During the first year of my first “real job,” I splurged on a new bedroom set and upgraded from a studio to a one-bedroom apartment. Of course, that meant my phone service had to be switched over. I waited and waited until well past the three-hour time period in which I was told the phone company would visit. No one came. I called the phone company and the representative made no apologies for having wasted half my work day—all she did was curtly ask when I’d like to reschedule. This being the early 1990s, I had to have a landline, and grudgingly scheduled a new work order to get my phone installed.

But I vowed that if I lived to be 100, I would live to see consumer reliance on such cavalier landline service providers fall by the wayside.

I have been vindicated.

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