The Call (At long last, the call!)

So the big news is that I have, for the past week, been in communication with representatives from Suddenlink, including the much sought-after local office, regarding our unfortunate ongoing situation with them. And the reason for the communication is due entirely to name-checking Suddenlink on this blog on July 29 (you know, beyond my thinly veiled "Link of Sudden" phrasing I've been using for months).

Shortly after I posted the Suddenlink name-drop, I received a comment to that post from a someone called Suddenlink Help who wrote: "Hi - My name is Tina and I am a `Suddenlink agents paying attention on the lookout' for customers in need of assistance. Please feel free to reach out to me directly for assistance."

And this was exactly what I was hoping would happen.

I looked Tina up on the Suddenlink website and found that she did indeed appear to exist and worked for their help desk. So on August 7, 2012, I sent her an email containing my former account number with Suddenlink and the short short version of the unfortunate ongoing situation minus all the Once Upon a Time language. And, for a short short version, it was still fairly long. But then, the unfortunate ongoing situation is now in its sixth month, so I think a couple of politely-worded pages can be tolerated. I doubt that it's even necessary to post the short-short note here, but the truly short short short version is that I spelled out the major beats of the unfortunate ongoing situation, noting the 18 times I tried to go through proper channels to no result BEFORE I name-dropped them on this blog in anything other than a thinly-veiled way. As I explained in the note, the reason I'd not name-dropped Suddenlink sooner is that I'd been hoping for a positive resolution with my efforts to communicate with them locally. But since one did not appear to be forthcoming, after 5 months, I decided to say their name and draw the attention of someone higher up. Beyond that, I noted my willingness to work with them on a solution if only someone would call me back or otherwise contact me to answer the questions I've had for lo these last six months, even if that answer is "No."

The very next day, August 8, 2012, I received an email from a Director of Operations at Suddenlink following up on the email I had sent to Tina. He apologized that the unfortunate ongoing situation has been as ongoing as it has and asked my patience as they evaluate things on their end and correct the errors of the past so that this sort of thing doesn't happen to anyone else. He even gave me his cell number and apologized again. He said he was turning things over to the tech operations manager of the local Suddenlink office who would be in contact with me shortly.

That very afternoon, I received a telephone call (AN ACTUAL CALL ON MY ACTUAL TELEPHONE!!!! GLORY BE!!!) from said tech operations manager of said local office. He too apologized and said that engineers had been sent out that very day to evaluate the situation, take pictures and gather maps so that they could figure out what could be done, if anything. He promised he would give me a call with an update the following day. And the following day, as promised, he did.

And it is at this point in the narrative that I shall suffice to say that communications with Suddenlink regarding the issue are ongoing, but ongoing in a positive manner. This is not to say that any promises have been made that I'll be receiving service, and I was not expecting any such promises.  However, steps are actively being taken to see what can be done to get service to me.

For the moment, I'm pretty pleased with how things are going.

Once Upon a Time (Part 11)

As he said in Part 7, the scribe had allowed two months to pass since he last talked to a representative from the Link of Sudden. The last time he had, the rep had been very sympathetic to his cause and had said she was going to load up his account with note after note explaining the unfortunate ongoing situation to her superiors and they would definitely be calling him very soon about answering his questions. Yep. Very soon.

Which, of course, had not happened AT ALL. And even after the scribe had dutifully given her his new phone number, since the one associated with the account, much like the account, no longer worked.

The last he had heard, two months previous, there was a note in his account from someone local that the cost of getting Link of Sudden service to his new castle would be $12,000. There was no explanation of what this cost covered, or if the scribe was expected to pay that or if the Link of Sudden was expected to pay that, or if there was a split. Nothing. So now, the scribe had decided that since having notes left in his account was about all he could expect in the way of communication from the local office, and since two months previous he had asked the Link of Sudden to see if they could get anyone to tell him exactly what the $12,000 figure meant, he would now just phone up the Link of Sudden once again to learn if any new notes had been left for him in answer to the previous ones.

The rep he spoke to indicated there were no new notes. He could see the $12,000 note, but no further explanation was indicated. Rather than read over the 18 plus previous notes in the account, the rep instead had the scribe give him the short short version of the unfortunate ongoing situation. During the telling, the scribe once again mentioned the 18 approximate times he'd been promised a phone call but had yet to receive one. The rep seemed suitably annoyed on the scribe's behalf. The scribe, however, could barely summon up even annoyance any more, let alone anything approaching anger. This wound, he decided, had festered for so long that the tissue had gone necrotic and he was left just feeling dead inside over the whole thing, but was still left with the ability to see the absurdity of it all. So he just told each increasingly ridiculous part of the unfortunate ongoing situation and he and the rep laughed and laughed and laughed, one of them with cold dead eyes.

After they stopped laughing, the rep said he was going to write everything out in detail and send the account up the poop shoot to his superiors. He, at long last, was going to be the rep to get things moving on this issue. The previous reps had been chumps. The new rep would not rest until he had documented things fully and he assured the scribe, someone would be in touch with him very soon.

"No, they won't," the scribe said. And he laughed and laughed some more.

"So how should I word this?" the rep asked.

The scribe decided to play along. If the rep was going to let him dictate the sort of wording he wanted in the notes, the scribe was all for providing those words. He was, after all, a scribe.

"Wants to know if the junction box in neighbor's yard can, in fact, be upgraded to accommodate a cable for customer's house," the scribe suggested. "Customer is willing to pay to have the cable buried, if upgrade can be made," he also suggested. "Is very annoyed that he's been promised phone calls on the matter on 18 separate occasions since February and has yet to receive even one," he continued in suggestion. "Is about to start negative media campaign," the scribe finished.

The rep said he didn't think he should include that last part. The scribe quietly disagreed, but allowed the matter to drop.

At the end of the call, the scribe thanked the rep for his time but assured him that he, the scribe, was under no illusions that what they had just done would have ANY effect whatsoever. He'd long ago given up thinking that anyone at the Link of Sudden was going to pay any attention to mere notes in an account or the suggestions of their phone reps. Clearly either there was a disconnect somewhere in the system in which the local office was unaware he wanted a call back, or they were actively ignoring him.

However, the scribe thought he might know a way to change that, or at least get the attention of eyes and ears higher up in the Link of Sudden food chain. And it could be accomplished, he believed, with the mere reordering of ten letters.

(TO BE CONTINUED IN NON FAIRY TALE FORM...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 10)

With the last of the improvements accomplished at the old castle in Borderland, it was time to get the place sold once and for all. The castle-sales-agent there asked the scribe and his goodly wife which lawgiver they wanted to use to do the work. Despite having lived there for four years, they had no real notions who would be good to use, so they asked for recommendations.

"Harpo or Zeppo" she said.

They chose Harpo.

Nearly two weeks then passed with no word as to a closing date. Just as the scribe was starting to notice that they should have heard SOMETHING by then, the agent phoned to say that the potential buyers were getting antsy that they'd not heard anything from Harpo's office. They were going to jump ship and go with Zeppo for the closing. The goodly wife called Harpo's office to inquire as to the date and was told by his Verified Georgia Peach of an office manager that no date had been set because she'd not even started working on it. "Well don't bother, then," the goodly wife said. The scribe and his wife told their agent to go with Zeppo, who said he could put a rush on it and set a date for the following Thursday.

The Tuesday before the closing, the scribe and his goodly wife took a trip to Borderland. Their reasons were two fold. One, there were a few things to pick up from the castle there. Two, they had an appointment for their dog, Moose.

During the intervening months since they'd moved to Tri-Metro, Moose had developed some problems. At first it seemed to be a temporary lameness in one leg, causing him to not put weight on it at time. Then they noticed it was actually in all of his legs, one at a time. Fearing something awful, the goodly wife researched it and discovered that Lyme disease produced such symptoms. Only a quick scan from their local vet in Tri-Metro showed no trace of it. The local vet had no other notions and just told the Goodly Wife to keep an eye on him. When, after a week, the problem seemed to be getting worse, to the point that the poor dog had pain with any movement and spent most of his time lying down on his comfy pillow, not daring to move even for the encroachment of deer, the Goodly Wife said, "Screw this" and made an appointment for him at their old vet in Borderland. He too ordered a battery of tests, including an indepth scan for Lyme. In the meantime, he put Moose on antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. One or more of these seemed to help and soon Moose was his usual energetic, bouncy self. But the Lyme scan came back negative, so the vet referred the dog to a university veterinary hospital. They too could find no conclusive cause to the problem, but did note that Moose's lymphatic system was active and producing fluids that were building up in his joints, likely causing him pain. This could be caused, they said, by an auto immune deficiency wherein his own systems were fighting him. The pooch was given a course of prednisone that would likely last for four months. This too seemed to work and soon Moose was gaining weight, drinking like a camel and peeing like a race horse.

The vet visit in Borderland went well. But when the couple arrived at their beloved former castle they found the power was off. From the warm temperature of the fridge, it seemed it had been off for some time. They called their power company and alerted them. However, the company couldn't send anyone to check on it until after they had hit the road for Tri-Metro once again. They were told, via a call, that it was back on.

When they returned to Borderland for the closing on Thursday, they stopped back by their former castle to pick up the one last thing they had left behind, the rope for their dog run, tied between trees in the back yard, and to drop off a welcome card to the new owners. However, the power was still off. Having very little time to get to the closing, they phoned the power company on the way and were told that the house would soon be transferred to its new name.

"Yes, but the future owners do not have the power to turn OFF our power until they are actually the owners, which won't happen for another 15 minutes," the scribe said. "Besides that, the power has clearly been off for a number of days already. We'd like it to be on for the new owners when they take possession."

Oddly, when the scribe and his goodly wife arrived at the office of the lawgiver their real-estate agent had told them to go to, they found it was Harpo's office and not Zeppo's. "Didn't we fire him?" they said. Evidently the firing had not taken. However, the future owners of their castle had had better luck with their firing, for they were nowhere to be seen since they had successfully moved into Zeppo's care. So the closing was completed without the scribe and his goodly wife ever meeting the new owners. They each signed their papers in offices one city block apart. And with that their former castle was now well and truly no longer theirs. They each had a little cry. And, fortunately, the power company phoned back to say that they had actually restored power this time instead of just saying they had.

With the old castle's sale finally concluded, the scribe bid a fond goodbye to Borderland and he and his goodly wife drove off in the opposite direction of the sunset.






(Wait, what was that other thing he was supposed to remember? Had something to do with the move... Was a source of frustration... OH, YEAH! Now I remember...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 9)

The scribe and his goodly wife raided all the gasoline powered equipment they owned, siphoning them as dry as they could with a little hand pump. This, however, amounted to what
little was left in the two mowers and the nearly full tank of the garden tiller. Maybe two gallons, if that. This they poured into her car and hoped for the best.

The wife said that word on the street was that Asscrackton wouldn’t see power again before Sunday and it would probably be the same for Tri-Metro. They would have to find gasoline, somehow, somewhere. The only good thing about the storms was that it had cooled everything off, so they slept pretty soundly with a breeze blowing across us through the windows.

The next morning, the wife called in to work to make sure she needed to come in. No sense driving to Asscrackton if they weren’t going to be open, after all. She was told that they would be open and that one of the main gas stations on the interstate had generator power and was open. Her plan was to drive there and get gas before work. She would also fill up our gas cans.
Meanwhile, the scribe’s job became keeping the house as cool as possible for as long as possible, because temperatures were supposed to hit the upper 90s again. So he kept the windows open until the battery-powered thermometer began to creep into the mid 80s. Then he started closing windows and shuttering blinds.

Mid morning, the goodly wife called to say she had been unable to get gas because the line for fuel was out to the interstate itself. However, her old clinic in Borderland reported that they had plenty of power there, so she suggested he drive there and fuel up. He really didn’t want to drive an hour and a half to gas up the car, but figured he could make it on less than a quarter of a tank if he didn’t use air-conditioning or any other electronics that drew power. And he did make it, and was even able to gas up at my favorite station 17 miles outside of town, across the border, where the gas is always the cheapest. However, they didn’t have gas cans, so he drove on into Borderland proper where he found things were well and truly FUBAR. Every gas station near the interstate was completely full and there was a line of cars adding to the chaos with each passing traffic light cycle.

The nearby Lowes only had 1 gallon gas cans left, so the scribe wound up driving further into town where he found an Advance Auto Parts that had a 5 gallon can left. On his way there, he had driven past Kroger and saw that their gas station hardly had anyone at it. The chaos, he reasoned, had not made it this far into town. But with credit card machines down at Advance, due to the storm, it was a cash only transaction, and by the time he’d made it to an ATM and back Kroger was eat up with cars. He had to wait in line for 15 minutes while the two deep line of people at the pump filled up their vehicles and multiple gas cans each.

The scribe took his newly filled gas can and drove to Asscrackton where he gassed up the wife’s vehicle and chatted with her for a bit in the darkened clinic.

“Do I need to cancel my trip?” he asked. After all, they were in a state of emergency officially.

“No,” she told him.

He returned to Tri-Metro, where there appeared to be one gas station that had some degree of generator power, but none for the town.

Though they waited to cancel the show until close to call time, the final performance for the scribe’s play was indeed cancelled. They would have no wrap party. They would take no cast pictures.

That night, after the scribe’s wife had returned home and they had opened all the windows and doors to catch what little breeze there was, he asked her again if he should cancel his trip.

“Please,” she said. “I grew up with no electricity until I was in high school. This will be fun.” This was, of course, a reference to her formative years growing up in a series of cabins in rural Alaska, where she did indeed have no electricity until her high school years. Her point was that while the scribe could be of some help to her there, his would be another car that needed gas. Plus, he was kind of a wuss when it came to lack of air conditioning. She, however, had grown up with less than this. She had a house, she had water and so she could survive just fine. If things got bad, she would pack up the animals and the deep freeze and drive them back to Borderland where we still had a house and still had power.

The scribe awoke at 3 in the morning and drove to the nearest airport to fly to Mississippi. He noticed power in Asscrackton as he drove through it, which seemed a good sign. The wife, however, would not see power in Tri-Metro for several days yet.

A day later, fearing the loss of their deep freeze full of Alaskan salmon, the goodly wife used a set of shelf-boards as ramps and then used a wheeled dolly to roll the smallish deep freeze into the laundry hall of the castle and then from there up into the back of her Honda Element. She then packed up the dogs and drove to Borderland, plugging it into the garage. Two hours later, another set of massive storms rolled across the state and knocked out power in Borderland. Seeing that there was nothing else to do, the following morning she had Lowes locate the nearest town that still had generators for sale and she drove there to buy the next to last one. With this she returned to Tri-Metro, powering the deep freeze for a few hours each day as well as charging her phone and laptop. And because of their continued lack of power and the lack of Link of Sudden High Speed Internet even IF they’d had power, her 3G hotspot capabilities in her phone kept her connected to the net of the whole wide world.

Meanwhile, the towns of the Tri-Metro area slowly crawled back to life. Stores reopened, people returned to their jobs, and life mostly resumed, albeit on a cash-only basis.

Power was also eventually restored to Borderland, which the wife learned from her former coworkers there. She made arrangements for the last of the castle-improvements to be completed so that the castle there could at last be sold.

Finally, nearly a week later, the power was restored to our castle in Tri-Metro. And an air-conditioned sigh of relief was breathed.

Once Upon a Time (Part 8)

Though it was only on the national news for about five minutes, West Virginia and much of Appalachia went through a difficult patch thanks to a series of violent thunderstorms that pretty much took out the power grid of much of the region one month ago.

The first wave of storms came through on the evening of June 29. The day had been blazing hot, not to mention humid. The scribe's goodly wife at work an hour away in Asscrackton, while the scribe was headed out for an evening at the theatre. (Truth be told, the scribe, being also an actor, was in a play at the local theatre and was scheduled for his penultimate performance that evening.)

Before leaving, the scribe noted a warning on his phone-of-smartness that a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect for the area that night. He left his dogs in his castle and departed. Fifteen minutes into the theatrical production, the power flickered a bit went out briefly. Five minutes later, it went out entirely (ironically, at the exact moment a character on stage said his previously scripted line of "Damn, my light!") bathing the place in emergency back up lighting.

It was decided to wait a while to see if the power would come back, but after fifteen more minutes the performance was cancelled and everyone told to go home.

As the scribe exited the theatre, he could see a tremendous black cloud in the western sky, in the direction of his castle. It was not yet raining. There wasn’t even really any wind. He drove on along the down town streets and onto the highway leading to his neighborhood with still no real weather problems. As he crested the top of that hill and got a good look at the valley beyond, he could see the storm that black cloud was producing and realized he might very well be in trouble.
A wall of wind and rain hit his vehicel. Through the windshield wipers, he could see shit flying through the air. And not little shit, like leaves, but bigger shit, like branches. The smaller trees near the road were flapping wildly to the point that he began to wonder if he was in a tornado. There were no funnel clouds that he could see, but the winds were definitely much stronger than those of your average thunderstorm.

As he reached the main road running to his neighborhood, he saw there were trees down. Most of them were smaller, but there was one larger, older trees that had been split by the wind, leaving one half standing and one half fallen. This was some serious weather!

In his neighborhood, there were more fallen limbs and even trees--mostly smaller trees, but some were dangerously close to the road or to their castles. There were leaves and small branches everywhere, creating a thin carpet in yards and along the street. The lawn furniture and trash cans of some of his neighbors had left their lawns to visit the lawns of other neighbors or, indeed, the road itself.

When he reached the side street that led directly up the hill to his castle, the road was blocked by a fallen tree at the foot of his nearest neighbor’s driveway. It was not a large tree, and he was able to drive around it through his other neighbor's yard, but it was blocking the road.

Once at his castle, the scribe could see that the kayak's he and his goodly wife had left in their yard following a kayaking trip a couple of days before were still present and accounted for. But they might not be for long if he couldn’t get them inside. He parked, not bothering to try his garage door opener, knowing it would not work without power. He ran to the side door of the castle and unlocked it and was immediately greeted by worried dogs. He dashed past them and down the laundry hall into the garage, pulling the door behind so they couldn’t follow. He yanked on the garage door release rope and then lifted the door manually before running back to the car. He pulled it into the garage and pulled the door closed.

Next he descended the Joker-striped wallpaper spiral staircase into the dim basement where he stumbled back along the length of the house toward the light of the basement's exterior doors. These he flung wide before running out into the yard, dragging the kayaks one by one back into the basement. During this, he kept listening for the tell tale freight train sound of a tornado, but heard only the rush of storm wind.

After locking up the basement, he returned upstairs and then through the back door onto the deck, where he had to rescue deck furniture cushions and plants from where they had been blown by the wind.

The back yard was a mess. A very large limb and several smaller ones had fallen from the ancient oak at the edge of the yard. The yard itself was scattered with more limbs and leaves and some of the decorative bushes looked in danger of taking flight. The winds were still blowing and a light rain falling, but most of the worst of it seemed to be over. The scribe stood in the back door and watched the lighting play beyond the mountains to the west.

Taking further assessment of the situation, the scribe noted that they had no power and from the look of the fallen trees in the neighborhood alone, power would be a day or two from being restored to the area. (What he didn't know then was that a massive tree had fallen on a nearby power substation, severing the wires for a great deal of the area.) The good news was that he still had a cell signal, including 3G, and still had running water. But who knew how long that would last?

The scribe returned to the basement and retrieved the stored water containers they'd purchased when they had well troubles back in Borderland. These included a 5 qt dispenser, a 2 gallon Culligan rectangular jug, and a giant 6 gallon plastic water cube. He filled them up.

After this, he located their supply of candles and oil lamps, though he couldn’t find actual
lamp oil for them and only one or two had any in them.

When the wife came home, she said the roads were nuts between Asscrackton and Tri-Metro. They’d lost power at her clinic, so she was able to leave right at closing time since she couldn’t do any of her computer-charting. Her next question, though, sent chills down the scribe's spine.

“How much gas do you have in your car?”

“Oh, shit,” he said, because he knew exactly how much gas he had. "Not quite a quarter tank." The scribe mentally kicked himself, for he'd been driving around all day, making mental notes to buy gas because he knew he was going to be doing an early morning drive to the airport for his flight to Mississippi in only a day.

“Okay,” she said. “How much gas do we have in the lawn mower?” The goodly wife then explained that while she’d had enough gas to get home and probably had enough gas to get back to Asscrackton in the morning, she did not have enough gas to then get back home afterward. Power was out all over Asscrackton and had been completely out in Tri-Metro as she’d driven through it minutes before. They would have to come up with some gas somehow.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 7)

Two months passed.

The scribe waited for the call from the Link of Sudden (Suddenlink Cable Systems, for any Suddenlink agents paying attention on the lookout for bad publicity about Suddenlink--which begins HERE), but no call ever came. And this despite the assertion from Amber, the last Suddenlink rep the scribe had spoken to, that she would follow up on the situation to make sure the much fabled call she promised would come actually did. There was no call. Not from Leon. Not from the supervisor from Borderland. Not from Amber herself. Not from anyone. And, of course, after 17 previous promises of a call from Suddenlink that had gone entirely unfulfilled, the scribe had not actually been expecting one to occur.

During that two months span of continued lack of calls from Suddenlink, the scribe and his goodly wife continued to enjoy their new castle even though the only internet service they could receive was via their cell phones' 3g hotspot. They also continued to attempt to sell their previous castle.

Back in February, they hired the real-estate agent who had held the listing on their previous castle when they had purchased it four years prior. She assured them that not only would it likely sell within 90 days but also that due to the improvements they had made it would sell for a nice bit of money over what they'd paid. The scribe and his wife decided to put it on the market for 186 beans, figuring that between offers and counter offers the castle would sell between 178 and 182 beans. The old castle began showing and within a month of hitting the market got its first offer for… 160 beans. This was disappointing, but it was a start. A low-ball offer was not something they feared, for they themselves had SERIOUSLY low-balled their first bean offer on the new castle and that had worked out fine. There was room to maneuver. The trouble was, the potential buyers were not only low-balling but were requiring the castle sale be contingent on the sale of their own castle, a deal that would effectively have taken the scribe’s castle off the market for the better part of prime selling season. That would be fine, but only if the offer were MUCH better.

The scribe and wife countered at 183 beans, which showed they were willing to drop the price, but kept it in the neighborhood they wanted. The potential then countered to 163 beans. Disgusted, the scribe countered that they would be willing to sell the castle for 178 beans and not one bean less. The potential buyer said they would be willing to buy the castle for 169 beans and not one bean more. The scribe then countered by offering them their choice of which of his supple ass cheeks they could smooch. The non-buyers declined further negotiation. Time passed.

In late May, word came of a new offer on the castle, this time a reasonable one. The offer came in at 170 beans-in-hand, which meant actual beans being passed and not contingent on the loaning of beans from a bean-loaning establishment. Even at the much lower figure (which was actually the same bean figure the scribe and wife had bought the place for when they purchased it) a bean-in-hand offer was a serious one to consider. It meant a lot less hassle to getting the place sold with a lot fewer chances of someone saying “no” along the way. However, the amount was still too low for the amount of work the scribe and his goodly wife had done to the place. They countered with 178 beans, expecting to have to eventually drop down to 176. But the 178 beans was accepted right out.

It took nearly a month for all of the inspections to be completed and for some reasonable requests for additional improvements to be made.

Before these could be accomplished, though, a great wind came along and nearly wiped the place out.

Once Upon a Time (Part 6)

It had been three weeks since the scribe last spoke to a supervisor from the Link of Sudden, which was, as noted, the first time anyone from the Link of Sudden had actually called him back. That guy had promised that "Leon" would be in touch with him by phone, seemingly within hours. However, over 504 hours had since passed and no call had been received from "Leon."

Meanwhile, the scribe's phone stopped working. Not his cell phone, but his house phone. He wasn't certain how long the phone had been inoperable, for they had received only two calls on it since it had been installed in March. At first the scribe thought that the phone had quit working because he had not yet paid his first bill. This was because his first bill had got lost in the piles of paper that had already begun to collect in the new castle and upon opening the second bill he discovered he somehow owed the phone company $111 for scarcely two months worth of service. How could that even be possible? He'd barely made ANY phone calls. Upon phoning the phone company and inquiring about it, he discovered that they were overcharging him for services they were supposed to provide for free. However, his adjusted bill total would not appear online until his next billing period, so the amount he needed to pay online was in determinant. So he just didn't pay it.

After the phone stopped working, the scribe went onto the web of the whole wide world and paid his bill. Days passed and the phone continued to provide only static. So he called the phone company back and let them know. They said they'd send someone out, and a couple of days later the scribe spied one of their service people digging in the local junction box for the neighborhood. The phone did not begin to work. And, after a long four day weekend away in Kentucky, the phone was still inoperable upon their return.

On Friday morning, the scribe phoned them up to alert them to this. They did not seem to want to believe him, because their records showed that the service guy had repaired the problem and received a dial tone at the junction box.

"I know," the scribe said. "I saw him down there. The phone still doesn't work."

The phone company agreed to send someone else round, though they were dubious if this would happen before Monday.

Having just faced one large bureaucratic organization that morning, the scribe phoned up the Link of Sudden. A cheerful phone rep named Amber took the call and, after hearing the SHORT SHORT version of his Link of Sudden Tale of Woe, was able to look him up and check the notes in the account.

"And then the Supervisor from BORDERLAND said that a `Leon' would be calling me within a few hours. That," the scribe said, "was three weeks ago. No one has called. And, I might add, until the supervisor from BORDERLAND called me, not one person from THE LINK OF SUDDEN has ever called me over the course of the past, ohhh, twelve weeks."

Amber said she was very sorry that this was the case. However, she could see in the account notes that Leon himself had actually made a note in the account back in April. Leon's note explained that that hooking up the scribe's castle for internet service would cost $12,000. The scribe should have been horrified at that figure, but nothing about the Link of Sudden could surprise him at this point, except, perhaps, for an actual phone call.

"This is the first I've heard anything about $12,000," the scribe said. "And that's precisely the sort of information we've been trying to get out of THE LINK OF SUDDEN for weeks."

Amber explained that she was uncertain if the $12,000 cost was their cost, the scribe's cost or something to be split up should it come to actually acting on the proposed job. The scribe again told her about his own proposed project of just getting the Link of Sudden to EFFing upgrade the plug-in box in his neighbor's yard, 70 feet down the hill, and his offer to have the trench dug to bury a cable from their, but, again, this was something he needed to discuss with Leon, who apparently was afraid to phone him. Amber made several notes in the account and said she would send communication to Leon that he was to communicate back with the scribe as soon as possible regarding the actual cost breakdown. Amber said she was on the scribe's side. She said she had his back in all this. She would follow up to make sure it happened.

And so far.... no call.

Once Upon a Time (Part 5)

This morning, at the crack of 8:42 a.m., the scribe and the goodly wife lay in bed in their new castle and were only barely awake when the scribe's cell phone rang.  He answered it and the voice he heard upon saying hello asked for him by name.  "This is him," the scribe said.  And then, after seven long of ass weeks of waiting, the voice on the other end introduced himself as a a supervisor from the Link of Sudden.  The scribe nearly dropped the phone in shock, for an actual call from the Link of Sudden was completely unexpected, especially since it had been well over a week since the last Link of Sudden employee he talked to had told him that she was supposed to tell him he would be called.  In no way did the scribe actually expect a call, though.

Nope, in the interim time, the scribe had written the Link of Sudden off as a probability. Oh, sure, if at some point months down the line someone from the Link of Sudden were to contact him and say he could at last have cable internet, he probably would take it.  But he had since made different plans.

After a bit of research, the scribe had learned that not only was his cell service with the Zon of Veri grandfathered in for unlimited data (a plan they no longer offer), but if he were to upgrade to a new phone with them he would not only be able to continue getting unlimited data but could also, for a reasonable fee, use said phone as both a tethered 3G internet connection and a wifi hotspot.  The cost of this feature on both his and the goodly wife's phones was less than he would pay for service through the Link of Sudden and FAR FAR less than he was paying with his AT-AT mifi card.  So he and the goodly wife had upgraded their phones, taken the AT-AT card back and were enjoying all the streaming Netflix that they wanted.  Furthermore, his new phone was the latest version of the Razr, which has a screen that's so big it's practically a pad device unto itself.  As far as he was concerned, the Link of Sudden could go soak their head (in a bag of dicks) because he no longer needed them.  Sure, it would be nice to have high speed internet once again of the type that would allow him to play Little Big Planet with his godchild in Mississippi, but cheap flat-rate internet was once again within his grasp.

The Link of Sudden employee on the phone explained that he was a supervisor with Link of Sudden and had received the scribe's case as an escalation.   (The previous LOS lackey had been made a liar after all!  Way to go, lackey!)  The supervisor was calling to find out what exactly the situation was to see what he could do about it.

"Well," the scribe began.  Then he paused.  His instinct was to punish the supervisor by making him sit through a point by point verbal recreation of the entire seven week saga, complete with reenactments of each of the times he had pointed out to the Link of Sudden that no one had called him.  Then, he decided against it.  Why hurt the guy who claimed to be trying to help?   Instead, the scribe said the paraphrased equivalent of "We bought this house, it used to have Link of Sudden cable, it can't get internet cause it's too far from the tie in, my neighbors 70 feet down the hill have a box for it in their yard, it only has two connections in it and both are full, the surveyor who came out said we might be able to tie into it but the equipment needs to be upgraded, I've been trying to get someone to call me weeks to find out if it can be."

The supervisor then said a very VERY telling sentence.  "Now, this is for 120 Arsenic Blvd in BORDERLAND, right?"

There was a pause as the scribe realized that despite the FACT that he'd explained, reexplained and REreexplained (which apparently you have to do because these people are more than a little RE-RE), each time he had called the LOS, over the course of seven weeks, the FACT that they had relocated from Borderland to Tri-Metro and that the house they had been trying to get service for was, in point of FACT, the one in Tri-Metro, the LOS still hadn't grasped that FACT and were trying to get him internet service for THE ONE HOUSE OUT OF THE TWO THAT ALREADY HAD EFFING SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!

"No.  No it is not," the scribe said.  "No, this is for 342 Snazzy View Drive in Tri-Metro."

"Tri-Metro?"

"Yes.  Tri-Metro."

"Huh.  Well I work for the Borderland office. It got escalated to us," the guy said.  "Tell ya what.  I'm gonna forward this on to Tri-Metro's office.  The guy there is named Leon.  He will definitely call you back.  Are you going to be around at this number for the next little bit?"

"Sure," the scribe said.

"Cause he'll definitely call you back."

"That would be great," the scribe said.

That, of course, was over 14 hours ago.  Can you guess how many times the scribe's cell number has rung since?  He'll give you a hint.  It's less than one.

Once Upon a Time (Part 4.9)

This morning, at the crack of 8 a.m., the scribe received a second automated call from Link of Sudden telling him an appointment would likely occur today between 8:15 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. and would take 20 minutes. This did not seem like enough time to bury and install a cable from the box down the hill, so the scribe took it to mean someone was coming out to deliver bad news that he could not have access to the web of the whole wide world. They would deliver that news in the first minute, allowing the scribe 19 minutes to scream at them in his golden voice.

At 12:30 p.m., with no sign of the Link of Sudden, the scribe phoned them up. The phone lackey did not immediately know what the appointment was for, so she had the scribe tell her the whole sad tale and of the many promised and reneged upon phone calls while she looked through the extensive notes in the file. The scribe couldn’t even work up any anger about it all, but just answered her questions with resignation.

The phone lackey eventually discovered that the calls were for the disconnection of services to his former castle in Borderland and not an appointment for Tri-Metro at all. She asked again why he was disconnecting his service if he only wanted to transfer it, which nearly set the scribe into a hair-pulling fit. He then pointed out that he had been trying to do exactly that for six weeks, but had now been told that once the matter was in the hands of the construction department only written communication would occur, at some indefinite point in the no doubt distant future. The phone lackey said this was odd, because she’d never heard of that rule and the account had no notes to that effect. The only thing it said was “customer is disconnecting service because survey is taking too long” which was not at all accurate of the situation. The survey has ALREADY occurred; it’s the results of the cost/benefit analysis and potential Plan B cable connection to the cable hub in his neighbor’s yard that is taking too long.

The phone rep was sympathetic to the cause, however, and said she would put in another escalation form, this time going to a supervisor and not the department the previous reps had routed such escalation forms to. She said that it was company protocol to tell me that someone would call me within two days, but she didn’t want to be a liar so she would just tell the scribe that that’s what she was supposed to say. The scribe had a good and hearty laugh at this and congratulated her on a job well done.

And since she was so helpful and honest, he asked her if, perhaps, disconnecting his service entirely was the wisest move. After all, if he was no longer a customer, would he even appear on the radar of the Link of Sudden in terms of incentive to even attempt to answer his questions or, dare he even dream, hook him up with service? The phone lackey said that she completely understood why he would want to disconnect, but if it were here she would give the disconnect a couple more days in order to give the form she had just sent up the pipe at least a chance to work. That said, the scribe asked to reschedule the disconnect for the following week.

Once Upon a Time (Part 4.5)

And then, not even two hours after he posted the previous part regarding the infuriating nature of the Link of Sudden, its lackeys and dick-filled bag-eating nature, who should phone the scribe at his castle but the Link of Sudden itself. Actually, it was an automated message alerting the scribe to an impending and heretofore unexpected service appointment at his castle, scheduled, it said, for tomorrow morning between 8 and noon.

Curious timing, to be sure. But the scribe suspects this may just be coincidence, as the link of sudden does not know him by his scribe name on this blog. Or maybe they just did the "cranky guy in West Virginia who keeps calling and pointing out how we don't call him back and whose complaint seems remarkably similar to this blogger's" math.

Nahh. I can't be the only one.

Until tomorrow, then...

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 4)

The following day, with NO EFFING CALLS RECEIVED FROM ANYONE, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden back and nicely asked to speak to the specific supervisor who had promised to call the day before. The underling said she was not in the office. Furthermore, the underling said that the reason the supervisor had not called was because the local tech supervisor had promised to phone the scribe to explain exactly why he couldn’t have the web of the whole wide world in his castle. The scribe asked to speak to a different supervisor, because mounting evidence suggested that he would never receive any such phone call. The underling told him none were available. The scribe told the underling that he felt as though he were being given the runaround, but would wait to hear what the technical supervisor had to say in his much anticipated phone call.

The scribe got dressed and prepared himself for a morning of using the web of the whole wide world at the place where they hide the books. But before he could even leave the house, he saw through the castle’s kitchen window a large Link of Sudden truck parked in his driveway. He went out and this was when he met the technical supervisor who had promised to phone. The man was very nice and gently broke the news that while all of the scribe’s neighbors seemed to have internet service, the scribe’s castle could not. At least, not without a great deal of work and expense on the part of the Link of Sudden. The most direct route would be to install a series of cable poles and rewire the whole valley from their line at the nearest major road. That would be woefully expensive, though the Link of Sudden might eventually undertake it should they feel like they would get enough customers along the route of the lines. The other option would be to somehow tie in to the connection shared by the scribe’s two nearest neighbors. Currently, that receptacle only had two connectors in it which were used by his two neighbors. It would be expensive to upgrade that box as well as to bury cable up the hill to connect to the scribe’s castle, plus there was the hassle of asking the neighbors if this was okay with them. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope on it. In fact, he noted, the scribe should probably look into other internet options because there was no guarantee the cost/benefit analysis for either of the aforementioned options would come out in his favor. But, the man said, he would turn in his survey findings to his boss, his boss would run the c/b/a and would call me back, probably some time early the following week.

The scribe, upon hearing this news, decided that the likelihood of him gaining the web of the whole wide world from the Link of Sudden was pretty low. He didn’t feel like the technical supervisor was jerking him around, but was on the level. He would explore other avenues. But he also wasn’t willing to give up entirely on Suddenlink, especially when the supervisor had said there was still a chance.

In order to get some web of the whole wide world into the house, he put in a call to a telephony guild called Frontier. He’d actually called them a week previous and had been told that they could give him service, though the speeds they offered were pale by comparison to those he had received with the Link of Sudden in Borderland. Still, they would at least get him SOME service. The new lackey on Frontier’s line, however, could find no record of his previous call, nor an address for his castle at all. The lackey suggested that if the scribe were to visit one of his neighbors and inquire of them their telephone number, he could locate the castle more readily. So the scribe, quite grumpy, walked down the hill to one of the two nearest castles and knocked on the door of that owned by the neighbor he had not yet met. Its resident, Martha, was a nice older lady who not only gave the scribe her phone number and address, but regaled him with tales of how fast her connection was to the web of the whole wide world. Couldn’t talk enough about its blazing fast speeds and how she had been told her house was the last one on the line from Link of Sudden’s local node and that she was pretty sure she’d been told that the scribe’s house could not have it.

Once the scribe returned to his castle and phoned the next Frontier lackey, they were able to pinpoint his location. Again, he was told he could have 4 megabytes per second in his speed on the web of the whole wide world, a far cry less than the blazing 15 mps promised by the Link of Sudden. However, when the Frontier installation lackey came out two days afterward, he could barely summon half an mps let alone a full megabyte and that was directly at the phone connection to the castle. The phone jacks within the castle would not even register. Turns out, the castle is at the very tip end of a line running from Tri-Metro Town B and is at 2200 feet from that access point, wherein Frontier recommends no more than 1800. Not only could the scribe not have 15,000 mps, not only could he not have 4 mps, he could not even have 1 mps and in order to get the half an mps within his home all other phone jacks in the place would have to be disconnected. The scribe told the Frontier lackey to begone, and to relay to his vile masters exactly how many bags of dicks they were invited to consume—which is to say one bag of dicks. But the lackey did suggest the scribe look into wifi hotspot devices for possible service. He did warn, however, that no one was giving away data for free these days.

Meanwhile, the promised days upon which the scribe was to have received a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis came and went with, of course, nary a call. At the end of that week, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and inquired as to the result. They again said they did not know, but would put in a request that the scribe be given a call. The scribe pointed out, for probably the sixth time, that he had been given repeated promises of a call in the previous weeks and had never actually been received one outside for the calls for directions made by the first two failed installation guys. The Link of Sudden said they were very sorry.

Not willing to give up on what had become a quest, the scribe researched other options via the web of the whole wide world down at the place where they hide the books. Turned out, the Zon of Veri, the Great and Powerful Atat, and Sprint offered wireless hotspot cards that could potentially connect devices in his castle to the web of the whole wide world at speeds approaching high ones. However, they all wanted to charge a fair assload for the privilege, not to mention required a two year contract. And of the services, only Sprint offered unlimited data with their MIFI card. The other two charged around $10 per gigabyte. After speaking to Sprint, the scribe learned that their service, while unlimited in its data plan, did not have a reliable signal in the area of his castle. Plus, they would require the two year contract. They did, however, note that a sister organization, Virgin America, offered a pre-paid mifi card for $50 per month with unlimited data and no contract. Unfortunately, when the scribe researched the validity of this, he learned that it was a massive pile of horse shit. Virgin America DID offer a $50 per month mifi card that claimed it came with unlimited data. However, while the data itself was unlimited, your access to it in high speed form was limited to 2 gigs per month, at which point they cinched off the pipe to dialup speeds for the rest of the month, or until you paid them another $50. And for that Richard Branson may consume two bags of dicks.

The Great and Powerful Atat, which allegedly has some of the best connectivity in the Tri-Metro area, also offered a MIFI card for $50 per month, but they at least gave you 5 gigs for that money and for each additional gig you went beyond the initial 5 you would be charged $10. The scribe reasoned that if he had to pay for such service, at least this was metered and would not be cinched off. He popped by the Atat store and signed up. And it worked! It was pretty much blazing fast and for most things he did not notice much difference between the Link of Sudden and the Atat. However, streaming Flix of Net movies chewed through the data at an alarming rate. It was almost to the point that he was better off paying movie theater prices to watch movies through his PS3. And when it came to using the PS3 network to game online with his god son, forget it. While it would let him play games online, something about the Atat connection would not allow a direct connection with his godson. The scribe decided he would take the rest of the month to try out the service before making any further drastic decisions.

Meanwhile, life went on. Boxes continued to be unpacked and put away and their former castle in Borderland was finally placed on the market. The goodly wife began her commute to Asscrackton for her work while the scribe began to take on freelance scribing jobs once again. He also was able to resume his casting of pod for the "Tales of the Place Where They Hide The Books CAST." It hurt him deeply to know that uploading it was costing him moolah, but at least he wouldn't have to upload it exclusively at the Place Where They Hide the Books.

Over the following two weeks, calls were repeatedly placed to the Link of Sudden asking about the cost/benefit analysis results. They didn’t have them, but promised someone would phone. No one ever did. Finally, nearly three weeks after being promised he would receive a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis, the scribe called the Link of Sudden back to ask again and was told a new request for information would be put in to the local crew. The scribe again stressed that he would believe no promises of phone calls to come until one actually did, because he’d had ten of them already and none had EVER come to pass. Furthermore, he was quite put out at having paid for an entire month of service on an empty house with no one in it. He would like to disconnect his service. The phone lackey begged him not to, saying that he was grandfathered into a good pricing deal and should not allow it to lapse until he heard word officially on his connection. The scribe countered that he was getting a great deal on service he was not and could not receive, so what sense did it make to continue with it? The lackey begged again, and the scribe relented. And to help alleviate the scribe’s concerns about no future callbacks, the phone lackey gave the scribe an escalation number which he was to give to the next Link of Sudden lackey after he didn’t receive a call for a few days more. At least they were planning ahead, the scribe thought.

One week later, and still no calls, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and gave them the number. The new phone lacked explained that his connectivity issue had been escalated to the construction phase. This did not mean, as she pointed out, that he would be receiving any service from them, but that the results of the survey were being considered and the cost/benefit analysis calculated. Furthermore, it was no surprise that he had received no call about any of it because once the issue had been escalated all further communication would be in writing. He should expect a letter at some point in the future.

“But how long do I have to wait?” he asked.

Oh, the letter could come today. Or it could come in weeks, or even months. You couldn’t tell with these things. Yes, once it was in construction’s hands, there was just no way to estimate when they would get around to it.

“But I was promised a call within four days of the survey,” the scribe said. “That was three weeks ago.”

Yes, we know. These things take time.

“But… but all of my neighbors have high speed internet through you. If they would just upgrade the equipment down the hill, I could have it, too. Maybe. I just want someone to call me and tell me whether or not that will even work. I’m willing to pay for burying the cable up the hill if you guys will just upgrade the box to fit another plug!”

Yes, we know. You’ll receive a letter. These things take time.

Every fiber in the scribe's being wanted to tell the lackey the exact number of bags of dicks that he required the link of sudden to consume--which is to say ALL of the bags of dicks. But, instead, the scribe again noted that he was still currently paying for service on an empty house and was unwilling to continue do so while waiting indefinitely for a letter to arrive from them. He had no more faith in their ability to write letters than he did in their ability to make a phone call. In fact, he wanted reimbursed for all of his time the Link of Sudden had wasted in this matter, which had been stretching on a full 40 days previous. He was through listening to lackeys beg him to keep his service. He wanted disconnected. The phone lackey reluctantly agreed, saying that a Link of Sudden rep could come by to pick up their equipment, but would only pick it up from the castle it had been assigned to.

"That will not be possible," the scribe said, noting that he now lived in a completely different town. The lackey suggested he could drop it off at one of their local guilds, but only listed the guilds in Borderland and Asscrackton as possibilities. No, the scribe said, he was only willing to mail it to them.

And that, dear and patient readers, was how the matter was left.

(TO BE CONCLUDED...)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 3)

After recovering from having his own jaw slam into his junk from the shock of having heard there was no job waiting for his wife in the town in which they’d just agreed to purchase a castle, the scribe could barely come up with words to express his shock and anger. Most of the words he was able to summon were variations and expansions upon the word “fuck”. Some of these he was able to keep locked in his brain for a time, but very quickly, as the gravity of the situation began to set in, they began to spew forth in such phrases as, “But we just bought a EFFing castle there!!!” What was not immediately apparent on that day in early February (nor has it become a whole lot more apparent to this day) was just what would cause Tuesday the Middle Manager to give the goodly wife the green light on purchasing a castle when there was no job for her to take at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic. But in that moment, all the scribe could do was share and magnify the anger the goodly wife was feeling. Eventually, she suggested she should hang up and allow him time to calm down because she was at work and could not join him in ranting and screaming “fuck” at the top of her lungs no matter how much she might like to. So this she did.

Gradually, the details emerged of what the true plan had been from the standpoint of the Grand King. According to him, the first he had EVER heard about any move to Tri-Metro by Dr. Goodly Wife was during her phone call to him that morning. Beyond that, she learned that there HAD been an opening in Tri-Metro some months before, but that this position had been filled by another healer who was being moved down from a more northerly Immediate Healing Clinic to fill that void. The king would have been fine with Dr. Goodly Wife transferring to Tri-Metro, but he said no one had told him and so he and his staff filled the position from elsewhere. The king had no idea why Tuesday the Middle Manager would have thought anything otherwise, because Tuesday had been involved in the hiring of the healer to fill the position in Tri-Metro in the first place. (She would later claim she thought the healer was being hired for Asscrackton and that she was largely in the dark on most of those kinds of decisions, which conceivably might be true.) Whether she was high, stupid or just being a big bouncy “C” was not then nor today clear. What was clear, as the goodly wife pointed out to the Grand King, was that she was now in a very unfortunate situation of very nearly being the owner of two castles neither of which were in towns she would be employed in for much longer. While the king did not owe her a job in Tri-Metro, she had operated in good faith on information given to her by his middle managers and had proceeded with plans to move there. Surely there was something he could do to try and make the unfortunate situation less unfortunate.

The Grand King’s suggestion was to offer her an immediate position in Asscrackton. This was not something she wished to hear, for while Asscrackton was closer to Tri-Metro than Borderland, it was still a hefty commute and it was still a job in Asscrackton. No one wanted to work in Asscrackton. It was hellishly busy and full of surly employees, if rumors were to be trusted. But the Grand King said it would be no problem to set her up there, which would be closer to Tri-Metro, and she could have all the extra days at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic that weren’t already spoken for. She could even have a nice raise which would combat the extra fuel expenses in getting there and maybe make the time spent in doing so worth it. And, if a position opened in Tri-Metro, it was hers and she could keep the raise. He would even put it in writing to her specifications. This sounded tolerable and even generous to the goodly wife. She later explained it to the scribe and while he was still fuming and aching in his junk, he did the math on the raise and agreed that it was in fact quite a tempting offer.

It took a few drafts to get the wording of the contract right, but eventually all parties agreed upon a set of terms and the deal was put into place. The goodly wife would start work in Asscrackton in mid-March. And, meanwhile, the closing date on the new castle had also been set for leap year day. That in mind, the scribe set about packing as much of their crap into boxes and hauling loads of it over to a storage facility in Tri-Metro in preparation for getting their old castle ready to be seen by potential buyers and to get as much of it in their new/old town. They even began speaking with the same moving company that had transported their possessions to borderland about hauling quite a bit of it back. The scribe and wife would pack and move their clothes and sundry books and crap, but the furniture and the kitchen could be moved by professionals.

At last leap day came, the papers were signed and the new castle was officially theirs. And to celebrate, and because it was the last day of the month and they didn’t want to pay another month’s storage, the two of them celebrated by hauling their crap from the storage unit to the new castle in the pouring rain.

The new castle was pretty great, albeit with a few things that needed updating in a big way. The pinstripe wallpaper in the guest bathroom, for instance, had to go, as did some of the window treatments that prevented the back door from opening properly and which infuriated the scribe, for if there’s one thing he hates its design at the expense of utility. But beyond those minor issues and some painting, the place was absolutely great. The two set about remedying the perceived flaws over the course of the following days.

In preparation for the move, the scribe had already contacted essential utilities to make certain that he and the goodly wife would be without them for as little time as possible. Not electricity and water, mind you, but the Network of Dish and the Link of Sudden for all their televisual and web of the whole wide world needs. The two companies even scheduled time to come out and do the installation on the same day.

The Network of Dish was the easiest of these installations, and happened in the afternoon. It was the Link of Sudden installation that had problems in the morning. The Link installation guy inspected the castle to find where its cable was located. Some more inspection then commenced as well as telephone device calls to Link of Sudden HQ and walks around the property. Eventually, the installation tech returned to the scribe’s presence and announced that despite the fact that the castle was wired for the Link of Sudden and had had service through them with the previous owners, the castle was now “unserviceable” for anything beyond basic cable. Apparently while the previous owners had used Link of Sudden for their television, they had not had high speed web of the whole wide world and consequently the connection from the castle into their system was over 300 feet away, which would not support web. The next nearest such node was in the yard of the scribe’s nearest neighbor, a mere 60 feet down the hill, but that particular box only contained two connection ports into which his two nearest neighbors were connected. The installation man said he was inexperienced and could not do such an installation, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than he could. He told the scribe that he would soon be called by such a tech to discuss what to do next.

After no such call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden to inquire as to when he could expect it. The underling on the line told the scribe that no call should be expected for the castle had been declared “unserviceable” by the first tech who’d been out.
“No,” the scribe pointed out, “the castle was unserviceable by that guy. He said he was new and that the castle might be serviceable by someone more experienced. He said they would call me.”
The underling said she understood and that she would note this in the account and request that the local dispatcher give me a call, but as far as she could tell the castle truly was unserviceable and the scribe should probably give up. The scribe reiterated to her that he really REALLY wanted this connection to happen. The purchase of the castle was made partially BECAUSE it had the Link of Sudden. He was willing to pay fees if it meant someone who knew what they were doing could come out and have a look at the place. The underling again said she would note it and that the scribe would be given a call.

After no call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden again to inquire. The new underling also said the castle was unserviceable which led the scribe to explain again the nature of this potentially incorrect claim and the lack of call backs. A little digging on the underling’s part and a note from the local dispatcher was discovered stating that the house actually was serviceable and that an installation could take place at my request. Nice of them to alert the scribe, no? The next available installation date, of course, was a week away and no argument would be brooked otherwise.

Because the scribe has his intelligent personal telephony device that is equipped with the web of the whole wide world and unlimited data, he is able to check his Mail of E. In order to get some of his bigger projects accomplished faster, though, he had to take his lap of top down to his former workplace at the place where they hide the books and use their wireless connection to the web of the whole wide world. He was therefore also able to hang out with his former coworkers and shoot the shit. The only former Rogue Patron he was able to see, though, was Mr. W. Perfect.

A week later, the next installation tech arrived, took one look at the wiring from road level and again announced it was unserviceable. The scribe was hardly surprised and said as much to the installer. The installer said that from what he could see there was no way to make the castle compliant with the needs of the Link of Sudden with its current setup. What was needed was to have the Link of Sudden send out a surveyor to assess the situation and make recommendations for how best to proceed. Perhaps, he supposed, the necessary cables could be connected to the power and phone pole directly behind the new castle, since they couldn’t be run from the street far beyond.

“Could you please tell me HOW I can convince them to do this?” the scribe asked. He explained that he had been phoning and phoning and begging for this very thing to happen but all anyone would say is that the house was unserviceable. Clearly, since every neighbor in spitting distance had the service, it was technologically possible to install. The intaller said it would be best to speak to someone in the Link of Sudden’s engineering department, preferably in Texas, as they could actually make things happen there. He said it wasn’t wise to call and yell as that tended to shut the underlings down and make them less cooperative.

So after the installer left, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and nicely asked them to speak to the engineering department, preferably in Texas. The underling on the phone did not seem to want to comply and began asking the scribe questions, which raised his blood pressure. And, after the scribe had described the issue, again and nicely, the underling said that her screen noted that the castle was unserviceable, but she could “put in a form” for the local tech supervisor to give him a call. The call could take up to 48 hours to be made, however. The scribe told her that this was unacceptable. He had been promised calls twice previously, but none had ever come. All communication with the company had been made due to his efforts alone. He did not trust that any promise of another call would be any more fruitful, so he asked to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor came on the line, the scribe explained the whole situation again and mentioned the lack of calls and the seeming confusion on the part of their installers as to what could or needed to be done to make things work. The supervisor apologized that the scribe had not been called and assured him that she would personally put in a call to the local tech supervisor and make certain that he called. And if he couldn’t call then she, the phone supervisor, would call herself and explain the situation. The scribe, she said, could expect a call from someone before 5 p.m.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)