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Computers Gone Astray – Or How I spent My Summer Vacation

(This transpired in the summer of 2006. Since they Fairpoint Communications has taken over telephone service for northern New England. All names and telephone numbers have been changed to protect the innocent.)

This saga started innocently enough last winter when, in a moment of irrational aberrant thinking, I convinced my husband that it was time for us to downsize and move to a smaller house.  For those of you who have done that in the immediate past, I need  not elaborate on the labor intensive, emotionally wrenching, marriage stressing  path this action sets one upon.  I have since concluded from a random and unscientific poll based on unsolicited comments by friends and acquaintances that within every couple there is one who throws out and one who hordes!  This is true for our family as well, yet I am happy to report that our marriage has survived this half-mile move up the hill and across the street to a new neighborhood of smaller homes.  My faith in technology and the companies that control it has been shaken however.

Naively I thought it would not be hard to transfer our Verizon service, which included telephone, DSL and dial-up access to the Internet, along with a few extras like call forwarding, caller ID and distinctive ring.  Jane, the person I dealt with at Verizon Customer Service also thought it would not be a problem, once I convinced her that 138 Upswept Lane did, in fact, exist even though it was not in Verizon’s database of addresses.  (There is foreshadowing here and Lesson #1 – if you don’t exist they can’t help you; so  never move to a “new”, as in “did not previously exist” neighborhood.)  My friendly customer service person who valued me as a customer, did say the DSL would take a few more days because even though I had been assured by the chief Verizon engineer in Burlington that the line was DSL capable, the powers that be in corporate Verizon could not ascertain that until after the line had been hooked up. (More foreshadowing and Lesson #2 – beware of large corporate computers in the sky)