Why I hate my Telephone

Having a telephone has become more of a burden than a convenience lately. Telemarketers, realizing their activities may soon be curtailed, have kicked into high gear, and have taken OVER my telephone. What’s worse, one of these telemarketers has taken a disliking to me, and feels the need to harass me on a daily basis.

It all started a few weeks ago when the Chicago Tribune called me at 8 in the morning on the Sunday following a very late Saturday out. I picked up the phone, expecting some kind of emergency ( my body thought it was still the middle of the night) and when I heard the sales pitch, I said something that was probably pretty rude, followed by the words “don’t call me ever again”. Before I hung up the phone I heard, “we’ll see about that, cuntbag.” I was too tired to think anything of this. I just hung up and went back to sleep.

Nearly every day since then I have gotten at least one call from the Trib, or from this guy. He’ll yell profanities and hang up, or pretend to be from some charity of some sort, like Save the Children, or the Red Cross, and just be really rude. The calls are annoying, and were nothing more than that until yesterday.

Yesterday’s call was a little disturbing. It went like this:

Him: Hi, is this Michelle?
Me: Yes
Him: Michelle?
Me: Yes.
Him: Michelle J******?
Me: Uh yes, who is this?
Him: Hello?
Me: Yes, what do you want?
Him: This is Michelle J*******, right?
Me: Yes, what do you want?
Him: Is your address (he repeats my address)
Me: Who wants to know?
Him: Hello? Hello?

That may seem harmless, but he knows my address – and he wants me to know that he knows my address.

So I finally got to my senses and dialed *69 to find out where the call was coming from. I jotted down the number, and called back. Naturally, this number doesn’t accept incoming calls. So I called reverse information, and found out the number belongs to Two Marx Motivations – some company I never heard of.

I called my phone company to let them know and see what they could do, but after being put on hold for ½ an hour, I hung up and called the non-emergency police line. That turned out to be the right thing to do. They took my statement, were glad that I’d had the information about the caller’s telephone number, and filed some report. They’ll let me know what happens. Before hanging up, the officer told me to call my telephone company and let them know what happened so that I could get the telephone number blocked and have a further record of the incident.

That is a whole other story – and not a pretty one.

My local telephone company is RCN. I switched to them from Ameritech because I was tired of Ameritech’s high prices and cocky, do-nothing attitude. At first, this was a good move. RCN was so thrilled to get my business and I was so thrilled to get their cheaper rates. Of course, now that they have customers and SBC Ameritech is in all kinds of trouble, RCN has taken over their competitor’s attitude.

I have to call them nearly every month because my bills are wrong, and I get attitude. I call them because they are cashing my checks and not crediting me, and I get attitude. I call them because they slap finance charges onto my bill because they haven't credited my accout, and I get attitude. Not only am I getting attitude, but each call takes a minimum of an hour, because they put you through the electronic menu hell of finding the right department. When you get there, you listen to Barbara Strisand and N’Synch for an eternity until an untrained, under qualified “customer service” crabass gets on the phone, with the attitude that you ought to be grateful that she answered the call.

That is the exact attitude I got last night. After no shit, 80 minutes on hold ( I have a speaker phone, so I was just watching TV until someone answered) some cranky bitch picks takes the call, and before I was finished explaining the situation, she asks me, “so why are you calling here?”

“Because the police told me to,” I responded.

“Well, the police were wrong. There is nothing I can do for you.”

The arrogance! I won’t go into detail, because this is getting way too long, but the skank phone company whore told me:

1. The police could call the corporate office themselves and file a report if they wanted
2. Filing a report is stupid, because there is nothing the phone company can do (yes, she said stupid)
3. If I want the number blocked, the request has to go though the police, or I can pay for caller ID with Call Blocker ®
4. She didn’t have an attitude problem, I did.
5. Her supervisor cannot take calls from customers. She is too important and too busy.
6. She has no obligation to take a message for her supervisor. Her supervisor will not return the call anyhow.

So basically, there is nothing I can do here – I will try and get the police to call up the corporate office of RCN, but somehow I don’t see that happening.

But I do see me switching local telephone companies when I move in a few months. I hear AT&T is doing local service now. I have stock in AT&T that isn’t doing so well, so maybe they’ve humbled and realized that if they treat their customers like shit, they’ll leave?

In the meantime, I’ll be screening my calls.