"Qworst" and "US Worst" are amusing nicknames many in the I.T. community has given to our local telephone company, but is the company deserving of these monikers?

Let me share a recent experience I had with Qwest and then you decide.

Since 2004, we've had a standalone DSL line at our home. This means we have DSL service over a pair of copper wires that would ordinarily also carry telephone service, but does not. My wife and I both carry cell phones, so we did not see the point of telephone service.

As our kids have gotten older, it began to make sense to have telephone service into our home. We considered VOIP, but concerns about 911 services swayed us to decide to just order a dialtone from Qwest.

I knew Qwest had an online facility for making changes to your account, so I went there first on 16 August to make this change to my account. It wasn't straightforward, but in the end, I got basic telephone service added to my account. I received an order number and an installation date of 17 August, the next day.

The next day, I checked throughout the day for a dialtone and found nothing. As the day inched closed to 5:00, I decided to call Qwest. The gentleman I spoke to looked into the order referenced by the number I gave him. He discovered the provisioning department had stopped the order because "you can't do that online. You have to call us to add dialtone service to a standalone DSL line."

I still find it amusing Qwest's website let me place the order, gave me a sales order number and an installation date... when what I was doing was not allowed.

So, I told the Qwest representative I would like to proceed with the change on the phone with him. He explained that I would be given a new telephone number because the number I had was reserved in a block of numbers specifically for standalone DSL customers. I was disappointed because I liked the number that was associated with the standalone DSL, but told him to go ahead.

I was given a new telephone number and was told the change would be effective 23 August. I had either heard of or directly experiencd occasions in the past where Qwest assigns DSL customers to their default ISP, MSN, despite the customer's requests, so I confirmed, at least twice, during the call that no changes would be made to the DSL portion of my account; My ISP would remain the same. The representativve assured me nothing would change each time I asked.

By now, you KNOW something is going to go wrong.

On the morning of 23 August, I couldn't access anything via the Internet. I checked the DSL modem and its indicator lights showed a DSL connection. I logged into the DSL modem and checked the status of the PPPoA connection and could tell it was cycling through a process of trying to log into the ISP and failing.

At this point, I called my ISP figuring they needed my new phone number so they could assign my DSL service to the new circuit. They said they had a disconnect order from Qwest, but nothing about new service on the new number. The tech support representative from my ISP (XMission) said he would call Qwest and conference me in. In a couple minutes, we had a woman on the line who looked into the situation.

She came back and informed me that my ISP had been changed to MSN. I immediately told her that was unacceptable. I mean, sheeesh! I work from home and several client sites have trust relationships set up with me based on my IP address. Without actually having that IP address, supporting those clients was going to be much more difficult.

The Qwest representative told me she was sorry and that they would switch me back to XMission. However, it would take THREE BUSINESS DAYS! In this case, it would be five days before I'd be back with XMission.

I was really pissed at this point. The XMission representative said he'd talk to XMission's DSL administrator to see if there was anything they could do. The Qwest representative apologized a few more times and said she asked her supervisor if there was anything Qwest could do to expedite the change and was told there was not.

Well, I knew someone who knew someone at Qwest- pretty high-up at Qwest, so I called him and told him what had happened. He let me know a little later his contact at Qwest would get it taken care of as soon as he got into the office.

Later that afternoon while I was at the office, I checked in again with XMission to see if they had my DSL circuit back yet. They didn't have anything and suggested calling Qwest to check on the status of the change.

So, I called Qwest. After a considerable hold time, a young man answered and after explaining my situation to him three or four times, he placed me on hold for a few minutes and then came back and told me he could't help me because he didn't have any sales order information and I'd need to talk to the sales office. He said he'd be happy to transfer me, so I accepted. Several more minutes of QWest's mundane hold music went by before the same young man came back on the line to ask me if I was still there. I said I was and he said he would transfer me to the sales office now. More mundane hold music for several minutes. The young man came back on the line to ask me if I had spoken to "Natalie" yet. No, I told him. He said he'd transfer me.

You get the picture. When I finally got through to someone else, it wasn't anyone named Natalie, it was just some guy saying, "Hello? Hello?"

I told him the whole story again. "So you want MSN as your ISP?" he asked.

No! I told him, I just wanted my old ISP back!

He said he couldn't do that. I demanded to know why I was transfered to him if he couldn't do anything about my problem. I honestly don't remember what he said because at that point, I just said I was finished with the call and would call someone else.

I terminated the call and promptly punched a nearby whiteboard with my fist, breaking the skin on one of my knuckles.

Then, I managed to get through to my associate's Qwest contact who said he would get the change taken care of that day. He was much more helpful and conferenced me in with some higher-level support people who worked directly with the "translations department" to get the DSL connection moved back to my ISP. Within a few minutes, I could ping the DSL modem at my house.

And, it all happened in less than three business days!

"Spirit Of Service." Isn't that Qwest's marketing slogan? I wonder if it means the real service is gone and all that's left is a ghost or spirit of the service that was once there, ages or eons before.