Crap Update

The relocation of my workplace is scheduled for May 14th. As you all know, I've been working full tilt on the move and construction project for two months now. I was finally getting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Count-down to moving day! Soon: over with, done, finito! I'll get my life back!

Then I got a call from All*stream, the phone company that provides our business lines. "Aw, shucks, I'm so sorry, but it seems that it will be impossible to move your phone lines over to the new location on May 14th. I'm not sure when we'll be able to do that. There's a facilities issue. It could take one week to resolve, or it could take two months."

Say what?

First of all, I placed my move order on April 9th, and they waited until May 4th to kindly inform me that we're screwed? Unacceptable. Not being able to even give a ballpark estimate of when it will be resolved? Double-unacceptable!!

They blamed B*ell. They said the lines belong to B*ell, All*stream just rents and resells them, and B*ell isn't cooperating. If we switch all our lines over to B*ell maybe we can get faster service?

Miraculously, my phone hardware sales guy had an internal contact at B*ell. After a lot of back and forth and time spent, the final verdict was that she couldn't help. She said that B*ell has service contracts with all its resellers and that it would be illegal for them to give preferential treatment to B*ell customers. She can't get the lines any faster. End of miracle.

Do you know how much havoc it would cause if we had to change our move date at this point? Not only have we made arrangements with professional stuff movers, copier movers, water cooler movers, mat provider movers, etc. , we have already informed 1200 clients of our move date. We don't have e-mail addresses for our clients. We have 1200 home phone numbers. This means that we may have to inform all those people that their next appointment location is still at our old place, and then half of them will show up at the new site anyway, and it'll be a huge disaster.

Next hope for a miracle is R*ogers business phone services. They may have some lines available to offer phone service to our new building, separate from the B*ell quasi-monopoly. We'll see. A very friendly sales rep called Annemarie is supposed to get back to me by 5pm tonight with an answer one way or the other. The suspense is killing me.

If we don't get our phone lines moved, then we have to postpone the whole relocation. For how long? Anyone's guess. The light at the end of the tunnel blinks out. Darkness. Despair. Doom.

If you're the praying type, you know what to do. (Please and thank you.)