Well, I know they're lying to me, I'm wondering if they're telling me a specific lie.

I called them on Monday because I saw they had a new high-speed plan that was faster and cheaper than my current one. Asked for the upgrade. They said it would take two days to connect. No problem. Just so long as my current service keeps working until then. [foreshadowing]

I'm posting this from the local Arabica.

So here's the question. They're telling me that the old service was discontinued as of Monday. Yeah, I figured that part out. And the new service takes two days to be provisioned. This isn't a matter of someone flipping a switch ... the request goes into the system and it takes two days for the software to set up the line.

That sounds like bullshit to me. If someone wanted me to be live today, someone could flip a switch, couldn't they?

After more laps through the troubleshooting steps than I care to remember*, I finally talked to an actual tech person at about 5 p.m. my time. She's the one who figured out what was actually wrong, and didn't want to try to explain it to the support manager well enough for him to explain to me, so she called me herself.

My old configuration was deleted from the front-end systems. This sends a "deactivate" code to the switch, just in case someone decides to reactivate. I was on SBC before they were acquired, so my username was @sbcglobal.net. The new system required me to have an @att username.

The switch said the username didn't match, but my address (IP? MAC?) was still assigned. The front-end systems didn't have any way to send a command to clear the sbcglobal address from the configuration, so someone had to fix it directly on the switch.

Some of the above is reading between the lines of what she said. She was talking to me like I was Aunt Tilly, but I got what she meant.


* I eventually started calls by saying, "I've already power-cycled the modem and the computer. I've reset the modem. I've used both support username/password combos on the modem. I've unplugged and replugged everything."