So AT&T finally turned on the phone line I ordered last week. Trouble is, there’s no available jacks in this unit (they’re all connected to the old line) so they told me I had to do my own inside wiring. Fair enough, I can just connect the extra set of wires on the existing cable, that’s simple enough. But where to connect them to?
The interface box is right outside the roommate’s bedroom window. Inside it are the connectins for all the units in this condo building, and empty terminals for another 20. None of them, of course, are labelled. I have no idea which one is the existing line (to look for the second pair), nor which terminal is the new line.
So I called the phone company.
I knew it was going to be difficult, but I didn’t think even they’d be so stupid as to make it impossible.
First I have to talk to the robo-receptionist, which is a worthless sack of shit. I started out by asking to “check order status,” to see if the line was actually turned on or not. As it turns out, it was. So I asked to “discuss order”, which finally put me in touch with a human being. I explained what I needed, and they transferred me to someone in the repair department.
The repair guy gave me the binding post numbers for both lines. In theory this is the number of the terminal pair that each line is connected to.
Well the numbers he gave me were wrong.
The existing line is supposedly on binding post #1. Well, post #1 is clearly labelled, and there’s nothing connected to it. Just a couple of inch-long cut-off wires. Obviously the existing line isn’t connected there, because it’s still working. The new line is supposed to be on post #14, which it may well be, but I can’t check because without the second pair from the existing line I don’t have anything to connect to it.
So I called back. I spent 5 minutes standing in front of the interface box, fucking with the phone tree, and got nothing but dead ends. So I tried the same sequence I went through the first time I called. The human I talked to didn’t know anything about binding posts, but offered to transfer me to repair. Instead she transferred me to the repair phone-tree, which I already discovered to be a series of dead ends.
So I called back one more time. This time I told the robo-tree, explicitly, in these exact words, “I need a binding post number.” I expected it to just go “huh?” but it actually recognized it and offered to transfer me to repair. I have to at least give them credit for that, they really did think of everything when it came to vocabulary.
Well, faced with the repair phone-tree, I tried the only other option that made any sense that I hadn’t tried before, which was to get information on how to “use” my AT&T products. This led me to another human being, who took my information, and offered to transfer me to someone in repair.
So they transferred me back to the start of the phone tree.
I haven’t gotten up the nerve to try again just yet.
