Nonsense

I have had several complaints that I have not posted in quite a while. But I have been busy and not much is interesting. I clean, I put away, I do laundry, I seem to spend a lot of time waiting.  S0 be warned, the rest of this is boring.

The project that has be taking up an enormous amount of time for the past 3 weeks (besides doing the taxes - Jeff got 3 different W2 forms at 3 different times as WI changed the law regarding Health Saving Accounts and I guess Wal-Mart couldn't figure it out) has been my brother Dawin's Charter TV Service. Today,  I have been on and off the phone talking with poor Georgeanne from Frontier Communications since 10am. It is now 2:30 and I am not done.

About 7 or 8 years ago Jeff and I gave my Mom a subscription to cable tv. The bill comes to FDL. When my mom went into the nursing home in 2008, Darwin began to reimburses us for the cost. The bill still came to FDL.

So several weeks ago Charter offered the account in Walworth a "Bundle" price. If Darwin switched his phone to Charter, the TV portion would be cheaper than he now paid and the phone would be substantially less. He would save almost $40 a month and get more channels and free long distance. It was great in that there wasn't even a contract to sign.  We ran into slight HIPPA Law problems (between Jeff and I) but after about 6 phone calls we signed him up and also switched the billing over to Darwin's name and address. (Well we thought we had)

So the guy came on April 6 and hooked it all up. The problems started right away;

>the new remote is hard to understand-Darwin has to use 3 different remotes to use the VCR. Darwin doesn't want a cable box.
>when Darwin calls someone - it says Jeffrey Worm is calling 
>THE BIGGEST problem---- the extension line to the barn no longer works.
Darwin and Harold both have cell phones but want a land line in the barn. 

When my Dad purchased the farm in 1956, the phone company put two extension phones in the barn. They have the same phone number as the house and ring when the house rings. The barn is about 1/2 mile from our house.

It took 3 or 4 phone calls to Charter to schedule a repairman to come look at the problem. According to their system analysis, the phone line is working just great. To make matters even worse, the house and barn have different addresses.

So Charter came again this morning and after 45 minutes of consulting with the experts, the worker said there is no way to hook up the barn phones. ( Do you think it is possible that there is actually a physical wire going from the house 1/2 mile away to the barn? It appears so!)

So I have spent the day trying to get the phone service back to the original Frontier Company. 


After numerous phone calls to Charter and Frontier phone company I can tell you with certainty-

>The account is in Jeff's name- well kind of, parts of it are
>The account is under Darleen's Social Security Number
>The account is under our old phone number of 921-1128 which fortunately Darleen remembered. I tried to have it changed to current number but for some reason I could not. The real number was "noted".
>Charter broke the law by switching Darwin's phone number from Frontier to Charter because the Walworth Account is under Donald Rambow's name ( I explained that my father Donald died in February of 2000 and the women from Frontier asked me if she could talk to him! Shows how well they listen)
> We can not return the account to Frontier because my Dad can't authorize the request. 

So right now I have time to write this as I am waiting for Georgeanne from Frontier to phone back. Sadly I didn't know my Dad's Social Security number off the top of my head so I had Rachel call and Harold didn't know it either. So my first or 15th mistake was to get operator Georgeanne's phone number, and assuming I could call her back easily, I hung up. Her line is always busy, I should have never hung up.

 Once I have my Dad's SS# I can be a 3rd party something and then we can do a " Fly Back" and send a "Port Order" to Charter. ( I am not sure but I think a Port Order might involve an after dinner drink! ) The sad thing is that once we switch back the account to Frontier, Frontier is not sure they can restore service to the barn, because "they no longer do hook ups like that".  It has ONLY been working non-stop since 1956 and I tried to switch it to Charter's modern technology.  

The really bad thing is I will never hear the end of this from my brothers.

OHHHH, Georgeanne is calling......

OK, I am a 3rd party something and was authorized to change the account back from Charter to Frontier. It was almost done, Georgeanne filled in all the paperwork for a "port order" and a "fly back". I was transferred to someone who didn't speak English very well and all I had to do was answer "yes" a bunch of times when she said, "Do you want the phone number 626-275-2241 transferred to Frontier?", Sadly, that is not the phone number. Somewhere along the line, the numbers got mixed up.

So now I am waiting for Georgeanne to call back again. It is now 4:56. I think Georgeanne probably is going home now after a long days work.

UPDATE: I finally finished with Georgeanne on Friday. For some odd reason Darwin had a local service by Fronteir and long distance with DCC. So I started in with DCC on Friday morning. That only took one phone call and about 10 minutes. Hopefully the barn phone will be working again April 30.