I spent an insane amount of time on Friday in Qwest's phonetree bowels of hell. I can't imagine that any company anywhere really thinks they are doing a good thing by making their customers work through a phone tree.

First I had to call and find out the story on my DSL. Actually FIRST I had to call Pacifier (ISP) back and find out what was going on there -- get some additional info and then call QWest. Thank my lucky stars after a couple of transfers and endless being on hold, I ended up with David who was completely competent and was quickly able to see that my order had been screwed up pretty much from page 1 and was able to get me fixed up, anticipate that I'd have billing problems, and told me exactly how to handle it. Yay David.

BUT -- I still didn't have my modem because when the order was put in there was a note that said, don't send a modem. So we had to order it so I won't have a modem for another week, even though my service will be connected on the 1st. But that's fine, I've lived without it this long, I can survive another week.

So my separate Qwest matter was to get that stupid Customer Choice thing taken off. This is some great service that costs $32 a month and I'm not sure if this is the line charge plus all these worthless extras -- or $32 on top of the line charges. I ordered it to get the activation fee on the DSL waived and agreed we'd try it and we loathed it immediately. I don't like call waiting. We don't have a caller ID rig. We still got solicitation calls. And the freaky alternate ring for long distance calls freaked me out every time.

To make a long story short -- I had to be transferred around to at least 5 different people including one jackass who insisted that I should really keep the Customer Choice and learn to like it. What, does this lady get beaten at the end of the day if a customer cancels the special package? We'll see how it all turns out when I get our bill.