Press ONE for English.

Don't ya just love trying to get customer service when you have a problem with your phone, tv or utility services.

After pressing a plethora of numbers to get to what you think just might be the correct department you are asked to enter your 47-digit account number. Just don't screw up in entering or you are starting right back at the beginning. Then when you actually do get through, the first thing they ask you is to repeat vocally the 47 digit account number.

You are absolutely certain that you pressed one for English. However when you finally do get through to a real person, they neither speak nor understand English. If you ask them some personal questions, you'll probably find that they are located in India or Taiwan or the Philippines somewhere and it's quite likely they've never even seen a satellite dish much less know how to fix one.

Well it was pay back yesterday.

Our satellite quit sending the video signal although the sound was coming through. I was at work and Alb was working hard on the basement. Jed was bored. And he wanted tv - NOW GAWDAMMIT.

He managed to get through to a real person and was in the process of "downloading upgrades" while giving play-by-play reports to the person on the phone when I walked in from work.

Obviously they had asked him for the PIN number at some point in the conversation. As soon as he saw me he switched in mid sentence to tell the guy the "one of the names on the account" just walked in and would know the password.

I told him the PIN number and he repeated, "9-4-1-1. Hey that's our old address. I guess we just decided to use our old address as the code..." and goes into a big long story about living on Old Summit Lk Rd. I knew what he was saying and even I had a hard time understanding any of it.

I'm sure the person on the line had no clue what just happened and reverted Jed's attention back to the tv by asking what was happening on the screen.

"It's still downloading. But this is BS.... blah blah blah.." he says as he presses CANCEL half way through the process. And the tv flickered and came on. Apparently the conversation between the 2 non-English individuals did manage to accomplish something.

But of course, as required by law in India, they cannot hang up the phone without trying to sell you something or upgrade your service. It took about 15 repeats of the same sentence, "No we don't want 2 more high definition channels for 5 bucks a month extra. Perhaps we will in the future but just not right now." Only coming from Jed's lips it sounded nothing like that. I don't think the guy ever did understand the response. But when Jed gave him a 9-out-of-10 for his helpfulness, he happily hung up the phone from probably his most bizarre encounter of the day.

I don't know what high def channels we had in the first place, so I can't check to see if we have 2 more. And it remains to be seen if our bill will be 5 bucks extra next month.