We learned a lot today. It all started with a phone call and a few rejected button presses.

After we added our oldest to our cellphone plan we, as always, discovered a few charges that we are sure were totally an accident/and or, something we weren’t told we’d have to reject or we’d be paying for it. (It’s also possible that the store clerk tapped it in Morse code and we didn’t notice.) We also had to correct our oldest’s name as they’d misspelled her family name (despite our having repeatedly corrected them when they said it wrong).

She Who Must Be Obeyed started pressing buttons on our phone and sighing a lot and then pressing more buttons. After a few minutes she started speaking to someone and that led to a few interesting discoveries.

First, we learned that our cellphone company thinks our phone number is our old number that we haven’t had for over 15 years. That number was acquired via the company I work for but they abandoned that service a couple  years after we started on it and we’ve had a different phone number since then. (This is similar to what happened when I tried to get a new bank card.) That involved a long discussion that took a shocking twist when the lady on the other end of the line insisted on speaking to our oldest.

She Who Must Be Obeyed pointed out that our oldest is only 15 and there was no reason in hell for her to have to get involved with this. That led to our second discovery: apparently during the long process that resulted in a wrong name and “accidental” charges, our oldest’s phone number got listed as the official phone number, essentially making her head of household. This meant they needed her permission to make any changes.

After clearing up that mess, we then added her to a service that lets her use Wi-Fi hot spots provided by our phone provider because they totally require us to do that rather than making it default. That, however, required me to get on the phone and answer several questions to prove that I am who I am even though the person couldn’t see me and all I did was repeat information She Who Must Be Obeyed had already tried to give. (To paraphrase a friend of mine: Could someone please tell me how, HOW, Japan became a major economic power?)

In the end we think we got it all sorted out. We’re sure something else is wrong, but we’ll deal with that when we figure out what it is.