Odd
It seems odd that the Fire Dept (or the County commission) in Cali didn't have a dedicated account rep that they could call up and get things worked out in about 5 minutes. I used to deal with Verizon at a previous University job, and I had the number to my account rep for problems like this. I didn't have to dial *611 and wait for the first available CS rep. It would seem reasonable that a local government group would get even better service from their rep than some nerd at a small University.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
