What Happened To My Business Line?

Earlier this year my wife started a job with the local cable company. At the time we had a package deal for internet, phone and cable TV, plus I had an additional line put in for my real estate investing business. As part of my wife's job, we received many of these services for free or nearly free.

I planned a working vacation "back home" where I grew up, and shortly before I was scheduled to leave, my wife became frustrated with the company and their attitude towards helping customers. Many of the employees (including managers) in Customer Service didn't care if they fixed your problem correctly, their main concern seems to be around how long you were on the phone with the customer. If you're on too long, you get reprimanded. Never mind the fact that sometimes you have a customer that needs their hand held more to get their problem resolved, and each problem is unique. But I digress....

So, my wife quits the job, and as part of her exit interview, she clearly specifies that the services we are receiving need to go back into my name, just as they were prior to her starting work there. A week or two later I leave for my work-vacation, and stop to stay the night at my niece's place part way "back home." I get a call from my wife. She says we do not have any of the premium channels we are supposed to have. I call the cable company and speak to a Customer Service Rep. (CSR) about resolving the problem. I tell him the story and that we had a package deal prior to her employment, and everything was supposed to be put back the way it was before she started work there. At no point did I mention canceling the second phone line. I did say that "everything needs to go back to the way it was prior to her working there." The CSR finds the package deal and gets it "fixed." A few minutes later my wife confirms the channels are back. All is good, right?

Before I had left, I forwarded my business line to my cell phone. While on my working vacation, I received a few calls that could have been routed through my business line, but they could just as easily been direct calls to my cell phone, as they knew or had access to both numbers. When I returned from my work-vacation, I noticed the light on my business phone was lit, which indicates no line signal. I figured there must be a loose connection, but I'm not concerned about it because I have the line forwarded to my cell phone.

Now, granted I do not get a lot of calls to this line, so I didn't notice a lack of calls. One day I decided to call the business line to make sure the forwarding was still working. To my surprise, someone answered the phone. I figured I fat-fingered it, and said I had the wrong number. I was not so sure I had fat-fingered it, so I pressed redial. I dialed the right number, but who was answering? I called back to find out how long this other person had my business number. It went to the answering machine and I left a message asking him to call me back. So far he has not.

After a bit of research and reviewing of the past few bills, I determined it was that night I had to call the cable company to straighten out what they couldn't do right the first time, and the CSR I talked to canceled my business phone line. (dude, you suck at your job).

It was three months after the fact that I determined this problem. I have business cards floating around, and signs on my Blazer that says "I Buy Houses" with the phone number on it. I am advertising for some guys home phone. I hope he is getting bombarded with calls for me, and that he is complaining to the phone or cable company.

I am currently determining how much the cable company owes me for new signage, new business cards and my time to resolve this. I will not get my business line through them again, I am going to add a line to our cell phone account.