The MOVE--I should have known

Even when you have to move your office from one cube to another, it's a pain. Chances are somewhere between changing phones and Internet connections, you can be sure that something is not going to work. Of course, if you work in a cube, you have tech support to solve the problem.

When you work in a home office you end up spending hours  trying  to problem solve the problem yourself.

I moved on Saturday. I thought I had taken care of the phones, the Internet provider and the TV cable so that we would be good to go Monday morning.

Who was I kidding?  Everything is requiring  follow-up phone calls. And follow-up calls to the follow-up calls.

Now, I wouldn't have a problem with there being a problem.  What I do have a problem  with is technical support that either doesn't care or doesn't know how to fix the problem.

What I don't enjoy is having to call technical support so often on the same issue that I have my case reference number committed to memory.

So, some time today, the cable folks will be back because the technician who stopped by on Saturday didn't test stuff to make sure it worked. If he had, he would have noticed that nothing was working.  If I had not been obsessed with unpacking, I might have paid more attention.

Note: since writing this, the cable guy did come back. Unfortunately I was on a teleconference and he evidently didn't understand the problem. He left.The problem wasn't fixed. Finally, after spending 30 minutes on the phone with Omar the problem was resolved.

Then there are the phones.

Who knows why I did it, probably to take advantage of a special program, but my business line had been handled by Qwest while I used At&T for my local  phone service. The emphasis is on USED TO use AT&T.

I called 10 days in advance. Explained I wanted the new service to start October 15th but couldn't disconnect the old address until October 21st because the water department needed the phone line operational to get a meter reading.

5 days later someone mentioned that when they tried to call my home line, it had a disconnect message. When I called AT&T and explained they had incorrectly turned off my phone, they apologized and said there was really nothing they could do about it.

"Once a phone is disconnected, we cannot connect it for just a few days." I asked to be bumped up to a supervisor who confirmed the policy.

Pointing out the fact that it was their error, did not impress them. Pointing out that if they didn't reconnect the line would result in losing me as a customer, didn't impress them either.

When the Qwest service rep was working on my phone lines he said that Qwest had a similar policy, explaining that it wasn't an issue of ability to do it, but that it cost too much to do it. No surprise there.

Although the movers were not coming until Saturday, I wanted to make sure my business line  and Internet lines were up and running Monday morning  so I scheduled the phone company to meet me at my new place on Friday afternoon.

Qwest gave me a three hour window from 3-6 pm. I got to the new place around 2:15p.m. Good thing I did.Qwest was there at 2:25 p.m. The Qwest guy added my business line, had me sign an invoice for $95 to add a jack and said I was good to go.

What he didn't tell me is that neither the new business line or the old business line would be operational for the rest of the day. It didn't go into voice mail.Just said it was disconnected. Note to whomever---if you were trying to reach me Friday, my phones are working.

Then there is the issue of my Linksys wireless connection. The good news is we were able to piggyback on Doodlebug's service and access the Internet throughout the weekend.  The bad news we couldn't connect to our own service. The first rep insisted I had a bad Ethernet cord. The second one had me go through some settings and promised I was good to go.

It wasn't until around 4:30 this morning, that the latest Tech support person figured out the real problem. Not exactly sure but it had to do with the order that the router, cable box and computer were unplugged and plugged.

It is now 2:00 p.m. I have my Internet. I have my wireless. I have my phones. My life is good.