Phone foolery: Caught between a malcontent and a merger

When was the last time you thought about your office’s phone lines and Internet access? Probably not in a million years, if IT is doing its job correctly. But it can take a lot of hard work to make sure the connections stay open, especially if your tech team faced the same two massive roadblocks — one human, one technical — as we did at my company just to get the system on track.

This tale began when our company acquired a business division in another city as part of our expansion plans. We quickly discovered that one person was in charge at this location and wasn’t about to let go without a fight.

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This division was already established, and we planned on offering the same services to the current customers while trying to increase our sales base. Our company’s managers determined that it made sense to retain the same phone numbers.

Roadblock No. 1: Power-hungry employee

I contacted the division’s office manager, “Jane,” to obtain a copy of the current phone bill and Internet provider’s bill. I planned to roll these numbers over into our account and to evaluate call volume and costs. It looked to be a simple operation.

But when she found out who I was, Jane launched into the story of her shock at finding out that her division was being sold to our company. She wasn’t going to lose her job, but she would be transferred to another location within her company in a different capacity. She told me that she had worked for the current division for 37 years and helped build it from the ground up and now felt like she was being ignored.

This went on for almost an hour. It would be difficult for her, and I certainly sympathized. But I only wanted copies of the bills and the name of the current vendors to complete my work and proceed to the next project. I asked yet again. Jane finally concluded her story and commenced with her next defense tactic: blowing off my request. She told me she’d have to check with the owner to see if she could release that information to me.

For the next week, I tried calling Jane but would be dumped to voicemail. So I switched strategies and called the location manager to perhaps obtain a copy. I knew I was in trouble right away — as I explained the situation, he whispered his replies to keep Jane from hearing him. He checked his desk for copies of the bills, but discovered his desk had been cleaned out.

Not deterred, I decided to call this company’s owner and explain what I needed. Shocked, I was met with the same stonewalling. It was easy to see that Jane ran this division. I thought to myself how grateful I was that our management had decided not to hire her.

I finally obtained some of the information I’d requested because our management threatened to cancel the purchase of this division if we didn’t get it. In the meantime I had made a trip to the location to evaluate it for rewiring needs and to get a feel for the building. I was met by Jane, who acted like I was storming Fort Knox.

During that visit I was able to evaluate the PBX for the phones and see the cable modem for Internet, which had a sticker for the provider affixed to it. Around that same time, our management threatened to cancel this purchase if we didn’t get cooperation, and the division’s owner took the threat seriously. I finally got enough information to proceed.

The phones were rolled over into our account with no problem, and I scheduled an upgrade to the Internet connection, which also went smoothly. Time rolled on, and Jane had been transferred. But the problems weren’t over yet.

Roadblock No. 2: Call me maybe?

By the beginning of the third month, I was approached by the person who handled the account contracts for our company’s remote locations. Apparently, no one had ever renegotiated rates for the phone service, which had dropped drastically over the past decade. The division had been paying too much for years — as would we. I was asked to see if the cable company providing the Internet connection could handle a couple of phones lines, which would allow us to cancel the phone service and save money.

Not remembering which vendor served this location — we used almost 20 across the span of the company — I called the employee who paid the bills for the site. She said there were no payments for any Internet service! I knew we had service, as I had set up the connection and remotely assisted several individuals at that location. What was going on?

Going through my files, I found the contract with the vendor’s name and phone number. I called — lo and behold, that remote location was scheduled to be disconnected the following Thursday for not paying our Internet bill. I told the vendor we couldn’t pay a bill we had never received. It was then I learned that the Post Office was returning the bills as “undeliverable.” (I never got an answer for that one.)

I asked why the company had not notified us when the bill was returned. The procedure when receiving a returned bill was to flag the account, and the customer then gets an automated call. I told the vendor that we had never received a call and asked what number it was dialing — and discovered it had transposed two digits of our phone number. The robo-caller had no way of knowing it was contacting an invalid or incorrect number!

I was able to pay the bill by using a credit card. Once I received confirmation that the account was current, I negotiated with the Internet provider to add new phone lines, canceled the original vendor’s service, and dropped the bill by more than 75 percent, adding up to an all-around IT victory.

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This story, “Phone foolery: Caught between a malcontent and a merger,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.