I have a tiny microcosm experience with y2k bugs in my daily life already and they have been very frustrating. One of the most difficult is with GTE, my phone service. First I could get no dial tone. Then I got a fast busy signal everytime I picked up the phone. This was 3 weeks ago. I called and reported it.. The representative told me that their computer showed no problems on my phone line. I called my neighbors, they were having the same trouble. We called back in larger numbers. GTE said "We are working on our y2k fixes and we may be experiences some problems". Probably this was a clerk who was violating policy by even saying that. So, they fixed our phone lines. A week later, same problems again. We all called and this time the lady my husband was talking to said, "Wait, my computer screen just went down, I'll have to get back with you". We waited. We called again. They said, "Our computer shows no problems on your lines". My husband got irate and said, "Okay, you come out here and fix it and if it's my problems I'll pay and if it's your problem you eat it". It got fixed....until today. Now, we have a dial tone, but there are a few selected numbers that we simply can't call. I mean you get a dial tone, dial the numbers and NOTHING happens. Other calls go through just fine. We called again, the lady said, "Our computers show no trouble on your line". We told then that we can't dial certain unrelated numbers (no apparent pattern to the numbers that won't go through). They said we must be doing something wrong and their checking shows everything is fine.

Again, my husband said, "You come out here and fix my phone line, come into my house, use my phone, let me show you what is wrong. If it is my phone I'll pay for it, if it is yours you fix it".

They said that's not the way they work....

Now you tell me, if this is multiplied times 20 or 30 other businesses and organization, how do we keep our sanity.

Also, I ran into a lady who lives about 16 miles away, and I was whining to her about my phone and she said, "You have GTE? I said yes, and she said, I'm having the same problems.".

Again, my fear is that some of these y2k problems that get incorporated into the fixes will mean that we will have diminished services and getting them fixed will take much time and energy on our part, because the business is not showing it has a problem.

Consider the banks.......

-- LindaO (lindao@hotmail.com), September 26, 1999

Answers

Gee...no, GTE!

.

-- corrine l (corrine@iwaynet.net), September 26, 1999.

LindaO, what state and county are you in? I just want to know where this is happening. We have GTE in Snohomish County, WA and haven't had these problems. Of course, we are getting a new area code sometime in the next year and that always screws us up for a while.

-- (formerly known as nobody@nowhere.not), September 26, 1999.

I'm in Texas.

-- LindaO (lindao@hotmail.com), September 26, 1999.

Linda, I'm in Denton, on GTE...have had no continuing problems, although there have been days in the past four months when I couldn't get a call through to Ft.Worth. Nothing that continued for more than a day. Until about a month ago when I had off and on problems with email (GTE is my ISP). They got it straightened out (it was upgrades -- area wide) and everything has been fine since then.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), September 26, 1999.

All my ex's live in Tex's!

-- bbbb (bbbb@bbbb.com), September 27, 1999.

We had similar problems with GTE on both of our lines all summer. Sometimes one line would go dead, sometimes both -- at the same instant. We'd call GTE on one of our cell phones and get the runaround. Each time, the phones would start working again after anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, and each time, GTE claimed that they never found any reason for the outage.

During one of the outages, which happened in the wee hours of the night, we did some "testing" of our own. We tried calling other numbers in our local exchange, starting with the school where my wife teaches, since we knew we wouldn't be waking anyone up there. Same thing -- fast busy, and later on, a recording saying the line was out of service.

After we tried the school, we tried relatives (*grin*), and finally, a few random numbers, and *all* of them were out of service. We concluded that the entire area had *no* telephone service!

We called GTE back and got the same guy. We told him he might want to reconsider his earlier "promise" to "try" to get our service back by the *next* evening, since whatever it was, it had taken out the whole switch. He kinda gulped, and said he'd get on it.

At about 6 or 7 in the AM, we got a call from GTE, checking to see if our phone was working yet. We said yeah, what was the problem? They said they didn't find anything wrong.

Right.

GTE = "Great Toads of Entropy" (Copr. 1986, Ron Schwarz *g*)

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), September 27, 1999.

PS: I forgot to mention -- we're in Western MI.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), September 27, 1999.

We have GTE in Hawaii...I haven't seen any more failures than normal.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 27, 1999.

We're here in central NC and no problems so far. But thanks for the head's up, just in case we DO have problems.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), September 27, 1999.

Oh LindaO,

What an incredible set of circumsi... I mean circumstances. On June 29,1999 I attended a Y2K community awareness meeting here in N.W. Indiana. One of the seven panelists was a PR and marketing rep. from GTE. Her name? Linda Williams. Where's she from? Dallas TX. what did she say? Reading from my scribbled notes from three months ago:

" have 370 milliom dollars alloted for Y2K remediation."

"deadline for compliance is June 30, 1999." "have a strategy of "Century Compliance."

"on target...working hand in hand with vendors."

"no guarantee but we are confident that all will be well."

"GTE MANUFACTURES NO HARDWARE SO IT CANNOT GUARANTEE NO FAILURES IN THAT RESPECT.... MUST CONTACT HARDWARE MANUFACTURER PERSONALY FOR STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE."

She reiterated this statement at least two more times during this event.

Think about that for one moment. They don't manufacture any harware so they are not responsible for any failures that may arrise from their use... The phone in your hand, Hardware. The routers, Hardware. The relays & switchs, Hardware. The mainframes, the PC's, the embededs, and the wires and optics that connect them all..... HARDWARE. Just exactly WHAT is it that they are responsible for? I for one don't know because there's not much left to be responsible for once you've taken all the HARDWARE out of the picture now is there? Billing maybe!? Maybe GTE isn't really a telecomunications company after all. Just an accounting firm with a phone company kind of name. Anyway...

After the meeting was over I was able to ask a few questions to the panelists. I asked Ms. Linda Williams if she had, or was planning to purchase an electric generator for use in case of power failures during the roll-over. She answered with an emphatic "No" It was my impression that, from what she said, that she thought they were too dangerous, and were unesessary even though she lived in an all electric home. It hadn't occurred to me at that momment but when I was able to give it just a little thought I got really, really pissed. Of course it's no big deal to go without heat in the dead of winter when you live damn near in Mexico! It's another thing when it's -10 degrees outside with a wind chill of -25 degrees and you have no heat. It's not a matter of putting on a sweater and maybe another blanket on for the night. It becomes a matter of life and death in it's most literal sense! I lived in White bear Lake, MN. (sub. of St. Paul, MN.) for three winters and it is not uncommon to have temps of -15 to -20 for days on end (this may be the high for the day) and wind chills of MINUS EIGHTY degrees! I am not exaggerating. But, I digress.

Linda, If your recent troubles are any indication of things to come I suggest it's time for another trip to Sam's Club and another cord of wood.

-- John F. (millenniumadrenaline@hotmail.com), September 27, 1999.

This is the first time I have posted in a few months, but thought it might intrest some of you.

We too have GTE (we live in central Illinios). For the past month maybe two, one of our two phone lines will just go dead. Sometimes there is a strange clicking sound and sometimes a buz. It happens randomly on either phone line and at no particular time of day/night. I also have called GTE (most of the time I still have one line). They also say "we see no problems with your line." But within a few hours/days it is fixed. Go figure.

Another small problem..... our vet.

I asked our vet Febuary this year how they were comming in thier efforts to become Y2k compliant? He said "Oh well hun... I'm not really that conserned... we are going to get all new computers sometime this fall of 99.

Its fall of 1999... they are puting in a new system of somekind (I'm not a puter teck). But I can say they keep billing me incorrectly. Two months ago they said I owed them $35.00, so I went in and payed it. The next month they said I had a CREDIT of $138.00....I thought did I send them my phone payment by mistake. So I went in again to see what was the deal. They said ..... we are having problems.... no you do not have a credit here but owe us $180.00. I said can you look up why I owe you $180.00? He said..."well not really, we are having problems with our computers (he doent know anything more about computers than I do.)He said just let it ride for a month and I will have the girls take a look at it. He has been doing the apoitments and all of theclerks work for sometime now (because "the girls" are staring at the computer screen).

Well its a new month and I got another bill from our vet. We have a balance of $0 again. But on the statment it showed a chare of $1.30 then a credit, a charge of $7.90 then a credit, a charge of $2.12 then a credit....... In red letters at the bottem of the page it said, "please be paitent with us, we are working on our computers, becoming Y2k compliant.

-- bulldog (sniffin@around.com), September 27, 1999.

This is a notice posted on my ISP:

Sep 27th - GTE is having problems

This morning GTE began having problems with people dialing into our ###-#### Mxxxxx, NC number. If you are getting a fast busy when dialing this number, please call and report the trouble to GTE at 1- 800-483-4400. We are working on this from our end as well, but the more people that report the problem, the faster GTE will get the problem fixed. (Number and city purposely ommitted by me)

-- cb (GTE_NOT_@LL._That_Compliant), September 27, 1999.

i also live in GTE country, in northern indiana. this reminds me of an incident that happened a few years ago. my husband and i attended a local seminar where the speaker was a disaster preparedness expert from california. in his speech, he jokingly referred to GTE as standing for the "great telephone experiment".

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), September 27, 1999.