remembered her.
But, desperate times require desperate measures, and when the chips are down you take what you can get, so I sucked up my disbelief and disappointment and explained to Wanda how the matter we were discussing a few weeks ago – uncertainty over who was providing our long distance – was apparently still an open question and had indeed become a problem. I described the messages we were getting, what was virtually a total loss of service, and the impact it was all having on our ability to engage in the orderly conduct of business.
“And not to turn our attention away from critical needs,” I added, finding myself unable to resist a zing or two, “but it appears you haven’t made much progress on the billing issues either. However, before I devote any time to that……”
“Oh, but I left you a message,” she interrupted, then hurriedly went on to claim that she had called me and had left word that she’d spoken to their billing people and had confirmed that all amounts we’d been invoiced were accurate.
My brain went churning into overdrive, rapidly reviewing available alternative euphemisms for the broad general concept of horse doo-doo. Somehow, and believe me, near superhuman effort was required here, I kept it all bottled up. As appropriate and satisfying as it would have been to point out that I doubted any such call had ever been made, and that I knew with certainty that no such message had ever been left, I instead managed to respond with only silence. “I still have your file right here,” she added, trying to fill the void, as if that additional fact might somehow lend credence to her tale. It did not.
“ We’ll come back to that at another time,” I said through clenched teeth. “For now, I need you to identify what has happened to my phone lines, and get it fixed.”
I then ran her through a detailed list of the issues. Two lines were dead, leading to the message “your toll service is blocked”. Two more lines were dead, leading to the message “the number you have reached is not in service”. On the other three lines, the noise and static was so bad that they might as well be completely offline. Further, when dialing the verification number (700-555-4141), one line says NOS Communications is the carrier, the other six say MCI is the carrier, one or all of which are wrong. And, just to round things out, to the best of my knowledge, long distance charges are still going to AT&T, not PNG.
She said she had it all, then promised that their technical people would be looking into it. She added that as soon as they told her something, she’d pass it along.
In other words, those famous last words……..
“I’ll get back to you.”
———————————————————
Precisely ten minutes later Wanda called back and cheerfully informed me that she had just called each of our phones numbers and had gotten through to our voice mail system each time.
“Well, that’s nice,” I responded, “but getting phone calls into the building has not been the problem. It’s getting calls to go out.”
Her reply?
“Oh. Yeah.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wanda called me back a few hours later. It was roughly 2:30 pm on September 28th.
She told me without preamble that she had spoken to their technical people and they have confirmed that everything is now programmed and working properly.
“So what was the problem? What went wrong?” I asked.
“The wrong PIC Code was used,” she explained. “0555 is not the code we use for MCI. It should be 222 instead, and that’s what has now been programmed into the AT&T system.”
Already I don’t like the way this is going.
“Time out,” I interject. “I told you that the PIC Code we need is 0555. PNG gave me that number, and they have since verified that number. I provided that number to your people back in July and I’ve confirmed it several times since.”
“That may be,” she says, “but we have our own numbering system, and 222 is what we use for MCI.”
“Why do you keep talking about MCI? I told you weeks ago that the carrier we should have been switched to might have been MCI, but then again, it might not. I also told you, very clearly, that the one thing I was certain of was that the PIC Code I needed was 0555.”
“But that’s the wrong number.”
If there was a wall nearby I would have been pounding my head into it. I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm.
“When, precisely, was PIC Code 222 programmed in?”
“Just now, today,” she replies.
“This afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“So what caused all the problems with the lines this morning?”
“You were trying to use the wrong PIC Code.”
I hang my head. I want to scream. I swear, I am not making this up.
“Okay, let me try this,” I hope a different approach might work better. “Who have I been billed by before today? Who’s been sticking it to me for $.67 a minute?”
“AT&T, but that’s only because your numbers had not been designated to go to MCI. The result was that your calls rolled into an undefined plan. Remember, you had a calling plan with us. You cancelled it.”
“Yes, I did, but I instructed you to send my call traffic to PIC Code 0555. In July. You’re now telling me that never happened.”
“Yes, because you asked for the wrong PIC Code,” she replied.
I briefly debate whether I’m listening to obfuscational double-speak of Congressional quality, or the ravings of a certifiable idiot. I detect evidence of both.
Either way, she has me caught in the grips of a Catch-22. This could go back and forth all day, and while it does, I’m getting nowhere. I don’t even know if I have functioning phone lines yet.
“Your lines should work just fine now,” she said as if she’d just read my mind. She sounded eager to end the discussion.
“That remains to be seen,” I say, “but rest assured I’ll test them as soon as we’re done here. In the meantime, what do I do when I get reach PNG and they tell me the PIC Code you used is wrong?”
“That shouldn’t happen”, she says. “If they get their records right, everything should be okay.”
“And if they aren’t?” I press.
“Oh, feel free to call me. At any time.”
Uh-huh. I think I’d sooner volunteer to have a series of root canals performed. In total darkness. By a chimpanzee. Without anesthesia. I somehow managed to keep the thought to myself.
Before hanging up I told her that while there’s nothing I’d like better than to never need to speak to her again, I felt fairly confident I would be, and probably soon.
As soon as I got off the phone I tested all the lines. The recordings on three of the four lines were gone. Line 1, however, was still putting out the “your toll service has been blocked” message. I then tried the 700 number on each line. Line 6 still says the long distance carrier is NOS Communications. All the other lines tell me the carrier is MCI.
I went outside. Found some stairs. Did my best Rocky Balboa impersonation. Knocked a few dozen insects into next week. Scared the hell out of some passersby. When I finally trudged back inside ten minutes later, various thoughts of mayhem had cooled. A little.
——————————————-
As I continued to replay that last conversation in my mind, I became increasingly certain that at any minute, someone was going to walk through my door, show me a hidden camera, and congratulate me for being on the threshold of reality television stardom. Maybe it was a remake of the old Candid Camera show. Perhaps Fear Factor was back, with a few new twists. Maybe it was a slow week for 60 Minutes and Morely Safer was about to make an appearance. Sanity was not an explanation for what had just occurred. It had to be something else.
Late in the afternoon, Amy from PNG called me. She was just following up, making sure everything had gone as hoped. As calmly as possible I told her what had transpired, including my best effort to recite the tale of 0555 versus 222.
“No, no, no! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,” she yelled when I finished. I continued to explain that line one was still blocked, and line 6 still says the long distance carrier is NOS Communications. I can hear Amy clenching her teeth. I understand the feeling.
“I’d like you to sit tight,” she finally said. “I’m going to get in touch with AT&T. It may be Wanda, or her supervisor, or her supervisor’s supervisor, but I’m going to find someone and they are going to talk to us. I’ll be back to you.”
And with that she was gone, leaving behind the ehco of those magic words again.
But this time, I was willing to bet they were going to come true.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was after 5:00 pm when Amy called back, but call back she did. She said she had spoken to seven different people in the intervening thirty minutes, and the last of them, a gentleman by the name of Scott Buddenhagen, was about to join us. She brought him onto the line.
Buddenhagen was a low-key sort of guy, quiet and soft-spoken. With a stoically detached and unemotional efficiency, he moved without enthusiasm through the subjects of interest. Two points of decided interest quickly emerged.
One, he promised that the PIC Codes would be changed first thing the next morning. There was no attempt to explain, justify or defend what had occurred prior to this discussion. No finger pointing, no expressions of anguish, no means or manner of apology. He just calmly promised to get them changed.
Take that, Wanda.
Two, according to Buddenhagen, who evidently had online access to our account history, the one and only order ever made to change our PIC Codes had been logged into their system on the 17th of September. Not in July, when the request had first been filed and then confirmed. Not in August, when someone at AT&T had (apparently) turned off their own company as my long distance carrier and replaced them with……no one. Not during the marathon call session I endured back in early September, getting bounced from coast to coast by an automated phone system that eventually, but only reluctantly, allowed me access to a human being.
No, he said there were no orders logged until September 17th.
As this is written, and this sentence is being put to paper in mid November, I have no idea where or when this ever-growing tale of telecommunications intrigue is going to end, but I do know this with certainty. Before I close the book on AT&T for good, somebody, somewhere, is going to have to tell me how the hell that’s possible.
Do you hear me AT&T?
September 17th?
Are you sh………serious?
With that question neither voiced nor answerable at the time, Buddenhagen recapped the following points:
1) The order for changing PIC Codes will be placed first thing the next morning. It was already after hours and too late to get it done the same day we spoke. He will call to confirm when the task had been completed.
2) There are going to be switching fees. He will inform me what those fees are when calls.
3) As to billing and credits, not his department.
Of course it’s not. It never is.
Amy, who had been listening in throughout, informed me she would be out of the office and unreachable for the next two days, but promised she would check in the day after, which would be Thursday, October 1, just to verify that everything was as under control as it seemed to be right then.
———————————————–
The next day was the 29th of September. While I was on another line, Buddenhagen called and left a message – it was around two in the afternoon – which said that all lines had been re-coded to PIC Code 0555 at 11:20 that morning. He thanked me for my patience and wished me a good day.
He neglected to leave any information about switching fees, but I waved off the oversight. It seemed a given that the fees would be outrageous, and I figured I’d just add them to the growing laundry list of financial issues that were still awaiting resolution. Besides, I had actually witnessed an AT&T employee following up on a commitment, doing something they had promised to do, and given the groundbreaking nature of that event, I didn’t want to spoil the moment with the introduction of details.
Still, having become inherently distrustful of anything AT&T, there was one more exercise to complete. Around 3:30 pm I began to independently verify the accuracy of his message.
I discovered that line 1 was working again. Okay, that was progress.
Then I began dialing the 700 number from each line.
Where I discovered that six of the seven lines produced a recording that said, “thank you for choosing MCI”. The seventh line led to a recording that thanked me for choosing NOS Communications.
I tested everything twice. Same result both times.
Which was, of course, the same result as was produced the day before.
In other words, nothing had changed.
Unbelievable.
Twenty minutes and a bit of phone tag later, I had Buddenhagen on the line. Within seconds, my once nascent sense of victory, relief and – dare I say it? – esprit de corps, was headed right out to sea.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, he said that getting the MCI recording on six lines was actually possible. There had been all kinds of recent consolidations and mergers in the telecom industry, he explained, and MCI has been part of several of them. He said they actually show PIC Code 0555 as belonging to WorldCom, but it’s his belief that WorldCom and MCI are related, perhaps one and the same. Whatever the relational explanation, the PIC Code for those lines is 0555, as requested.
He then told me that the recording I’m getting on line 6 – NOS Communications – is not possible.
I expressed a contrary viewpoint on that one.
As part of the search for an explanation, he asked me to try dialing a new number from each line. He told me the number – 1-203-700-4141 – identifies instate long distance carriers. The 700 number I’ve tested previously is for identifying out of state long distance.
I put him on hold and gave the new number a try on all open lines. In each instance it led to a recording that said, “Sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed.” I got him back on the line and told him as much. Once again, he said that was not possible. Once again I expressed a contrary viewpoint.
Something along the lines of “guess again”.
He told me he was unsure what was going on, but suggested we probably needed to speak to PNG. “It has to be something they did,” he speculated.
“And I suspect they’ll say this is your work,” I countered. “All of which is academic anyway. The only person at PNG who knows what’s going on, and who I trust to deal with it, is Amy, and she’s out and unreachable until Thursday.”
Buddenhagen then suggested I might want to call AT&T Repair and have them look into the whole situation. He gave me their phone number. The reason he suggested them, he said, is they might be able to “ping” the lines, to remotely send a signal that might help them detect the existence of any continuing problems.
Though probably well-intentioned, obviously this guy had never personally endured the agony of trying to reach someone at AT&T – especially somebody in repair – from the outside. At that precise moment, I was once again able to make phone calls from all lines, so the immediate crisis had been averted. I decided I’d had enough grief and aggravation for one week. I wasn’t about to voluntarily go looking for more.
So, I diplomatically waved off his suggestion that AT&T Repair be called.
