If you’re in Chicagoland or anywhere else that is serviced by the moronic denziens of Ameritech, and things are fucked up with getting your line installed, here’s a tip: Just tell them you’re having trouble with the line.
A bit of an explanation: I’m in a 3 bedroom apartment with 4 people. I’m in one room, Adam is across the hall from me in the 2nd room, and Katy and her boyfriend Dave share the 3rd (much larger) bedroom.
Each room has its own landline, I think mostly for people who dialed up a lot before the advent of Cable Internet. We keep the seperate landline system so as to avoid nasty fights over long distance bills and over phone use in general, and so we can save the Celebrity Deathmatch-style smackdowns for fights over the need to do the dishes.
My landline went out yesterday, and Katy and Dave’s (which had been accidentally routed into Adam’s room) started acting up at the same time, and since I thought we had the same problem, the service tech wrote down the complaint as a “trouble on the line,” not just that they’re fuckheads.
The Ameritech people had told Katy and Dave they couldn’t fix the botched routing until late next week, and they were kind of pissed about that, but more so about not being able to access their phone.
So the guy comes out, and after a bit of confusion, we explain that there are two different lines with two different problems, since we didn’t realize the lines didn’t have the same problem (mine was just dead, theirs had a dial tone and was ringing twice, then conking out).
So the guy fixes not only my problem (which I think took about six seconds, since this is at least the third time this has happened), he fixes Katy and Dave’s problem and moves the line into their room.
Thank god for service techs that are more competent than customer service people.