The telephone Saga

I have been trying to get a telephone put in to the farm house and there has been one miss communication after another or no communication. Seems there are a few people at the telephone company without communication with each other. They also don't know much about telephones in rural areas. Twice I was told I could not have a phone because I didn't have electricity!

Needless to say this mis-communication between the various offices and sub-units and contractors caused me a lot of frustration. If I wanted to talk to the telephone company I had to get in my truck and drive up the road about four miles till I got a clear signal and then call on my cell phone and hope that the call didn't get dropped by the cell phone company....arrrgh

Many appointments were made to come to the farm and check the line and finnish the job and no one showed up. Some of the appointments were down right lies. Grrrrr.

Lo and behold I came home from town one evening and there were trucks working on the the telephone line to the house. They put in four poles and a wire said they would be back with a splicer and left. The following day they came picked up their equipment and left. No line to the house just a tall hitching post right next to the barn.

Well, the following week I was back on the cell phone to Altell and got the run around almost daily. this went on for two weeks and then all of a sudden out of the clear blue this man shows up with an old telephone truck and says he is going to get the phone hooked up but needs to find the signal and he has to start about five miles away. He left and I didn't see him until the following afternoon. He got the signal to the pole at the barn and because he felt sorry for me he rigged a line from the pole to the house.

I hooked up my extension cord for my phone to this line laying on the ground through a temporary box the man attached to the house. The next day two men showed up with a trenching machine and buried the cable; they said the big deal was over grounding the telephone line, but the telephone poles were grounded. The shook their heads and buried line and hooked my extion line to the box on the outside of house; the line leads through an open window. They said they didn't do the inside work that Altell would take care of that.

That was over a week ago; I called yesturday about the completing the work and the customer rep. left me on hold for a while and when she came back she said that the schedualer was trying to reach the tech and that the job would be finnished by five pm. Guess what? The job is not finnished. I had to come in town and do some business so I will be on the phone again tomorrow and around and around we will go again at least for now I don't have to use my cell phone and drive miles up the road to use it.

Sure is a nice hitch'n post though.