Just a few things, I want to clear up as 2019 begins.

[Lance]

Attn: Phone company, the one with wires attached to poles coming to my house.  Put your message in an email and send it to me.  The mumbling creature you employ as a “telecomunicator” Tyquanda (I asked her to spell it for me) who is only working till she (presumptively) can find a fool to marry and pay her student loans is below the necessary IQ to carry one end of a conversation.  I was overjoyed to hear 29 times that my call was being answered in Florida in the United States. You may find it odd that I didn't need a “Security Code” nor did I provide my SSN to your company back in 1964 when we began our business relationship, I don't.  I haven't needed either number to conduct business with you since, and I won't in the future.  Also see if you can find an articulate human to fill that job.  I do not and will not comprehend Uhhu and uhuh as words, and have no intention of accepting them in a business call.
Thank you very much for answering my call in a prompt fashion when you damn well pleased because you employ insufficient persons to get the job done, and feel you can convince me my time has no value.  Be assured I too recorded the conversation for quality control purposes and will be attaching a copy of the recording to my electronically filed Complaint to the Public Service Comission.
Thanks in advance for your attention to my problem when you damn well get around to fixing your wires that I emailed you about falling off the pole 17 months &11 days ago.

[goodfellow]

Customer Service!!! -- just a catch phrase these days I'm afraid.

[slip knot]

   yep, Customer service, sadly the Americans are now just as bad as the foreigner's.   


Wife and I just left Sams club. The checker was all but unintelligible. I don't even know what accent she was.

[mrbill]

It's not ALL bad.  I was at Walmart the other night and and, in addition to my normal basket of goods, bought a whole bunch of rubber ducks they had in a bin as a gag gift for my wife.  I stood for a while in a long line and watched the cashier - who looked an awful lot like Edward Scissorhands - mumble his way through each transaction.  When it was finally my turn and he saw the ducks his face lit up and we had a nice conversation about the "bling ducks".  It seemed to make his day and I got a "thank you sir and have a good night" that none of the previous people in line got. 

Bill

[J.A.F.E.]

I don't know about where you live but in LA county there is a Department of Telecommunications and this is the organization that grants the charters to operate within the county. I suspect most counties have something similar. I have found them to be a very effective resource in dealing with these issues. A direct letter/email gets quick response from both the department and the company in question. Far more effective than dealing with the state or federal level.

[Lance]

In NY there is no county regulation of utilities.

I dwell in the boonies near Rochester where I am screwed er I mean served by a small local 3 exchange phone company that was in 1952 out in front of the industry with rotary dial service and surrounded by the once famed Rochester Telephone Corp who led the fiber optics business.
The small company is what is known as an REA company, meaning they have all kinds of benefits funded by Uncle Sugar.
The man who built the small company hated Rochester Tel with a blue passion, and sent back their annual offer to buy his company with some interesting notations including how thick ice would be in hell when he sold.  As a rural carrier they got a free 10% share of the nonwireline celular system free. When he croaked the widow sold the company to a Vermont water Company running a few rural water systems there, and moved on to her new man.

Within the first year, 30 employees went down the road and contractors came in.  In 3 years the small local company became the parent company to 7 more small rural phone companies, all financed by the Taxpayer. 
Rochester Telephone became the parent company of the unfolding fiasco called Global Crossing based on their fiber network.  As the Clinton Crime Family was stealing furniture for their house on Loooong Island, they propped up Global Crossing with military contracts and the clever kids running Global split all the high cost wire companies and local phone service off Global.  Rochester Telephone minus fiber went on the market, and sold cheap because market analysis said cellular would kill local wire service.

Rochester Telephone who for years wanted to buy the 3 exchange REA company they surrounded for years came to be owned by the tiny company, financed by the taxpayer.  A lot of people got sent down the road, and all maintenance of system went to the back burner.  When the price of scrap went high, cable got stripped off poles and scrapped.  Wonderful devices called SLC-96 appeared beside roads to act as mini central offices, connecting local cable to fiber so more copper could be scrapped.

The system from NY to Illinois is now supervised by some kid sitting in Florida looking at his screen who can pretend to troubleshoot and reroute around problems.  The system supposedly generates service orders to people in the field riding around in bucket trucks to repair problems.  The bustards in Vermont don't like making repairs that cost money, so they have an override on repair orders.
Meanwhile the cable splice can in front of my driveway is still sort of covered by garbage bags and duct tape into year 5.  When it rains the phone stops working.  I start backcharging.

The cable side of communication is even funnier.  Local company begun in the late 80s got bought by Time Warner who got bought by Spectrum who is so good they have been ordered to sell themselves to somebody with a clue how to run a cable company.  The 90 days they were to sell within is now 18 months, nothing is sold and lawyers & politicians get richer. 

You really don't want to know about the Electric company owned by a bunch of olive chewers in Spain with wine skins on their shoulders. 

The people at State PSC all have Degrees they swiped from protractors which leave them smart enough to barely understand my very detailed complaints.  Since I can and do explain the issue, I have a win record of better than 95%. 

[daves_not_here]

You seem irked. 

[Lance]

Naw.
I do however subscribe to the old Russian saying; The more you know the more painful life is.

[pep]

Lance,
Sounds like they are upgrading, and going with under ground utilities .

 Rochester, must be something these days without Eastman. I spent 11 weeks there for training at Kodak.  BFTDC (before the disc camera).

 Saw the Xerox building downtown, my former employer,  and Wegmans a store to behold. Off the planet place, everybody needs a Wegmans .

The kicker, Miami boy was there for the summer, never saw a snow flake ....

Global Crossing, I'll be damn did not know that was home brew Rochester, Level 3 bought them, 5 years or so back. Now Level 3 has been consumed  by CenturyLink   gobble gobble. Most of the Global Crossing data center are shut down, I believe the is on still, soon to be shutdown in Springfield.

Pep

BTW "Just a few things, I want to clear up as 2019 begins."    Too late 

[Lance]

The once employer of 70,000+ is now known as WHO, and George Eastman's ashes entombed at the entrance to Kodak Park are passed by mere hundreds these days.  Legend has it the company died for missing digital photography.  Reality is the UofR business School geniuses killed the company to maximize short term profit by bringing in Fisher from Motorola to sell off Kodak company by company.  When he had it almost done they swapped him out for a personal friend of BigearsBama who managed to get a hanger to collapse on one of the company planes visiting BigEars for a Superbowl party.

BigBlueX also managed to self destruct, first selling the tower and then Webster and renting back.  Then they put in a company built female AA to run the show all the way to hell.  She and Perez of Kodak both sat on the clean KneeGro's Job Creation & economic development Council where Ursula Burns created several maid and lawn care jobs for her holdings.  Meanwhile Ursula cleaned up by selling out employee stock holders invested in X stock for their retirement.  At least it can be said X blew it on their own by completely missing desktop computer printing in spite of inventing Docutec and if memory serves their 820 desktop.

Rochester lost General Railway Signal too, along with Bausch & Lomb, Ritter Dental moved away, Taylor Instrument got swallowed, Stromberg Carlson disappeared and a few hundred suppliers and support shops went away too.

You may also remember Midtown Plaza just north of X Tower.  The last roll of retail downtown after Gilbert McCurdy looked at PigeonHole Parking from his office atop his department store and declared downtown is dead in 1960.  Well, that too is pretty flat these days thanks to demolition after the idiot mayor of the city bought the complex that cost $50,000 a month to maintain. 

He was following on the track record of the Mayor who bought Rochester the famed aluminum hulled fast ferry boat made in Australia that would come to be known as the Edmund FitzJohnson.  Being a brilliant Awfreekin-American Johnson who evolved from the world of Social agencies to become Mayor managed to steal a Canadian plan to run ferrys from Rochester to Toronto to alleviate border backups at Niagara Falls.  It was brilliant in 2000, and Grady thought he swiped the complete plan.  When the Canadians saw what was happening they made sure no Toronto terminal existed as they watched Grady rebuild the old Port of Rochester to happy ferry land and try to figure out how to get rid of the old blast furnace residue long buried.  The boat arrived via Seaway where it took only minor damage being squeezed through the locks and arrived at the dock on its sole remaining functioning MAN engine to await repairs.  Then those nasty airplanes knocked down the Twin Towers and a whole new world of international travel regulations came into being, while the engines got fixed.  The hired crew sat around in their comfortable accommodations and the Fire Department insisted a fireman had to be standing next to the hose as fuel was pumped aboard.  When the Edmund finally got running and made a test voyage with 300 invited politician's pals, the Captain realized he didn't dare put the hammer down because hitting a floating tree might hurt the hull, and insufficient rescue capability existed to take off 300 people in the middle of the Lake.  The Edmund completed it's dubious career in Charlotte laying at anchor as people who invested in leases at the terminal and the Duty free onboard bar went broke. 
As I write this, there are supposedly 5500 cases of untaxed liquor and wine in a bonded warehouse someplace in Rochester.  Taxpayers are still paying rent on a Morton building that Toronto calls a ferry terminal, and Rochester's magnificent terminal sits empty costing heavy coin per day.  The boat squeezed back down the Seaway to work the Mediterranean after being sold at half price to get rid of it, and Grady Johnson retired to be a Government Ethics Professor at RIT.  I dare ya to find the liquor.

You mentioned Wegmans.  That little family owned and operated business that had one of two stores across from X tower during the Depression just keeps growing.  Average store size today is 12 acres under roof.  Most stores now contain the current version of cafeteria the downtown stores had during the Depression, some serve alcohol.  wegmans.com will give you a mere glimpse.  Sadly the company lost it's history as it passed down through 4 generations.  One of the original stores remains on W Main.  The chain now reaches South to the DC Swamp & beyond.  Wegmans is rated as 1 of the Top 100 companies to work for in the US, and still builds most managers within the company.  Wegmans is a tourist destination for people visiting Rochester.

There are a few books about this town, but most won't get published because they aren't written by fat women who claim to know history.

[john k]

I heard thru the grapevine that Bell will no longer run wires to new housing, anything to the contrary?

[Lance]

What's left of Bell and many other companies want out of copper ASAP. 
The number of new residential and small business phones going on wire is dam low.

VOIP on fiber is the last hope of the former phone industry, and they are loosing that battle to alternate carriers.

If the price of copper goes back up phone companies will resume removing cable from pole lines and begin mining commercial buildings for the copper they own there.  RIT students have been getting nailed an annual fee for phone cable in place in the dorms for at least 10 years even though few have wired phones in their rooms.  Long Distance is a dead industry, and what's left of the phone industry changes every month.