Deeker's Message of the Week

Oh wait! What's this? A bill from Qwest, eh? Let's see, postmark says May 22, so it was sent out not too long ago, I'll open it:

Our records indicate there is a total past due amount...

We have provided a breakdown of your past-due charges below. The services shown in bold print will be disconnected if the past-due amount is not received by June 1, 2006.

QWEST OPTIONAL SERVICES	$xxx.xx	OTHER CARRIER SERVICES	$xx.xx
QWEST REGULATED SERVICES	$xx.xx	LONG DISTANCE SERVICES	$xx.xx

Yes, I was behind on my phone bill- by one month! Christ, it's not like I've let it go month after month! I mean, really, one month?! Give me a fucking break! I've had some financial issues to recover from. Shit happens. Anyone who isn't a doctor or a lawyer knows what it's like to be strapped for cash.

But this rant isn't about my personal finances; I'm getting things back on track. What this rant is about is the FUCKING BULLSHIT THAT QWEST PULLED ON ME! Let's take a look at the notice again, shall we? (I'd include a scan of the notice, but I don't have the patience for that right now):

• "Services shown in bold print". According to their notice, the only item in bold print is for OPTIONAL SERVICES. I believe that would include my DSL service. It's not something everyone gets with their phone service, so I suppose by definition that's optional.
• June 1, 2006 is the date they give me. I don't know what calendar they go by, but last time I checked the calendar the rest of the Industrialized World uses, we're not there yet. Perhaps the earth got transported through some wormhole and the whole space-time continuum is out of whack, thereby making the actual date later than what it's supposed to be, but somehow, I am inclined to dismiss that theory as having so much as a single iota of being possible. Having reasonably, logically and rationally settled on the fact that June 1 has yet to arrive in this particular plane of the known universe, WHY IN THE HOLY HELL FUCK HAS MY DSL BEEN CUT OFF?!
• The notice was postmarked May 22. Yeah, so they did sent out a notice, as it turns out. Maybe, just maybe if they kept my service turned on until June 1 LIKE THE NOTICE INDICATES, I would have gotten the past-due payment settled and this shit would have never happened! Fuckers! Pull your heads out of your asses if you haven't suffocated already! Learn to read a calendar! How these fuckwads got past the first grade in three tries is beyond me.

You'd think by setting a past-due payment they'd get me back up and running right away (the cable company does this. One time I was late on my cable service and it had been cut off. The second I made my payment over the phone, BAM! The cable came back on! Halle-fucking-lujah!). Oh no, too easy. Apparently the comically bumbling assholes who run this end of operations at Qwest saw it fitting to not just interrupt the service, but to take it a step further and CANCEL the service! There's a difference, as I learned from the many angry phone calls I made to Qwest (which turned out to be a hopeless exercise in futility). You see, interrupting the service means they just cut off my access to it, but the service is still on my account. Cancellation, on the other hand, means they take it off of your account completely. Gee, thanks for letting me know!

Here's what really irks me to no end. Because the service was cancelled, I have to wait until MAY 31 to get these services reinstated! Oh yeah, naturally as luck would have it, all this shit had to happen during a holiday week (Memorial Day for those of you outside the U.S. who may not be familiar with our holidays), thereby delaying the process by another whole precious day. It's as if I am starting all over from scratch! Fucking shit, this is pissing me off the more I think about it!

So, of course, having no Internet service at home means no update for this week. Sorry, folks. I've had to post this message from my mom and dad's computer (dialup, no less, how quaint!) Since my Internet service has been off, so has the server where the survey responses and Diaper Boy Drawings are posted, which is why you can't get to these materials. I've tried to get Qwest to expidite the process, given the circumstances, but for reasons too lengthy to explain here, they can't do that. If I could just switch to another company I'd do it in a heartbeat and tell Qwest to go fuck themselves, but when a company is a monopoly they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want and you can't do jack shit, because hey, who else are you going to go to?

I project to have service restored on Wednesday, May 31. By God I'd better have it up and running by then. My patience is exhausted and if they dick me around any more from here on out... well, I shudder to think of what might happen. All I know is that somebody deserves to be hurt for this.

Once again, your patience and understanding is much appreciated as I work through these latest matters. I know that a couple months from now this won't really matter, but it still affects my quality of life and I think I have a damn good reason to be as hotly pissed as I am about the whole fucking thing. If you happen to work for Qwest and you're on the bottom rung of their cooperate ladder doing grunt work, I pity you for working for such a fucked-up joke of a company. If you're one of the suits who determines how things are supposed to work, well, there is no amount of diabolical or scatological torment to be thrust upon you that would even begin to be enough to satisfy me. Your company is in severe need of improvement in its inexcusably shitty customer service, and seeing your sorry asses get kicked out the door would be a good start.