Brents IT Blog

So today was the last day for me to verify if my new telecom company would be able to move ( Remote forward, technically ) our existing numbers at our remote site to our new PRI's at our corporate office.  See we are in the middle of consolidating our phone system into one unified system.  There are soo many benefits to this system; it’s simply stupid to not do it... other than cost.

With that said, let me back up a two months.  Two months ago, they asked me for a list of all the numbers I wanted to port, their locations to/from, and an authorization form.  I quickly provided this information and they were off.  So I call them back about two weeks before we are ready to go.  At this point, I still don’t have my new PRI circuits.  Apparently they spoke to our phone vendor and it was determined they need PRI's and SIP was not possible, so my PRI's were being held up by accounting because of the difference in cost of equipment they had to provide.  Ok, this part is new to me, no one mentioned this conversation to me and all of a sudden, I am supposed to making this happen!  Sure, nothing that a cattle prod and some boos can’t fix. 

While this is going on, I receive word that the number port is ready to go, great!, oh wait, they want to port all my numbers from all the sites on one day?!  I guess someone missed the fact that this would not be possible since the phone vendor cannot handle 11 simultaneous installs.  Did I also mention that I told the sales rep we would be deploying sites one week at the time?  Yes, one week after another, a tight schedule, but this transition needs to occur quickly.  So after I announce that they are mistaken and we need to spread the porting of numbers over the 10 weeks, I am told they have to cancel the first order because it’s only good for 20 days.  Ok, so if it’s good for 20 days, why would you cancel it?  20 business days is four weeks, good enough for us to get 5 sites going, leaving 3 sites that these guys don’t manage number for anyways!   Anyhow, they port our main number on the set day and cancel the order.  Now I had planned on doing another site on the following Friday, guess what?  Yeap, they couldn’t cancel the order fast enough to get a new order in for the same numbers!!! 

ok, no problem, they have the list, they are working on the new spread out schedule now, I can use a PRI input device at the first site to allow their calls to transfer to corporate across our network.  This will buy us another week while they fix this.  Well the order doesn’t finally cancel until late last Thursday.  Great put the new orders in!  Oh wait, we can’t find the numbers you need, please send us all the information you sent us last month again so we can create a new order.  Ok, did I miss something here?  Did they just ask me for the SAME information I gave them two month ago with written and signed port notices?  Yes, in fact they just did.  Oh, now it’s a Friday too, so this won’t get done till Monday.  So at this point I take a deep deep deep breath and calm down.

So it’s now Wednesday of the next week.  Not a peep from the new telecom provider.  Why, because they STILL cannot find the numbers to port.  I gave them a list, how hard can it really be?  Seriously, they have had them for two months.  On top of that the old telecom is demanding 10 days to port any numbers.  Keep in mind that we are still paying the old provider and I have threatened our sales rep with a complete cancelation of services if they don’t cooperate, but dead silence is all I hear with a smart ass reply stating that I must follow legal procedures that give them 10 days to legally transition the numbers.  WHY does it take 10 days?  The answer: it doesn’t, it just gives them 10 days to be complete tards while they drown themselves in a pit of sorrow over their loss.  While this sounds stupid, I can’t stress the amount of crap telecom providers must go through to transfer numbers.  I should also mention that they ported these numbers in from sprint/embarq 5 years ago, so it’s not like the numbers were theirs to start with.

Ok, enough of that.  So today I am told that my sales guy from the new telecom will call me back to work through the transferring number to ensure an order gets put in today and its right.  BTW, this is a set of different orders so they won’t be rushing other sites.  Well, it’s now 11:30 PM on the same day, no call, no email, not a peep; yet again.  So at this point I have to call off two more installs until this entire mess is resolved.  Oh and my phone vendor is now upset that they have to put the deployments on hold because of the telecoms.  Someone from them even said to my boss that if they knew about our previous telecom, they would have never done the deal.  WTF!  What a worthless statement, that guy would have licked my boots to get the deal.  Let’s also not forget to mention the fact that they haven't even finished configuring and installing some major backend items of our new phone system! 

So now you see.... why telecom companies suck.