COMMUNICATION?

If it is true that difficult moments are to be treated as ‘learning experience’, my intelligence must have gone up a couple of notches this week...unless I’m like my daughter who affirms that “What I have learned so far is that I never learn anything!”

When I moved my office home, the telephone company informed me that I could not keep the same business number because I was changing areas, but did offer to transfer any calls to the one I used at my residence, which would now be treated as a commercial number....at commercial rates, of course. It has only been six months, and I have called them several times to complain about the package I received. Finally, in exasperation, I asked to have my service switched back to residential, and was told that I could do nothing about it until July, at which date the contract would expire. During my last conversation with a representative there, she made mention that I had to pay my bill, or the service would be suspended. I knew the account had been paid, and after arguing back and forth for a while, we discovered that my online payments had been applied to my now non-existent residential account instead of the new business account. Although the phone number itself had not changed, the account numbers did. I hadn’t paid attention, so was still using the old account number when making the payments. The rep gave me the fax number, and I sent her the proof of online payments. In my mind, the problem had been resolved. This happened at the beginning of May.

Yesterday morning I woke up to a dead telephone. I contacted the company to be told it had been suspended for non-payment. ARRRGH! Another representative, more time lost explaining again what had happened, all the time stressing that this is a BUSINESS and the service was important, once again sending the proof of payment by fax.....and I am told that, sorry – I had paid into residential which is a different department than commercial (although the same damned company!!!), so within 2 to 4 weeks the residential department would send me a cheque to reimburse me, and in the meantime I would have to pay the $1000.00 already paid if I wanted my business phone reconnected. Impossible, I replied. I don’t have it – you’ve got my money – I want my phone back – do an inter-department thing – this was supposed to have been taken care of over a month ago! The result is that, once again, someone was to look into it and get back to me – which still has not happened – and the phone is still not working.

So – what do you think? Is this proof that we’re never too old to learn? One thing for sure, it had given me lots to write about, and writing gets it off my chest.

Now, more relaxed, I’m going to go hug my doggies and take them out for an early morning romp among the trees. It’s a sure-fire way to bring out my SMILE. Sharing with you, folks!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec.