OFF THE HOOK

We had a slight problem with our landline the other day. Now I know, (because, despite everything, I am still just about enough in tune with the zeitgeist about such things) that there will be one or two of you already chortling at the notion of us still having a “landline” at all, but we still have one and still find it useful, so that’s the status quo whether you like it or not.

The problem was related to me by my mother who rang me at work to tell me that the phone would ring once and cut off without even going to voicemail and that she’d found this out by trying to leave one of her many messages.

At our end, the phone that only makes a very slight “ting” every so often which I’d taken to be a “line test” of some sort, or perhaps someone deciding that they’d mis-dialled and, because it generally leaves us in a bit of peace, I do have to admit that I kind of like it like that.

Anyway, because we actually rarely receive any calls on it, and the outgoing calls had been fine, we hadn’t actually noticed a problem until we were told about it, such is the wild and crazy madness that is our social life.

However, there are practical concerns and they may very well be reasons that we have to be contacted in an emergency, and, later on, when I went to track down my local friendly builder who’d promised to call me back, I did discover that he had been trying to get hold of us but hadn’t been able to get through, so I promised to report the fault and off I went to dig out a phone bill to find some kind of engineering problem contact number.

Now, I’m old enough and dumb enough to remember a time when I could dial three digits and speak to a person and tell them what the fault was and the wheels would be put in motion and the fault would be corrected and all would be right with the world.

This is not the world in which we now live.

Both of the suggested numbers on the bill, despite offering that I could “chat to us instantly” connected me to an automated voice service which, after making various selections of the “for such and such, pick two” variety connected me to another automated voice service which insisted that I should allow them to run a line check and that I should disconnect the phone so that they could do so and then, after the test, they would call me back with an update.

Do you see the flaw in this procedure yet, boys and girls…?

Yes, that’s right. If I can’t receive incoming calls, how are they going to call me back?

What I wanted to do was explain to a person about what was happening and have them realise what kind of fault (or phenomenon) was actually happening in my own “real-world” situation. My broadband connection was fine (well, no worse than is usual), my outgoing calls were fine, but something peculiar was happening with my incoming calls and message service, and there wasn’t really an option for that…

As sure as eggs is eggs, a few minutes later (but not really soon enough as I had to dash out again shortly afterwards to deal with a prior commitment), the phone went “ting” and cut itself off. Because I was sitting next to it, however, I was able, by picking up the receiver, to re-establish the connection and hear the automated message telling me to ring 151 for a “full report…”

The “full report” was, of course, another automated message, but at least this message did give me the fabled “Option #2” which was to be connected to an engineer.

Huzzah!!!

It rang twice and they put the phone down on me.

I kid you not.

They… PUT… the… PHONE… DOWN… ON… ME!!!!

Now mildly furious, I started the whole procedure over again mostly in order to shout at the automated voice service that I actually wanted to speak to a real person and to tell it what a stupid machine it was. Naturally, it then informed me that my line was busy and I should try again later before cutting off, but the rant made me feel better, mostly because I knew that it couldn’t be “recorded for litigation training purposes…”

In the end I sent them an email.

“It’s good to talk...”

(Naturally, after I wrote this, a rather pleasant engineer rang me the next day to tell me that it sounded like an equipment fault and that I should unplug everything to narrow down which item had gone wrong, which I did after I got home. It turns out that everything works fine if I plug it directly into the wall, but if I use any of the three ADSL filters, then the phenomenon persists. New ones are now on the way, courtesy of a lovely young fellow on the sub-continent, although I’m still rather intrigued as to what kind of power surge in the telephone network might have made all three filters fail at once...? Not that I’m going to try ringing them again and finding out... That’s far too much like hard work.)