"PLEASE, just say yes or no!"

A couple of weeks ago my husband switched up from Charter TV and internet service to DirecTV and Bellsouth DSL. My Charter internet almost never went down in the five years we had the service. Bellsouth has been down twice in two weeks now. Tuesday for over 5 hours and you know how that would drive me insane, and again today just for 15 or 20 minutes.

In that 15 or 20 minutes I called Bellsouth to let them know how I felt about the disappointment. I got an automated troubleshooting machine. I was asked if this was about the service connected with line 256-bla-blah? I started to say yes but the machine came back on before I could answer, "PLEASE, just say yes or no!" Did it just yell at me? It repeated the question and I answered yes. It asked a few more questions some of which didn't make sense.

About then I realized that I was standing on the back deck with several preschoolers playing loudly and a baby sitting in the high chair right next to me eating a cookie, trying to tell everyone how good it was. All this was interfering with the computer's ability to decipher my answers.

I was asked another question and the baby yelled out again. On the line there was, " If you need more information, just say "help". I screamed for help. The automated voice says,"I'm sorry, did you say you were having problems with your connectivity, DSL modem, or accessing your account?" My little friend squealed again. By this time I've caught on to the noise problem and I'm just letting the baby do the talking for me. Finally, I hear, "I'm sorry, I can not help you with your problem. Please stay on the line for a technical support expert," or some such thing.

I did indeed get to speak to a real live person. I've been tied up in automated phone help mazes for over an hour before but this child got me there in two minutes. So now you know how to get live help on a line. So easy a baby could do it!

Does anyone out there know if it's normal for Bellsouth to lose service so frequently or is this kind of unusual? I miss Charter.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Today is my 22 anniversary! Whoo hoo! Some of you are amazed aren't you? Ha ha ha. Kisses to everybody!