Wednesday, January 25, 2012

In the tradition of one of my favorite bloggers

The following phone exchange just took place. They said it would be recorded and used for training purposes. I HOPE so!

He: This is Verizon and

Me: Are you calling to sell me something or is there a problem with my service

He: Oh, no problem. Verizon is in the area, and we just see you are long term customer and thought we might lower your rates with some of our…

Me: I pay fifteen bucks a month. Are you going to lower that?

He: Oh, no sir. Sorry about that.

Me: Are you involved with FIOS at all?

He: yes

Me: I’ve had opposite opinions from verizon as to whether it is available to me, here now.

He: What is your phone number?

Me: Um…you called ME, remember?

He: stutters…mentions something about H***

Me: I don’t live in H****

He: More mumbling, F****. Yes, phone and internet available

Me: If I go away…..

He: Reconnect charge of $29.95

Me: Sounds like a deal breaker to me

He: We have vacation package where you pay $15 a month

Me: For service you are not using?

He: Mumbles

Me: BTW, saying you are ‘in the area’ sounds a lot like the gypsy home improvement scammers. You might want to try for a better opening line.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

I Wanna Go Back To Dixie

I Wanna Go Back to Dixie

That was the title of an irreverent song (as were they all) penned by one of my heroes, Tom Lehrer in the late 1950’s. It is not simply the choice between temps in the low seventies versus wind chills close to zero, though that IS an additional incentive.

But, truly, now I have one home and two houses, and it makes me unspeakably sad to see the look in four beautiful eyes on Skype.

And darnit, I miss my good lawnmower too! Just inside trying to regain feeling in fingers that were wearing insulated gloves while I re-set the gutter drains and picked up forearm sized branches from the 16 Oak trees which have little purpose in life, seemingly, other than to dump garbage on the ground twelve months out of every year.

Guys- I’ll be back as quick as I can.




Trust me on that!!!

Friday, January 13, 2012

For Ben B mostly

When is enough enough?

For years I have defended the customer service of Direct TV, because it has always been good or better.

Today, returning to my lair in the cold north, I found no service, so I called their eight hundred number.

Shortly after nine AM. I got a recording basically with three messages interspersed with mellow piano music.

I have gotten pretty familiar with those three messages, having now heard each of them well over ONE HUNDRED times.

It is coming up on two PM. When it has been five hours, I will disconnect and see if I win a prize for the longest hold they ever got. Even Dell at its worst was better.

I have actually managed to do quite a few things while using portable phone to listen. One was to call on a letter I got about FIOS, using a cell phone to call while listening to the recording on my home phone.

FIOS has the good grace to answer with a recording saying they are very busy, call later. A bit more honest, n'est-ce pas?

Ben, when (if) I DO reach them, I will definitely take a page from your playbook and suggest that they owe me a free month for my five hours.

My fallback position is pretty strong actually...they can lose a good customer of many years.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

So Dear to My Heart

Once Upon A Time, Walt Disney, way back when he was alive, made movies which were quite beloved by children of that era, but which apparently do not get much play these days.

One such was about a little black goat, and starred the same boy star who had been in Treasure Island, Bobby Driscoll, who was perhaps about my own age. I suspect that I may have been a little jealous of his fame and fortune, and was somewhat brought up short some time later on, when I read that he died alone and undiscovered for days in a tenement in a ghetto in NYC somewhere.

Anyhow, Blogger Girl and I went for a local bike ride and found this little fellow bleating up alongside the fence in a herd of Longhorn cattle, lots of other goats, and an emu. It reminded me of that movie, and a simpler, gentler time that I suspect many of us older people miss.