Dial-up blues
In early July, Dave and I took turns calling various utilities so that everything would be turned on when we got to Salem. In order to save money, we were very conscious of trying to keep our monthly bills here down to a minimum. We left the tv behind so we wouldn't be tempted by cable. Since we wouldn't be able to get cable internet without taking out a second mortgage on our house, we decided to go the DSL route. We chose Verizon. That was a big mistake.
Dave called them to have phone service and internet activated on the 21st of July. The 21st came and went. We had phone service but no internet. Dave called on the 22nd to ask what was up. After working his way through electronic menu after menu and then spending an unbelievable (at least for those who haven't had the enjoyable experience of spending hours on hold with Verizon) amount of time on hold, Dave finally talked to an actual person. They had a lengthy conversation during which Dave was asked repeatedly if he was sure he wasn't a woman named Kathy (or Sue or Shirley) because that's the name that was assigned to our account. Finally the representative got everything squared away and told Dave that Verizon's m.o. is to wait for a phone signal before sending someone out to hook up the DSL connection and that it's usually scheduled within 10 days, information that would've been nice to know when we first called; we could've scheduled to have phone service turned on earlier than the 21st. Later that day we got an automated message saying that our DSL was scheduled to be turned on the 4th of August. Dave's head nearly exploded. He called Verizon the next day and said the 4th of August is not within 10 days, and was then told that it is, however, within 10 business days. Verizon apparently has a knack for leaving out useful information in their conversations with customers. He managed to get us moved up to the 2nd, but that was the best they could do. They told us if we wanted to, we could do the one month free dial-up trial so we'd have some kind of access to the internet, but they would need our credit card number so they could charge us the monthly fee; all we would have to do is remember to call and cancel the service before the 30 days are up or else they wouldn't credit the amount back to us. Some free month. Just ahead of the 2nd, Dave got an email saying they were having problems and that they wouldn't be able to get us hooked up until the 11th. At that point I was super-duper-ridiculously annoyed and started calling around to other places. No one would give us a decent rate because we can't commit to a year's worth of service. Comcast told us we could sign up for a year then pay the $200 early termination fee if we wanted, but we wouldn't get a good monthly rate anyway because we wouldn't be buying a cable package with it since we don't have a tv. There seems to be no good route to take around Verizon.
The point of this story is, for those who look forward to Henry pictures, there haven't been any because even though we located a new cable with which to download them from the camera to the computer, it takes four thousand years to upload them to the web. On the 26th I noticed that iTunes has Jetsons episodes for sale. I decided to buy the one where Judy tries to win a date with Jet Screamer and after three hours, only about 5 percent of it had downloaded. If we actually get DSL on the 11th, there will be much dancing and singing and watching of cartoons. Oh yeah, and uploading of pictures.
If you made it this far, thanks for listening (reading?) to me kvetch.