Nov. 8, 2011 (ShapeShiftas) -- Yesterday the evil corporations ruined my day.
It only took one: The evil, incompetent, bankrupt communications corporation Fair Point Communications, our sole choice for phone provider here in Central Vermont. They are our land-line provider only, we get our broadband and TV service via satellites. We pay three separate and hefty bills each month to obtain otherwise what Fair Point quaintly calls its "bundle", offered to their other customers for $49 on every statement, but not available where we live, even though they promised to provide it three years ago.
We have a couple of choices for wireless service in the state, but none of them provide enough towers for coverage around Stockbridge. We do have cell phones here in the country, I've kept my old, 917 number, and I basically only use it when I'm in the city. For the last several years we lived in New York, we didn't even have a land-line; well, except for our DSL service, which we didn't even need after a while, there were so many Wi-Fi spots in the neighborhood around our apartment.
In the cities you need a cell phone nowadays, just try to find a pay phone, there aren't any. Everyone walks around talking on their cell phones and has been for the last decade. I can remember the girls play-talking on old cell phones while walking to the park. I got my first "smart" phone about 6 years ago, before I knew we would be moving to Vermont, and, although that phone (before apps) proved too smart for me, I always had service.
In Vermont, though, you can't take modern infrastructure for granted. We live on dirt roads still! And since we awoke yesterday to find our land-phones not working, we need to make a cell-phone call (Verizon) to report that our land-line service (Fair Point) is not working. I asked my husband to call it in on his way to the school-bus drop-off; he's none too pleased, since his (Motorola) cell-phone died six months before it's eligible for the new-phone upgrade, but he finds a pay phone in town (they still exist here!) and gets put on hold for about 15 minutes, only to be told there is "something with our bill". He is secretely glad that the phone isn't working anyway, and so he hands off to me, knowing that I pay the bills and know what is going on. Plus, I have Fair Point customer "service" on speed-dial, I have had to call them so many times.
So I drive the mile or so down our road to the one spot where there is cell-phone service and pull over under the huge old maple tree that still gets tapped every spring. Our friends who own this place keep saying they are going to put up a sign and a drop-box on the tree, "Cell Service - 5ยข". I think they could make some money, everyone knows this is the spot, sometimes there are two or three cars parked here. If they were a big telecommunications company, they could charge a lot more!
I dial Fair Point and start to clench my jaw. I finally get through all the voice prompts, hard to navigate on my tiny (BlackBerry) keypad, and I am ready for battle. It is just as I suspected, I know how horrid this company is -- the billing issue we discussed last month is still not corrected, and so they just disconnected my phone. Both lines, and one is for my business.
You might think they would call us before doing this, but nooooo. I am really getting steamed up now, and so they transfer me to a different department. My blood pressure is rising with every minute kept on hold, but I am staying calm when I talk to the minimum-wage customer "service" rep. We go round and round for 30 minutes to correct something we spent 20 minutes on last month, and then I'm told it will take 24 hours to re-connect my phones -- AND -- they don't even apologize. Well, my inner NY just came roaring out, no more Mrs. VT Mellow. I only managed to drop one or two f-bombs before she is hanging up on ME, saying, "Have a nice day!"
WHAT???! She HUNG UP on ME!!!? Now I am still furious and also feeling guilty for yelling at this poor woman. She's the latest in a long line of Fair Point employees I have lost my temper with, I'm surprised they don't have me on a list (they surely must). Every time, later, I feel bad about yelling at the individual when I'm really furious with the corporation. I know that corporations are people, but it's not the people-who-work-there's fault...
The worst of it is that I let this no-win, impersonal, infuriating altercation mess up my day. I'm still arguing with a faceless call-center employee of a publicly-traded (NASDAQ:FRP, I would short, before this blog post goes viral) for-profit monopoly! -- that does or does not provide what I think should be basic infrastructure for civilization in the 21st century.
I had a beautiful day all planned, and then, I could get nothing done. I was just too angry to concentrate. I let myself be overcome with my all-too-human emotion for this inhuman institution. They get me every time.
You CAN fight City Hall, but you can't be creative when you are consumed with rage.
peace, Deborah