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From: joe%icjapan.UUCP@nosc.mil (Joe Talbot)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Unbreakable Dialtone
Message-ID: <16532@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 91 06:11:57 GMT
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Reply-To: Joe Talbot <joe%icjapan.UUCP@nosc.mil>
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 78, Message 3 of 5


This is a really annoying one to get repaired! First, GTE ALWAYS
"clears" trouble reports quickly. The company's performance is based
on trouble reports being "cleared", NOT necessarily solving the
problem reported. Often people will just give up. When you report a
problem, you'll find that it is almost always "cleared" within and
hour, and WITHOUT anybody calling you back to tell you about it.

Intermittant problems such as bad trunks, bad DTMF receivers and
switch bugs are almost impossible to get fixed unless you are
persistant and somtimes nasty. Always keep a log of who you spoke
with, at what number and when. Always let the GTE person you are
speaking with (usually a clerk with no telcom knowledge or interest
and NO power to get anything done) know that you are keeping a log and
that if this problem isn't solved, it WILL come back to haunt THEM.

I hate to sound so down on them, but GTE runs its telephone operations
like a water or gas utility, or a governament bureau. To them, you're
just a number.


Joe Talbot	Voice Mail 011-813-222-8429


[Moderator's Note: About twenty years ago I had a case where many
calls I made in the middle of the night were getting hung up in some
bad equipment in the Chicago-Hyde Park CO. No one in repair wanted to
listen to me. One night I got the troubled equipment so I kept it on
hold on my first line and called Night Plant on my second line and
asked him to go in the frames and find me; in doing so he'd find the
pathology and either fix it or busy it out. He went in and found it.
The next day the foreman called me and thanked me, saying "I've been
looking for that booger for a couple days now!"  :)  PAT]