Tales from Tech Support.

So I got on this call that kept me on the phone for quite some time… the customer had no connection whatsoever, and I was getting line test results indicating no signal sync. I ran through all these steps with the customer that should have resolved things, but nothing was working, and things didn’t add up; the modem lights status didn’t match the line tests I was getting.

Anyway, I ask the customer to attempt to sync up the modem in a different phone jack, which results in the call being disconnected. I call the customer back at the alternate number, a cell phone, and she asks me to call the home line. So I call the line that I have in the account, the one that the service is provisioned for, and I get some random business!

So it turns out that a week ago or so, the phone service just up and gave her number away; one day she woke up and had no dial tone, so she called herself and someone else answered. Literally – gave her number away. And though she’d had a tech out to work on the lines, it was obvious that the service hadn’t been transferred over, and doubly obvious why I wasn’t getting a modem response, and the customer wasn’t getting connectivity.

“Well, Ms. Customer, I think I may know what the trouble is now…”