Sprinting to get Nexteled, Part 1

I just love change (this may force me to reconsider any change in Washington), especially when the change is made in the guise of improved customer service.

Here's the story: Last night I decided to download a new ring tone for my phone; Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers. Great song and I even had a person to assign it to.

So, I log into my Sprint account and the fun begins.

Let me say I did know that a change was coming and that it would require me to jump through the hoops that they set up (all in the name of improved security - and with what I just went through with them on the address change lord knows they needed it). So I was ready when the page telling me I had to create all new user names, passwords, pins, security question answers...the whole 9 yards.

While filling out the form, all I could think of was "Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

Hell, I had barely gotten over the same type of experience when AT&T switched over to Cingular's computer system (you see, this is Sprint switching to Nextel, the 2nd customer service rep I talked to this morning confirmed it).

So anyway, last night I created and answered. Then came the magic moment.....I attempted to log in. The new user name was invalid, the new password was invalid. So I click on the "forgot user name button to get them to tell me what it was I just created (obviously some 3 headed republican type animal) and they send me back something completely different than I had just typed in.

In all my wisdom, I attempted to log in with what they said I used for a user name....user name invalid. By this time I am getting just a tad frustrated. After all, I just want to download a f#@& ing ring tone (I still have "Time" but am running out of patience.

Then, I go through the forgot user name process again just to see if they are consistent and of course they aren't. I get the name I had originally entered. Now it's time for the password.

Type,type,type,type,type (it had to be 6 to 10 characters and a combination of numbers and letters).....password invalid. Click - forgot password, type user name, type pin....pin invalid.

While all this is going on, Della, the lovely NK's cpu is acting up, seems to be some registry issues so the sloooooooooowneeeeeeeees is contributing to the level of frustration and I meekly surrender all the while wanting to throw phone and computer out the window but since we moved the office into a windowless room I just deflatedly shuffle out of the room and down the stairs to watch the Daily Show (dammit I forgot it was a rerun).

Intermission: Take a break, have a beer, maybe a glass of wine or a martini while you sing that favorite movie house theme, "Let's all go to the lobby".

I'll be back in a minute with part 2.