Ah, modern technology

[legalmoose]

So, I finally decided what to do about the phone situation.

I ordered a Treo from Verizon (variety of reasons, biggest one being that my parents, lioncub, K, Lawrence, my brother and his wife, etc. are all on Verizon). Ordered it yesterday morning, with the expected delivery 2-3 days after ordering.

Fed-Ex, however, is far, far too fast & efficient and delivered it today.

So I got it all hooked up, got all my needed programs synched over, and everything worked like a charm. Followed the directions, and set the thing up through Verizon's automated setup, then tried to make a call.

Oops.

Got an automated message from Verizon telling me to put in a credit or calling card number and quoting some outrageous amount per minute to call folks. So I did the automated set up again. The same thing happened when I tried to call out.

So I looked up the freebie in-house *611 number, called that, and got a Cingular help operator. This wouldn't be remarkable except that I was porting my number over from T-Mobile, not Cingular.

So I whipped out the land line and called Verizon. Long story short, Fed-Ex was too quick; the two companies had it set in the system that I wouldn't port until tomorrow at the earliest, so I'm sorta phoneless until tomorrow when everything should work and switch over just fine.

In the meantime, I can make outgoing calls on my old phone, but anyone trying to call me will get an automated "this person is not available" message, with no way to leave a voicemail. :-) I think I can still send SMS, but don't know if I can receive them. This should all be resolved tomorrow and be merely a temporary glitch, but in the meantime if you really need to reach me, email or call the home number.

Comments

[dipdewdog.livejournal.com]

Faaaaaaaaaancy.

[expatriate.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what you get for using AT&T Wireless / Cingular.

*has nothing nice to say about the company*

[legalmoose]

I never had problems with AT&T when I used them. I only switched over to T-Mobile last year because I could get more service and a free phone for less money a month than I was paying AT&T.

[expatriate.livejournal.com]

That's because you didn't live in Portland, dear.

[expatriate.livejournal.com]

I blame the Lower 48.

Seriously - when I was in Anchorage, everybody crowed about the wonderful service from AT&T Wireless - until the Alaska market was traded to CellularONE (who should be avoided like Pentecostals).

Flash to when I moved to Portland. AT&T would just drop my calls at random, taking into account my location, the price of pork barrels, the phase of the moon, the tide level in Bandar Abbas... and if I called them, Customer Care would either blame it on me, my phone, or location (irregardless that this would happen over the entire Metro area). If I managed to finagle a credit out of them, they would say they were doing it "just that one time." To which I would think, "No, you'll do it every time if you're going to keep dropping my damn calls."

The only difference I noticed after the buyout was that the Customer Care representatives increasingly did not speak English as a first language.

[legalmoose]

And a Blackberry can't synch with my Mac, so feh on them. ;-)

[ironmanjt.livejournal.com]

How is the Treo synch? Believe it or not, Tiger actually synchs WORSE with my P910 than did the previous OS :(

[expatriate.livejournal.com]

You're IN (http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/innetwork.jsp)? I'm IN (http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/innetwork.jsp)!

zOMG