Life Of Jason

Well, I’ve moved into my new house. (Well, it was built in 1920 but it’s new to me.) I have 1900 square feet of finished space and here’s my belongings loaded to move:

Methinks I’m going to have to get some more stuff because there’s a lot of empty space in this new house. Then again, once I get married this summer and my fiancee and her daughter move in I’ll bet a LOT of that space is going to fill up quickly.

It looks like that contrary to an earlier post I’ll be getting Mediacom cable because of our great friends at AT&T. I work from home over the internet so it’s vital that I have DSL or some other kind of permanent, high speed connection. I called weeks ago to AT&T and said that I was moving December 28 and that it was critical to have my phone and DSL in place. I was assured that the phone and DSL would be hooked up at my location downtown and ready to go. I said thank you very much and prepared other things for my move.

Well, moving day, the phone and DSL at my apartment was cut off early in the morning as it should have been shut off. No problem with them disconnecting service.

I get into the new house around 2pm with the trailer and an armload of DiGiacinto’s cheesesteaks. (Have to eat a ceremonial first meal in the new house and there’s nothing in Springfield that would be greater than cheesesteaks from DiGiacinto’s.) We get in all the furniture and boxes and sit down to enjoy our sandwiches when I said to my fiancee that I should hook up the phone and make sure it’s working properly as promised. I dig through boxes until I find the phone and plug it in…to hear silence. Every jack in the house. Silence.

So I call AT&T who says they activated the line and everything is working properly so if there’s a problem it’s inside my house. When I questioned further the rather rude customer service rep told me I could go outside to the box and plug directly into that to see that the phone line was active and working properly. So I go outside in the cold temps to open up the box only to find that all the wires inside the box are cut. Obviously AT&T never sent someone out to the house (that had been vacant for over a year) to see that the box was working properly. However, I had some experience running phone cables in my early radio days so I was able to re-wire the box and get a dial tone.

I get inside and call my cell phone to see that it’s working properly and the caller ID was a number different than the number I was given by AT&T.

I call their office and they say that if I’m calling them on that phone there’s no problem with the service. Then I tell them to look at the caller ID on the I’m calling from and that it’s not the same as the number on my account. Then they start asking security questions because they’re afraid I’m trying to mess with someone else’s service. Finally after about ten minutes they finally concede that the problem is their fault and that they’ve crossed lines somewhere and that someone else’s phone is going into my house.

I’m not going to go into what happened when we got a phone call that night from the person who owns the phone line. They were…less than friendly to us. Let’s leave it at that. After all, if there’s one thing that someone going through a move and all the attending items that go with it wants it’s having someone else’s phone line running into their house.

So I call back to AT&T about getting this issue resolved and spoke to a woman who was very friendly and sympathetic. She apologized over and over for their mistake but said the earliest they might be able to fix it was Tuesday. I told her about my job and how I had to have the internet connection and she said that because of weather problems in our area that all the technicians were backed up with service orders and even though it was their mistake they couldn’t repair the problem any faster.

My fiancee said that Mediacom had internet and phone with their cable and we could get them all for $99 a month for a year. My plan was to get settled and then get cable or satellite TV a few months down the road (since I could see the Daytona 500, the Super Bowl, Life an KSPR News at 5:30 over regular TV.) However, the kids don’t have cable at their mother’s house and they love Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network so I know they would be happy to be able to see it at Daddy’s house.

“As if you could live without ESPN,” my fiancee said.

Well, I still wasn’t convinced to make the move because I’d heard that cable internet service fluctuates so much during the day that you could lose 80-90% of promised speed during peak times. After being assured that at most it would be 50% (still making it twice as fast as the DSL from AT&T) I asked how quickly they could get the service installed. January 9. When I said that wouldn’t work and thanked them for their time the customer service rep asked me why not and I told her about my work situation and how internet was critical to my job.

“OK…give me a minute,” Lara the friendly customer service rep said.

After about two minutes she comes back on the line.

“I can have someone there tomorrow,” she replied.

I signed up for it.

So AT&T lost a customer and Mediacom gained a customer that they likely wouldn’t have otherwise. To be honest, after the hassle of dealing with AT&T, the customer service rep at Mediacom and her kind, helpful attitude really helped seal the deal.

It’s now time to unpack and actually force myself not to keep everything in one room since my place isn’t just one 400 square foot room anymore!

I do want to give some very public thanks to some people who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me get into this house. First, to God for making this house come together and provide blessings along the way. I want to thank Tim Prater of Empire Bank who not only found grant money for us to get this home but also discovered a missing credit that lead to our getting money back from closing. If you are planning to do any real estate transactions you cannot go wrong with Tim.

Well, time to unpack and to fix some of the little things that slid through the disclosures (like the downstairs toilet always running.)

If I don’t make another post before 2008, I hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year!