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Telephone Problems
There are many things that can go wrong with your telephone. These problems can be very costly in time, money, lost contacts, and missed opportunities. Creating telephone problems is an effective way of causing Bad Fortune for somebody.These are some of the problems that I have experienced with my telephone service. Some of the problems are explained more in their own sections.
Details of some of these events are in these sections:
- For years, seemingly at random, static would appear on my telephone line, making conversations difficult.
- For years, seemingly at random, I would hear on my telephone line a sound similar to the sound one normally hears after dialing somebody but before that somebody answers.
- On July 3 2000 my telephone line failed completely. When I reported the problem, it resulted in the strange Telephone Technician Ralph's First Visit.
- Only 3 months later, on 2000 Oct 05, my telephone line failed again. I reported the problem and it resulted in the strange and coincidental Telephone Technician Ralph's Second Visit. It was the same person as last time. But while fixing my regular telephone line, the line that I used for voice conversations, he disconnected my second telephone line that I used for DSL Internet service.
- I have a Duophone headset telephone that allows me to have telephone conversations and keep my hands free to operate my computer or do other things. On the Duophone telephone:
- The TALK/HANG-UP button often fails. I need to press it a second or third time.
- The volume control, which is a slider, is often virtually impossible to move. Sometimes when moves, it does not change the volume. Once I had the control turned all the way down and the sound coming out of the headset was painfully loud.
- I had a Sony cordless telephone. It drained batteries quickly though I rarely used it. It often failed to link to the base station. One day it failed completely.
- On 2005 Jan 06 my telephone line failed, beginning a 7 Day Telephone Outage! This time the line was carrying both voice service and DSL Internet service, so I lost both.
- I've had many problems with my cell phones also. Maybe some day I'll document them.
7 Day Telephone Outage
On 2005 Jan 05 somebody cut some telephone cables in my town. Because of this, I lost my telephone and Internet service.I was without service for 7 days. Most people had their service back within a day.
Here is a chronology of events in this Telephone Problem.
- 2005/01/05 Wednesday.
Early in the morning, the telephones of two of my neighbors went dead. But my telephone was okay, and they used it to call the telephone company, Verizon, to report their problems.
That night, my neighbors got their service back. But at approximately the same time my telephone line stopped working. I concluded that the phone company probably broke my line when they fixed my neighbors' lines.
- 2005/01/06 Thursday morning. I used my neighbor's telephone to report the problem with my telephone line. The telephone company (Verizon) scheduled a technician visit for Saturday Jan 8.
- 2005/01/07 Friday evening. Fox 25 TV reported that hundreds of residents of my town, Chelmsford Massachusetts, were getting back their phone service after vandals cut telephone lines in several locations.
- 2005/01/08 Saturday.
I stayed at home all day Saturday waiting for the Verizon technician. He never came.
I used my cell phone to call Verizon and they said that my problem was because of a cable outage and that they were working on it. Estimated repair time was 9:30 PM Sunday.
Local TV 7 news reported that repairs were continuing on cables cut by "very sophisticated vandals" in Chelmsford. 75 customers had no service, but at one point, 80% of the town had been without service.
- 2005/01/09 Sunday evening. My line was not fixed, so I called Verizon again. The new estimated repair time was Monday at 5 PM.
- 2005/01/10 Monday 5:30 PM. My line was not fixed. I called and the new estimated repair time was 9 PM. It was not fixed by that time, so I called again. This time there was no estimated repair time. They suggested that I call in the morning and ask to speak to the day foreman.
- 2005/01/11 Tuesday.
In the morning I tried calling Verizon and asking for the day foreman, but the foreman's line was busy. The woman said that she would ask the foreman to call me back.
I waited a while, but nobody called me back. So I tried calling again and reached an "indoor foreman" who told me that a technician was assigned to work on my problem today.
That afternoon a technician arrived. After doing some tests he said that the problem was out on the pole and needed a bucket truck to be fixed, which was something that I had been telling his company for days. He said that he would call it in and it should be fixed Wednesday.
- 2005/01/12 Wednesday.
The line was not fixed.
Before I could call Verizon, Verizon called me, and a woman said that they did not fix my line but that is should be fixed by 4:30 PM tomorrow, Thursday. I told her that I was thinking about going to the Lowell Sun newspaper with the story. She said that maybe they could send somebody in the morning.
Later that evening I did call the Lowell Sun and told them what had been happening to me.
That night TV 4 reported that more cables have been cut, this time in Westford, and Verizon was offering a $50000 reward for information leading to the vandals.
- 2005/01/13 Thursday.
8:50 AM. A telephone technician arrived. I helped him get to the building's network interface.
He was back to me in a half an hour and my phone line was fixed. He said that he had not tried to fix the cable. Instead he moved my telephone line to an unused wire pair.
I asked him why the repair of my line took so much time. He said that when they repair multiple big cable breaks, they don't test the lines. They splice or replace the cable, and go onto the next one. Unfortunately a few errors are made, and bigger customers get priority in repairs. Naturally, my line was one of the ones on which they made an error.
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