Another SBC Complaint

Greetings. Complaints against SBC are fairly regular, especially if you've been with them long enough, but I had another one come up this past weekend that's notable.

I had called SBC a couple of weeks ago to setup my Austin home phone for January 20. I was assured that the number would be activated on that day. I even called them last Thursday to see what time the number would be turned on. I was told it would be 5pm. Well, 5pm came and went. When I picked up the phone to see if things were working Friday evening, I didn't hear anything. I tried the other phone jack on the outlet near my bed with the same result: nothing. My parents later said that they tried the phone in the living room with no luck.

So, I've just moved into my new apartment, but my phone line wasn't working. And, since SBC is a phone company, they're only open business hours, which meant that I had to wait until Monday morning before I could call them to inform them of the problem. Thankfully I had my cell phone last weekend and could make and receive calls on that, otherwise I really would have been stuck.

On Monday morning at 7:30, I called the repair services line and requested a repair for my line. I then used a trick that my friend Carman Fan1 told me once. I call the repair line back, got a human, and told them that I wanted to add some information to my service request. That information was: "I am blind and need my phone for communication purposes. So, if it can be ready sooner than the 5pm deadline, that would be great." The representative did add this information to my order and I hung up. I made these calls at 7:30 remember. 2 hours later, at 9:30, someone from SBC was at my door and ready to fix the line. It took him longer than he expected, but 20 minutes later, he had a dial tone on my line, which was great.

So, in the end, SBC had a fast enough response to resolve the issue, but my main complaint is that since they're only open business hours, I wasn't able to call them over the weekend to let them know of the problem. Carman Fan says that the line was turned on at their office, but not at my apartment. Actually, truth be told, someone from DART Paratransit was able to call me Friday afternoon and leave a message on my Call Notes voice mail, even though the line didn't ring in the apartment. Go figure.