The Number You Have Reached is Not in Service

Tonight, I was not feeling well, so I decided to rent a movie and curl up on the couch with a good pay per view movie, and I actually stayed awake through this one, though it wasn't easy! Then, when the movie was over, my daughter, as teenagers are known to do, tried to call her friend on the phone.



"Mom, why is there no dial tone on the phone?!" As though the world was coming to an end.

"I don't know. Do I look like the phone company? Check my phone and see if it has a dial tone," I tell her.

"Nope, it's dead too."

We both grab our cell phones and try to call the numbers, and we get a fast busy signal.

"Okay, call Grande on your cell and let them know," I order her.

"Uhmm, mom, is their number 555-5555?" she queries.

"Yes," I respond.

"Uhm, listen to this," she says.

She puts her cell phone on speaker and dials the number to the Grande offices again. I hear,

"The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up now."

Huh? Okay, try again, same number, same message. Please hang up now? Uhm, really? I was planning on holding the cell phone to my ear for as long as I could. I would have never throught to hang the phone up when the call was done. Wow. How informative this message was! Well, at least the recording was polite, after all, it did say, 'please'.

Now, my phone service is with Grande, and so is my cable internet and my digital cable, but my internet is up and I had just finished watching a pay per view movie, so I know the cable is working. Humm, okay. So I go to the computer and look up Grande's site, and I get the number to our sister city (local call between cities) and call the Grande phone number for Midland.

"The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up now."

Well, isn't that interesting? So I find the number to the main office for Grande Communications in San Marcus, Texas. I'm not sure why anyone would have corporate offices in San Marcus, but I digress. Picking up the phone to dial that number, I get a series of "Push 1 for..." instructions, but eventually, I was able to get through to a real, live, breathing person.

"Grande Communications," he answered the phone.

"Uhm, yes, I live in Odessa, and..."

"...your phones are down?" he laughed.

"Yeah, I guess you already knew that, huh?" I laughed back.

"Well, we kinda figured it out about 15 or 20 minutes ago, when our office started receiving about 45 calls per minute on our switchboard, and then we couldn't reach the Midland/Odessa offices ourselves."

"Ah, well, yes, that would do it," I laughed. "Does anyone know what's wrong yet?"

"No, not yet. Last I heard, we had just gotten a hold of a tech rep. We'll have it up as soon as we can though."

Apparently, all of their on-call tech reps have home phone service with Grande as well, and since the phones were all down, the home office was unable to contact their emergency on-call techs to repair the problem. I found this highly amusing.

Hummm, very interesting. Now, Grande Communications is a small internet service provider and cable provider, which also provides other bundled services such as home telephones and security system monitoring and packages. Since all the security systems run off the phone lines too, that means that all the security systems for Grande are down in the area too. Hope no one has a "This House Protected By Grande Communications Alarm Monitoring Services" or something such as that in their front yard.

Truth is, I was having problems with my phone line earlier today while talking long distance to a friend. It hung up on me once, and it had a lot of clicking a line noise. This was around 2 this afternoon or so. Perhaps if I'd reported it then, this double city-wide outage wouldn't have happened.

Yes, folks, the phones being out in Odessa is all my fault! Blame Michy!

All right, now that I've made fun of Grande a bit, let me give them some props. They have the single best customer service and tech support personnel in the freaking state. I have left service providers before (ie SPRINT PCS) because of their poor customer service, even if it meant I had to pay more elsewhere. I have NEVER had a problem with how Grande has treated me, AND they are cheaper than the other guys - can't beat that.

But still...you have to wonder what happened to wipe out phone service to approximately, what I'm guessing is about 25% all all phone subscribers in two cities...as well as knocking out the local offices to get a message that says, "The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up now."

Ah, to the writer's mind, I can see so many scenarios...it's a plot, I tell you, a scheme...a diabolical plan, it is...yes, conspiracy at the highest levels....mystery, intrigue..

THE DAY THE PHONES WENT DOWN IN A SMALL WEST TEXAS TOWN!