FAXES. MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE.
Livejournal, I haven't told you about The Fax Calls lately, have I?
There's been this fax machine that's been calling my cell phone sporadically for a while now. Every few weeks/months, it will start calling my phone, usually 10-20 times in a row, with 1-2 sessions in a day, for a few days in a row. The time of day seemed random, usually during business hours but also at odd times. Once, it did this after 1am. I was not happy.
When I pick up the phone, all I hear is a beep. It beeps a single tone about once every 2-3 seconds, indefinitely. If I don't answer, it leaves the beeps as a voice mail, so I pretty much have to answer and hang up to get it to NOT leave me messages.
I didn't realize how long this had been going on until I checked my LJ tags. The first time it happened was almost 2 years ago. See? I chronicled that exciting day in this entry. It was June 2008.
I called T-Mobile, and was told they can't do anything, because the caller ID is blocked so it comes through as UNKNOWN all the time. Apparently T-Mobile is one of the cell phone providers who isn't technologically advanced enough to do block unknown numbers, no matter how badly a customer wants it. Get with the times, T-Mobile, this is 2010 and you should be able to do such a simple thing.
Once it did not come through as unknown, so I sent a fax to the number on the caller ID saying "stop faxing my cell phone!" but it didn't stop the faxes. I submitted the fax number to the FCC, even, and it didn't stop the faxes.
Today, the calls were coming in at an insane rate. I'd pick-up-and-hang-up, and before I could even set the phone down, it would be ringing again. I literally lost count of how many times the fax machine called me. Frustrated, I called T-Mobile, not expecting them to be able to do anything but looking forward to complaining loudly.
As expected, the girl on the other end of the line couldn't block Unknown Number calls, but she DID help me change my voice mail number so calls go to a fax machine instead of voice mail. I think it's because her name was also Jessica, so she was automatically awesome. I plugged in the number for the fax machine in our office, and waited. After a while, it worked and a fax came through!
Guess what it was. Guess. Keep in mind that this has been happening for almost 2 years. Keep in mind that the calls have come at all kinds of odd hours. Then guess.
....it was from a freaking insurance company, to a doctor's office. That's right. From one office to another. And no one in either office thought to wonder why all of the faxes from Company A weren't getting to Doctor B. For two years. Yeah....
I called the "From" phone number, and talked to the lady, and asked her to please for the love of all things good in the world stop sending faxes to my cell phone. She asked for the case number on the fax I got, and I guess only changed the fax number for that case (and not the master file for the doctor's office) because I kept getting fax calls even after that. They stopped mid-afternoon, but I don't trust it- if tomorrow is 100% silent, I'll maybe start to believe it's done.
I looked up the doctor's office and called them, and asked for the contact name on the fax. "Yeah, she handles Company A, but she only works Mondays and Wednesdays," was the only answer I got. I explained that Company A had my cell phone number on record as their fax number, and asked if they had been missing faxes, and suggested that maybe that would be a reason why. "We don't have any problems getting faxes." I wanted to point out that I didn't ask if they had problems with ALL incoming faxes, but since the lady cleared didn't care at all about anyone, I just decided to call back Monday and talk to the contact on the fax directly.
So yeah, thanks to incompetence at the insurance company office and seemingly rampant apathy at the doctor's office, I've been getting fax calls for almost two years. I'm about *thisclose* to flying to New York and wreaking some havoc.
There's been this fax machine that's been calling my cell phone sporadically for a while now. Every few weeks/months, it will start calling my phone, usually 10-20 times in a row, with 1-2 sessions in a day, for a few days in a row. The time of day seemed random, usually during business hours but also at odd times. Once, it did this after 1am. I was not happy.
When I pick up the phone, all I hear is a beep. It beeps a single tone about once every 2-3 seconds, indefinitely. If I don't answer, it leaves the beeps as a voice mail, so I pretty much have to answer and hang up to get it to NOT leave me messages.
I didn't realize how long this had been going on until I checked my LJ tags. The first time it happened was almost 2 years ago. See? I chronicled that exciting day in this entry. It was June 2008.
I called T-Mobile, and was told they can't do anything, because the caller ID is blocked so it comes through as UNKNOWN all the time. Apparently T-Mobile is one of the cell phone providers who isn't technologically advanced enough to do block unknown numbers, no matter how badly a customer wants it. Get with the times, T-Mobile, this is 2010 and you should be able to do such a simple thing.
Once it did not come through as unknown, so I sent a fax to the number on the caller ID saying "stop faxing my cell phone!" but it didn't stop the faxes. I submitted the fax number to the FCC, even, and it didn't stop the faxes.
Today, the calls were coming in at an insane rate. I'd pick-up-and-hang-up, and before I could even set the phone down, it would be ringing again. I literally lost count of how many times the fax machine called me. Frustrated, I called T-Mobile, not expecting them to be able to do anything but looking forward to complaining loudly.
As expected, the girl on the other end of the line couldn't block Unknown Number calls, but she DID help me change my voice mail number so calls go to a fax machine instead of voice mail. I think it's because her name was also Jessica, so she was automatically awesome. I plugged in the number for the fax machine in our office, and waited. After a while, it worked and a fax came through!
Guess what it was. Guess. Keep in mind that this has been happening for almost 2 years. Keep in mind that the calls have come at all kinds of odd hours. Then guess.
....it was from a freaking insurance company, to a doctor's office. That's right. From one office to another. And no one in either office thought to wonder why all of the faxes from Company A weren't getting to Doctor B. For two years. Yeah....
I called the "From" phone number, and talked to the lady, and asked her to please for the love of all things good in the world stop sending faxes to my cell phone. She asked for the case number on the fax I got, and I guess only changed the fax number for that case (and not the master file for the doctor's office) because I kept getting fax calls even after that. They stopped mid-afternoon, but I don't trust it- if tomorrow is 100% silent, I'll maybe start to believe it's done.
I looked up the doctor's office and called them, and asked for the contact name on the fax. "Yeah, she handles Company A, but she only works Mondays and Wednesdays," was the only answer I got. I explained that Company A had my cell phone number on record as their fax number, and asked if they had been missing faxes, and suggested that maybe that would be a reason why. "We don't have any problems getting faxes." I wanted to point out that I didn't ask if they had problems with ALL incoming faxes, but since the lady cleared didn't care at all about anyone, I just decided to call back Monday and talk to the contact on the fax directly.
So yeah, thanks to incompetence at the insurance company office and seemingly rampant apathy at the doctor's office, I've been getting fax calls for almost two years. I'm about *thisclose* to flying to New York and wreaking some havoc.