Oh noes it didn't work what do I do? (ranty)

[Chanlin]

This one is short sweet and ranty on my part.

Small background: I work for a prepaid cellular phone service.

Right now we have a situation where the *228 (aka over the air or automatic) programming is not working for new activations. We have many panicky dealers calling up asking what to do.

My conversations inevitably go like this:

Me: Did you try programming the phone manually?

Dealer: No/ why would I do that?/ What do you mean?/ There is a manual programming?

Me: Do you know how to manually program the phone you have?

At this point if I keep getting dealers answering yes I think I may be going to jail for committing an act of extreme violence to someone. For the time being yes answers are eliciting

Me: Ok, so program it manually and that should solve your problem. (I try to hide the snark/sarcasm in my voice but its getting to be difficult since this is pretty much a carbon copy of every call I have taken for the last 3 hours.

No answers result in me taking an extra 10 to 15 minutes to help them program it.

[jjllbb]

I don't quite get the technicalities of it. But i DO know what it's like to repeat yourself OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.....

and you have my sympathy. I bet you're going to start dreaming about saying that stuff. THAT'S when you know it's time to take a vactaion or kill someone. either or.

[Chanlin]

I don't quite get the technicalities of it.

.

Thankfully it was fixed an hour before my shift was over.

*228 is a sequence of numbers you can dial from your phone in the USA which is fairly universal to all carriers. This will tell your phone and the cellular network that you want to download the phones pertinent service information to the phone including the Phone number, various technical information that helps the phone communicate with the network such as "Whats my home area" and "what service provider am I with" and what settings do I need to communicate with their network etc etc etc. This takes a several step manual process and boils it down to a 1 to 2 minute automatic process.

In the USA and most other countries most phones are pre-branded with a service provider in mind IE a phone branded with Verizon's logo already has a good chunk of Verizon's network info in it sans information regarding the phones home area.

[technopoptart]

I don't quite get the technicalities of it. But i DO know what it's like to repeat yourself OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.....

and you have my sympathy. I bet you're going to start dreaming about saying that stuff. THAT'S when you know it's time to take a vactaion or kill someone. either or.

During my physics class i ended up waking up in the morning half concious and kept trying to put the numbers on the alarm clock into physics equations but the dammed colon kept confusing me.

[Chanlin]

but the dammed colon kept confusing me.

Curse you colon, your cunning plan has foiled me again.