Old Phone Lines - Part 2

Techs from Qwest came over today to hook up to our underground lines. They got quite a kick out of the old lines.

A while back we'd noticed that the lines running from the pole were not anchored to the house properly. They went though the branches of a large maple and then through a hole in the window frame of one of the second floor bedrooms. It's bad enough that it went through a window frame, but it also wasn't anchored to the house before it went through the window frame... ;-)

The tech anchored it properly and gave us the card for his supervisor, who we should call when we were "ready to replace this mess and do it right", as he put it.

I finished the inside wiring a while ago and finally got around to calling the supervisor this week. He got quite a chuckle when I told him that there were binding posts on the inside of a bedroom window frame. "How did it get like that?" he asked. "I dunno," I replied. "We've only lived here a year, so it has probably been that way since Alexander Graham Bell installed it."

He was very responsive and came out quickly this morning to check everything out. Later in the day another tech came to remove the old wire from the trees and connected a new line to our buried cable. The tech was quite amused too at the way the cables draped into the tree and then to the house. He saved a piece of the old line for us just for fun - note the splices and broken strain relievers in the short span. It's no wonder it stopped working every time it rained. I'd already connected a phone so as soon as he punched down the lines we got dial tone. He was really excited and told my wife, "Hey, hangup and let me call you!" He took out his cell and dialed, but... the phone didn't ring. They looked at each other for a minute and then realized... the ringer was off!

I'm happy with Qwest's response and customer service and glad we could provide fodder for their "shop stories".

Thanks Shawn!