Ameritech and their "specialists"

The BBQ Pit
1

The phone lines were screwed up at work yesterday, in that people attempting to dial our number from within the city got a message that all circuits are busy. We were able to receive long distance calls without a problem. I called their “Repair” department in the morning, and was assured that it would be fixed by that afternoon.

The day goes by, and no change. I call them back up, and the conversation went like this:

Me: I was just calling back to check on the status of my trouble report.
Them: Okay, what is the phone number?
Me: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Them: Okay, one moment. We show that the trouble on that line has been cleared up.
Me: Uh, no. Nothing has changed. Still have the problem.
Them: Oh. Well, what was the problem?
Me: Whenever somebody tries to call us, they are told that all circuits are busy.
Them: Oh. Let’s see. Oh, here we go. This was referred to our specialists, but they needed more information before they could attempt to fix it.
Me: What sort of information?
Them: Oh, well, they don’t tell us what sort of information they need, just that they didn’t have enough information. They tried to call you, but couldn’t get through.
Me: That’s because NOBODY can get through. That’s the problem!
Them: Oh, I see. Well, I can put another ticket through to them, and have them contact you.
Me: No, you see, they CANNOT call us, because the phone lines aren’t working.
Them: Oh, that’s true.
Me: Can you put me through to the specialists?
Them: Oh, no. Nobody can call the specialists directly. You can only talk to them if they call you.
Me: But they can’t call me.
Them: …
Me: How are we going to resolve this?
Them: The only thing we can do is put in another report to the specialists, and have them look at it.
Me: Wouldn’t that get us right back to where we are now?
Them: I don’t know.

NICE FUCKING SYSTEM YOU’VE GOT THERE, MORONS!! What is this, a god-damned Abbott and Costello routine? My telephone doesn’t work, but you need more info but you don’t know what, and can only get it by calling me on my telephone? Holy Christ! Get your fucking act together over there!

“It is only out of sheer, morbid curiosity that I am allowing this freakshow to continue…”

2

Add to that list: AT & T, Lucent, MCK, and Vital. Those are the organizations that we had to work with at our company to get a T1 run from our main warehouse to a second warehouse a mile up the road. After two months of trying to arrange it, I had a contact list with 25 names on it, in seven different organizations, none of whom was actually in charge of anything, every one of whom asked me deeply technical questions about what the other guys were doing.

Ameritech owns the T1; AT & T sublets it from them; Lucent is responsible for the hardware at each end for the telephones; MCK handled the actual hardware; Vital came to install the hardware for MCK, since MCK doesn’t do it themselves. Every tech who showed up at our facility said “I’m thinking of leaving and setting up my own company, focussing on customer service. What do you think?” I dealt with a total of five different project managers for one project. It would have been simpler to buy bows and arrows, to shoot flaming messages from one facility to the next.

I can’t believe that no one has stepped into this nightmare market as a “single solution provider”.

Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.