You don't have a high speed Internet connection??

[ultrarunner]

Yes... woven and twisted.

The bulk of the neighborhood homes were built by McGregor construction in 1922 as is mine.

Still have the original single 30 amp fuse main, double hung windows and high leg Spark Stove... bought it from the original owner that bought it new in 1922.

 

[MossRoad]

Hey, I learned FORTRAN at Purdue on punch cards. We always chuckled at the guys who would drop their card stacks and have everything out of order...

(I may have been one of those guys more than once)

I saw someone do that at school.... I secretly chuckled. :laughing:

 

[California]

First thing you do with a stack - or tray - of punchcards is grab a felt pen and draw a diagonal line across the top edge of the deck.

 

[MossRoad]

We do that with our euchre deck....

 

[ultrarunner]

So today at work the Phone Company shows up with a service order in my name to install fiber...

Thing is I never ordered it or agreed to it.

Almost weekly the phone company calls trying to get me to switch from DSL to a higher cost/greater speed fiber which is one of those why would I do this if it is not broken.

Never thought a large and established phone company would slam a very good customer... guess things change.

Here is the sleaze part... account rep said I... meaning me, would receive a $400 gift card for "Upgrading" and not the Hospital.

 

[MossRoad]

Here is the sleaze part... account rep said I... meaning me, would receive a $400 gift card for "Upgrading" and not the Hospital.

Our company fired a guy for claiming rebates for himself instead of the company.

 

[ultrarunner]

Exactly... I can't understand the ethics of a major US communications company pulling this and especially with a long established Hospital Account???

I reported it immediately to the Hospital Administrator...

I negotiate contracts all the time and if you want to make an impression... cut to the chase, give me your best price and I will give a yes or no...

 

[dmccarty]

...

Here is the sleaze part... account rep said I... meaning me, would receive a $400 gift card for "Upgrading" and not the Hospital.

Wow! Ironically, on the drive to work this morning I heard another ad for a sales position at the radio station. This must be a high turnover position or they are expanding because they seem to have frequent ads for sales jobs. The part of the ad that caught my attention this morning was the phrase, "highly ethical" or some such.

The use of that wording is interesting.

Did you report the account rep's offer to their company? If the sales rep worked for my company, they would loose their job over this and if I took the gift card, I almost certainly would be looking for a new position.

Later,
Dan

 

[ultrarunner]

No didn't go higher than internally here at the Hospital...

A few weeks back... in the middle of the morning the phone company terminated our DSL of 19 years... it caused a lot of problems... phone company said it was a mistake and then that could not restore as it was legacy...

I was not having any of it... said we are a hospital and their actions have jeopardized patient safety... it was back in two hours but still no remote access due to reconfiguring the hardware... at least I was able to get medical records, op reports and insurance authorizations restored.

 

[California]

... in the middle of the morning the phone company terminated our DSL of 19 years... it caused a lot of problems... phone company said it was a mistake and then that could not restore as it was legacy...

Hopefully somebody has more recent information but what I read several years ago was that ATT was committed to shut down all services delivered over copper wire for legal reasons.

Traditional telephone service has for a century been a government-approved monopoly, moderated by Public Utilities Commission regulators who specify and limit the allowable profit margin. One element of this arrangement included giving ATT the right of eminent domain, that is, an exclusive right to run their wires over public and private property wherever they need a right-of-way to deliver service. This eventually evolved into subsidies to ATT to extend phone service into rural areas, to upgrade main trunk lines, etc, and also to use highly theoretical depreciation tax write-off figures, as ATT's lobbyists suggested 'necessary' improvements to the PUC's allowed phone rates.

Now today ATT wants to escape this government regulation of allowable profits. The way to do this is re-state their service as providing entertainment to their customers (an unregulated activity) with Internet service (also unregulated) offered as an add-on to that primary service. Then you can add VOIP to this Internet connection if you like.

So 'legacy' phone service will soon disappear.