I'm happy to report that my home phone is back in working order. I confirmed with my landlord on Thursday that my new downstairs neighbor had RCN install a new cable line to her place. On Wednesday, when I lost phone service, the RCN technician drilled a new hole into the side of the house and had to run cable through the basement drilling several more holes. My landlord was not very happy with this very invasive process.
I followed my landlord's suggestion that I call RCN and demand that they fix the problem they apparently caused. The RCN customer service person very nicely replied that while they were sorry for my inconvenience, they could not repair the problem because they were not my phone provider, unless I was willing to switch to RCN that day. (Not a chance!) I told her I was staying with Verizon and that if they were able to fix the line and show RCN's tech had caused the problem, then I would be forwarding my bill to RCN. She politely told me I that I should call their 800 number again if Verizon was able to do that and billed me.
The Verizon tech showed up at 8:30 this morning and said he could tell by the gnarled nest of disconnected cables and loose phone lines hanging out of the cable/phone junction box on the side of the building, coupled with the pile of wire cuttings and pieces of electrical tape on the ground, that my building had been the site of a recent RCN installation.
He spent 30 minutes in frustration searching the basement and the side of the building trying to locate where my previously connected line had been cut and, as he said is RCN's standard practice, the end tucked into the siding or the rafters. After that exercise in futility he came back and spent the better part of another hour troubleshooting from my phone back to where the line entered the living space. In the process he confirmed what a previous Verizon tech told me: my apartment has at least three separate lines installed, though only one was active. Unlike his predecessor, this technician took pity on me and moved my line coming into the house from the gnarled mess in the primary junction box that the RCN tech had apparently made such a mess of and moved it to a second external phone junction box (connected to the telephone pole) that is above the roof over the front porch. He then rewired the apartment to connect all 10 of the 11 phone jacks to my existing line. (The 11th jack I cut off during my earlier fun running stereo speaker cables.)
The Verizon tech was very professional during his adventure troubleshooting the problem. He said that this type of "accidental" disconnection is nothing more than a little game that RCN and other third-party phone and cable supplier technicians play with each other. That said, he told me there would be no charge for his work.
I'm pretty happy with Verizon today.
Holy cow! Yeay verizon! So i can call you again and hear your sexy voice! Thanks verizon guy! I'll be calling ya soon darlin.
Love,
XO,
Snow
Gee and I thought Ameritech out here in Michigan was bad. Too bad Verison only does cellular out here. Hope everything else is going well.
Talk to you soon.
Monique