What makes a business think its time is more important than its customer’s time? Don’t say: Your call may be recorded because…  (Liar liar.) Or:    … your call is important to us (that’s why we don’t hire enough people to answer your important calls). Or:   … key in the name of the person you want to talk to.  (Yeah.  Right.) What makes you think your time is more important than your customer’s time? Are lousy telephone business practices the norm? I know people who don’t bother calling any airline but Southwest, because SWA answers the phone – right now – with a human being ready to take care of the caller.  Try calling Delta.   (Note -  keying in zero two or three times over any recording will get an agent mucho faster).  Or (please) take Cell 1.  Owned by Western Wireless, they rank near the bottom for customer PR. Their web site and automated 800-service procedures show little more than extreme paranoia with enough layers on the onion to guarantee unpleasant relations.  The fruitless search for a specific layer came to light in attempts to get them to fix 928 612 0266.  It’s a cell phone keyed to their Navajo Mountain (south central Utah) site.  That site is switched from Cedar City, Utah (where I have a Class 4/5 office).  The network could not call that number going on five months.  Dave Tishnell, their dealer in Page, Arizona (the nearest town) flat out said the fast busy (FBT) when that number was called comes from Cell 1’s Cedar City switch.  (Dave sells and repairs most of the two-way and microwave west of Navajo Mountain from Page, Arizona – within the coverage area of that Cell 1 signal area). Tried calling Cell-1’s Cedar City roamer access number 435 680 7626.  Then completed by dialing the specific cell number.  The phone responded. (If you don’t hear a ring back tone, the phone is not hearing the call).  Wade through layers of Cell-1’s gawd awful answering system.  Finally give detailed trouble reports.  Nothing.  One closed ticket said they don’t serve Page.  Another lady agreed that the Cedar tech (was/is) grumpy about being bugged.    No, can’t talk to the manager.  No, can’t talk to the maintainer.  Different approach.   Demand a refund/credit for the months of outages.  Four months.  In May the network began to complete calls to that phone.    Then came ATT wireless Eons ago, Bellcore assigned me the last remaining block of unassigned 800 NXX numbers that had a middle vowel.  629.  Works out to MAX or MAY.  U.S. West reprogrammed their tandems in Utah to route all 800-629-xxxx traffic to my Utah tandem.  We would then send the calls on to our customer’s destination. These numbers only worked from Utah and Northern Nevada where my company has access tandems.  Bellcore/Telcordia/SMS-800 (nee Mike Wade) have spent a pile of dough down the years in defiance of orders from the 10th Circuit and District Court, to allow us continued use of those numbers.  Other than a hundred or so we have, the remainder sit in permanent unavailable status in the ResBorg accessible SMS database. Except when ATT wireless took it on themselves to block all calls to 800-629-xxxx.  They took the trouble. Again.  And again.  On a Monday following Memorial Day, Tanya said the calls all went to Beehive Tel. Beehive was not available for tests over the holidays.  Not true. My office is manned by live people 16/7.  Took five weeks.  Must mean ATT wireless repair also sucks.  Editorial brevity Some of you complain that I don’t use enough words to explain a story topic. That’s ‘cause there is not enough room. And this issue cuts it 13% more. C’est la vie. Copyright 2003 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   ©  Beehive Telephone Co.