Long ago (50 years), far away (outside N.Y. city), there was a monopoly that owned anything to do with telephones. I mean we’re talking the lines, we’re talking phones (rotary), directory assistance, long distance, local calling, repair. You name it, they owned it all. We had a local calling area that covered 10 miles north (all trees) and 1.25 miles south, where most people lived. You didn’t have to worry about talking to anyone in your calling area because it was a fixed rate, unlimited usage per month. The only problem was the dreaded message units. Message units were billed by the time you talked to people outside your local area (most) and not quite long distance. I could never figure out how it cost me twice as much to call a friend two miles away than my uncle in Houston, Texas, 1,600 miles away (do I hear ripoff?). The excuses given for this discrepancy were lame, like more lines, therefore more repair, more technicians, and on and on. They never mentioned how much more revenue this slick system brought in and that there were 10 times as many calls being made in the greater NY area (cha-ching!). I swore the first chance I got I would leave the monopoly.

Fast-forward 50 years. I am no longer a customer of the old monopoly; my days of being abused are over. My current company is a sleek, streamlined, newfangled, state-of-the-art voice-over internet (VOIP) phone company. I have voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, long distance, and anything else you can think of for $17.95 a month. (Yesss!!!) Problem solved!

Fast-forward 3 months. I pick up my new VOIP phone to check my voice mail. No response. I go to the website and it reads “Voice mail is temporarily down.” No big deal. Must be making improvements, I think. After all, it’s a state-of-the-art VOIP! Two days later I can’t access the website. My voice mail is not working, no one is answering the phone, and I’m getting worried…stay tuned.