Embarq

I've spent much of my afternoon on the phone with Embarq.

On May 14, the telephone man came to hook up a phone at our new location. Now, I had told various Sprint employees that we had to have a line run, that our new home is in a location where there's never been a house or a phone. I could tell it wasn't computing with them, but whatever.

The telephone man was supposed to arrive between ten A.M. and noon that day. He finally showed up around 4 P.M., after I made many calls to Sprint. See, they had already turned off DSL and telephone service at the old house. When I called to see why I had no service, they said, "Oh, that's been switched to the new location."

Yeah, the new location with no telephone lines at all. How's that gonna work?

The telephone man ran 500 feet of wire on the ground from the old house, across our back yard behind the shop to the trailer, and had the phone company switch my service back to the old house.

He explained that they'd have to run lines under the road and up here (duh) and he filled out a work order for May 25. When nobody showed up by May 27, I called, but that call was mysteriously disconnected about the time I started raising my voice. Hmmmm.

So today, over two weeks after the 500 feet of line was placed across our yard (very unhandy when Cliff's mowing the yard) I called again. This time even the customer service person seemed shocked at how long it's been, and said they'd have the contractor who does excavation for buried lines call me. Which he did.

He says it's the rain preventing him. Which seems strange, since you could have tilled in the garden most days this week. Yes, we've had some rain, but not that much. Oh, and he just received my work order one week ago. He does live in Springfield, Missouri, about 165 miles from here; so he covers a wide area. Some nearby towns got seven inches of rain a couple of nights ago, while we only got 4/10 of an inch. The guy says he hasn't been able to work all week and is going to work Father's Day weekend; by the time I hung up, I was feeling sorry for him. At least I do have a telephone and Internet, so far.

I will say, this puny line has been working for me. The telephone man who strung it across the yard told me my DSL probably wouldn't work like this, but so far it hasn't failed me (knock wood).

Anyhow, the contractor said he'd do his best to get the line in next week.

I've fought this issue for so long, it's getting to the point that I don't much care. As long as my Internet works, that is.