Phone problems that resulted in a major loss for Tippy and Puc!!!

[cowpuc]

I was suppose to hook up with Sandman.. Part of the process of hooking up with him was him calling me as soon as he got into town and me finding him and leading him to our home.. When he didnt call I checked the phone and found out that our home phone was out of service to incoming calls, no idea how long it had been that way..

The phone guy came and left a note on the front door that he could find nothing wrong and he had left a message on our voice mail..

Well, the issue was that it wasnt ringing to our house and onto our answering machine, it was going directly to the voice mail supported by our phone company, a service that we never use..

I go out and find that the service box on the outside of the house has a bad connection where the little plastic flipper plugs into the service jack.. I bypass this connection and hard wired the house internals directly to the wires coming into the service box and BINGO - all is well.. Called the service guy back and shyly admit to bypassing their box, he laughed and said no problem as long as I have service and that he would replace the whole box when he has time... So everyones happy,,, until we find out what was on the voice mail that we had missed..

Tippy digs thru our paper work from the company, gets into our voice mail and finds out that the phone has been dead for almost 2 weeks.. It appears that I had WON a 2 night/3 day all expense paid trip to Harleys Anniversary over in Wisconsin - long gone by!!!! Tippy actually broke down and cried!! I just wanted to puke!!

The radio station that I had won the trip thru had left 2 messages on it and, I couldnt believe it, they apparently had contacted our local HD shop trying to find me and the local HD shop had also called our home number and left a message for us too!!!!!

So, lesson learned is, next time I fill out any of this contests I am putting down ALL my phone numbers, maybe even my neighbors,,,,,, maybe stay home more (nahhh), I am still ticked....

All this technical computer age stuff with hidden voice mails, computer stuff, electronic this and that and on and on is just to complicated for me. Way to much to remember for my ol brain,, I wanna puke...

I even miss points ignition.. I wanna puke...

Puc

[syscrusher]

I was suppose to hook up with Sandman.. Part of the process of hooking up with him was him calling me as soon as he got into town and me finding him and leading him to our home.. When he didnt call I checked the phone and found out that our home phone was out of service to incoming calls, no idea how long it had been that way..

The phone guy came and left a note on the front door that he could find nothing wrong and he had left a message on our voice mail..

Well, the issue was that it wasnt ringing to our house and onto our answering machine, it was going directly to the voice mail supported by our phone company, a service that we never use..

I go out and find that the service box on the outside of the house has a bad connection where the little plastic flipper plugs into the service jack.. I bypass this connection and hard wired the house internals directly to the wires coming into the service box and BINGO - all is well.. Called the service guy back and shyly admit to bypassing their box, he laughed and said no problem as long as I have service and that he would replace the whole box when he has time... So everyones happy,,, until we find out what was on the voice mail that we had missed..

Tippy digs thru our paper work from the company, gets into our voice mail and finds out that the phone has been dead for almost 2 weeks.. It appears that I had WON a 2 night/3 day all expense paid trip to Harleys Anniversary over in Wisconsin - long gone by!!!! Tippy actually broke down and cried!! I just wanted to puke!!

The radio station that I had won the trip thru had left 2 messages on it and, I couldnt believe it, they apparently had contacted our local HD shop trying to find me and the local HD shop had also called our home number and left a message for us too!!!!!

So, lesson learned is, next time I fill out any of this contests I am putting down ALL my phone numbers, maybe even my neighbors,,,,,, maybe stay home more (nahhh), I am still ticked....

All this technical computer age stuff with hidden voice mails, computer stuff, electronic this and that and on and on is just to complicated for me. Way to much to remember for my ol brain,, I wanna puke...

I even miss points ignition.. I wanna puke...

Puc

 

Cut the cord and use a cell phone only. Then get a Google voice number and set it up to ring on your cell phone. This is the number that you give to businesses that you don't really want bothering you. Then remember to check your voice mails frequently. It is far better to use the network system answering machine than a local one that isn't backed up and fully redundant. If you're going to play the game, ie, have communications, then you need to become good at it and keep up on changes to the rules, er, I mean technologies.

[bongobobny]

Well that sucked!!!

 

Yup, the world is over techified!! How did we survive without computers?!!? Quite well from what I remember!! Now days it's almost impossible to talk to a real human on the phone...

[Phoneman1981]

Sorry to hear about your missed opportunity. Evidently you do not use your landline much? Otherwise you should have noticed the outage. Voicemail from the phone company offers some redundancy over a old school answering machine, It does come in handy at times especially during outages such as yours.

 

Syscrusher had some good ideas to consider.

 

As for me, I live in a town of 25,000 people and most eveyone knows me. Many people still call my home number. I am reluctant to ditch my land line for several reasons safety and redundancy being two of them. I choose to keep my landline with only basic options ( no voicemail). I have my phone company "Simm Ring" my home number to my cell. I can answer the call at home in my easy chair or my cell phone which ever works best for me. I often let unrecognized incoming calls go to my cellular voicemail. Something you might consider? You keep your identity and have the best of both worlds. No matter what technology you use, sooner or later something is going to malfunction and let you down.

[Flyinfool]

That has to suck.

 

But then look at the bright side. You may have gotten some weird looks doing Hardly Fest on a Venture......

 

But on the other hand, I could have taken you out for some good Wisconsin Ice cream while you were here.

[Aussie Annie]

AAWW that sucks !!