All a blur

Shortly after my last post on Friday, everything went haywire. Because my landline phone was out, I called Time Warner to let them know and give them my cell, but apparently the technician showed, stood on my stoop and called my other phone - and never rang the doorbell. He turned around and left, got into his van, and canceled my service. I only discovered any of this about twenty minutes later when I found that my email account had been deleted. I spent the next 3 hours on the phone with them, being passed from one person to another, most of the time having to explain my story again only to be told that I had the wrong person (as if I'd chosen the person I was passed off to.) I spent countless minutes on hold, and once when it seemed I'd found someone to help me, my cell service went out and I lost contact. Upshot: they couldn't send the technician back, or schedule another call for another 3-4 days, event though it was their own stupidity (ring the doorbell!) that screwed it up. They couldn't get my email account back, and all the emails sent to me in the interim would be bounced back to the senders. I yelled, cried, laughed, screamed. At one point, on hold for about 15 minutes, all the weight of the last days (weeks? months?) of stress hit me and I started bawling hysterically. I was just catching my breath when a woman picked up. She turned out to be one that wanted to help me, and did something to manually reinstate my service, although it wouldn't take affect until later this weekend. She has called me back twice, and I have her name and number so I am more sane. Seriously, if one person early on had just said, we're so sorry, we screwed up, here's what we'll do for you, it would have been fine. I can live without TV and internet (I can steal wireless from an unsecured network elsewhere in the building, and I somehow have basic cable still) and I'll get over losing my email account. But please treat me like a customer you want to keep.

My other option for internet and TV is the phone company - and until they actually can provide me with basic phone service, I'm not about to give them more business, either. They showed up twice during the time I was on hold with TWC, and apparently the fix is in the works, but required more than the technician could do alone. He also called me back to reassure me it would happen, but I still have no phone service.

Things were going so well with the move, and I'm still really happy here. I have gotten a decent amount of unpacking done, and feel like I can move slowly through what remains. I am not ready to return to work tomorrow, though, but I suspect it will be a nice distraction to get out of the apartment and away from the non-working phone, tv, and cable modem.