This deal’s red all over

I received a late notice from Sonera today. A very late late notice. This is the first time I’ve seen this bill from the ADSL line at Kapteeninkatu. The original unpaid bill is from last December!

I guess I could have avoided this. When I disconnected the line, which was still in my name even though I had moved out from Kapteeninkatu already last August, the customer service lady said there was a two week notice for termination, so I had guessed that there’d be another bill coming. It never came.

The people living at Kapteeninkatu at the time the line was disconnected said they didn’t need the ADSL line (though they had no compuctions against using it), so they weren’t going to pay for it. It pissed me off, I mean, I hadn’t been living there for months, but it was too much trouble to try to get anyone else to cough up the money.

I’ll suck it up, whatever.

I try to pay the bill.

“Invalid account number,” the net bank tells me, in angry red letters.

Huh? I check the number. Re-type it very carefully.

Invalid account number!

This is a first. The account number printed on Sonera’s bill is wrong.

I try calling Sonera. It’s fifteen past three here in Copenhagen. That means it’s fifteen after four in Finland. The creditor department has closed fifteen minutes ago. I try calling them anyway. Dee dee dee. I hear the three ascending notes of a faulty phone number.

Again: huh? The number doesn’t work. I go to Sonera’s website and try their main office. That doesn’t work either. There’s something wrong here.

Evidently Telmore doesn’t allow me to call international service numbers. Or maybe I can’t call international numbers at all. I don’t know, I haven’t tried yet.

This is not my day. I switch SIM cards, put in my Finnish DNA card, try calling Sonera again. Sure enough, this I get through, and the creditor office is closed. I get a recording telling me when it’s open. For some reason, because I’m a fool, I call Sonera’s main corporate switch. A lady answers but naturally she can only tell to contact the creditor department on Monday. One of those: “I don’t know, I just work here” situations.

Bottom line: I’m seeing a lot of red today.

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