By Friday morning, the line was completely dead. In order to check whether it was my inside wiring or the problem of my primary local exchange carrier, I arranged for one of Canada’s leading regulatory technology legal minds to stop by the house and we were able to isolate the problem to the network side.
He then called my local carrier and placed a trouble report. The repair bureau initially said the technician would be out sometime during the day on Saturday. We asked for the time to be narrowed and we were told to expect the technician between 8 am and 12 noon.
At noon on Saturday, I was informed in very clear terms by my daughter that the technician had not yet arrived. She succinctly asked if I would be so kind as find out how much more time she could devote to minding the house to be prepared for the visitor (I am paraphrasing).
When I called 611, I was told that 8-12 is ‘only indicating a preference, not a commitment.’ The technician showed up at 5:00 (so much for caring about my preference for morning), changed the pair and used the secondary drop that serves our home and left at 5:30.
Problem is that the phone stopped working again less than 15 minutes later.
After calling 611 again, I was told that a technician would absolutely be back between 8 and noon on Sunday. Guaranteed.
Hmmm. I think I have heard that before. But with sincerity, I was assured this would be in the morning, not just indicating a preference.
To be honest, my real preference is for my phone to work. If I can’t get that, my next preference would be for a repair to last more than 15 minutes. It’s only when preference number one or two aren’t delivered that I want the repair technician to show up within a 4-hour window.
Is that really too much to ask for?
Surprise, surprise. No technician has arrived to repair the line, despite all of the promises that were made last night.
However, Andrew tells me that the problem has now been assigned to a technician and I am next on his list.
Stay tuned.
Technician has arrived on-site. This time, the problem is a corroded wire. Dial-tone (so far, at least for a few minutes). Life returning to normal.
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