Call It What You Want...

The saga continues.

Last week, I visited my friends at T-mobile, spent some time waiting around, and finally, had the text-message sending and receiving features turned off my phone. I said goodbye to the text messages in this famous post.

Goodbye, until yesterday, when I got the phone out of my coat pocket and saw that I had received two new messages, one from LovelyChelle and one from a new friend, Pam. You have got to be kidding.

So today, I called my friends at T-mobile again to look into why the magic fix only worked for three days. Jamie answered the customer service line and quickly realized that my situation was beyond her control and put me on hold to wait for technical support. (“Your average wait is six minutes. You may choose to hang up and have us call you back. Or press 2 for other options.” Are you kidding? I’m in your queue. I’m waiting. I can put this thing on speaker phone and play with Mark and the computer until you decide to answer…)

Finally, I got Amber. The first question was answered easily enough: Why did I start getting messages again? Well, it seems that while, yes, someone was able to turn off that feature on my phone, the computer sees that phone and says, “Gleeps, that phone doesn’t have text message receiving. I must turn it on!” So in order to keep the text-message receiving feature off, it would have to be turned off every three or four days.

But where are these messages coming from? What is the number of the fellow in Iraq she is trying to reach? Veeeeery mysterious. Amber asks questions. My answers do not come back as they ought. From what numbers have I been getting messages? I read her a couple of 5-digit numbers. Hmm, those should be regular 10-digit numbers… Hmmm.

What model phone do I have? Gee, I don’t know, but it’s made by Nokia.

Ahhhh-haaaa. But, no, hmm, wait a minute, does this phone...? Hmmm, yeah, that’s it.

I’m not getting messages from other t-mobile customers, or even other mobile phone customers. These are AOL instant messages, somehow coming through onto my phone (on occasion). Somehow, AOL was activated on my phone. I must turn it off. Amber instructs me to compose a text message saying “OUT” and send it to a certain number. It doesn’t work. She has to reset the text-message sending feature so that I can send. She does. I send. It goes.

Amber will call back tomorrow to see if I’ve been bothered with anymore messages – AOL Instant messages, not text messages at all.

Possibly this saga is over. Except that I can send and receive actual text messages now, if anyone wants to send them. (Do not take that as an invitation, just a comment.) And I still am not the father, I don't want kisses from Chelle, and, no, I'm not in Iraq.