As of late this morning, we still didn’t have long distance service. Because of the nature of the telephone business there were two possible points of failure – but I knew it was my local company.
I dialed 811 and then, with insight gained from a technician I spoke to yesterday, just kept pressing “0” at every prompt until a human answered.
It wasn’t painful. It wasn’t difficult. It was time consuming. I was called back a few times as technicians used my ‘dial tone’ to make sure their reprogramming had stuck.
My phone now works the way a phone should, but it is becoming increasingly difficult not to seriously consider cutting my bill in half and switching to a VOIP provider.