e i g h t - c u b e d . c o m 

PacHell?

Bad and good experiences with Pacific Bell today. I came home to find my phone line completely dead. No dial tone at all. As I had a rather important fibrechannel switch firmware upgrade scheduled for 9 PM, this was not a good thing.

I tried unplugging the modem and all the phones and then plugging my dumb phone (i.e., the one that doesn't require an external power supply) in. Still no joy.

Thinking that I was going to have to do the upgrade from work, and wanting to call PacBell anyway, I headed back down the hill. In my irritation I completely forgot any of my puncture repair gear. Fortunately I made it there and back in one piece, and got an unexpected workout on the bike to boot.

Have you ever felt like you were lost in a twistly little maze of passages, all alike? That's what PacBell's automated telephone repair answering service is like. I eventually used the system to log a service call, and it promptly told me that it could schedule a repair technician to visit me "between 1PM and 5PM tomorrow".

Not relishing a night sleeping under the desk, I persevered and managed to get hold of a real live person. (This is the good bit coming up here...)

I told her my situation and the reason why I really, really, needed the phone available, and, after checking with the duty supervisor for my area, she told me that they were indeed dispatching a repair technician straight away! That was very impressive.

An hour later the phone was fixed. PacHell? Not in this case.