Voicemail follies

The supplier of our landline telephone service is good old Frontier Telephone — I guess what Rochester Telephone eventually became.
We hardly use it; we use our cellphones.
But for old folks who refuse to call a cellphone, we need it.
There also are all our contacts who still use our landline phone-number.
We use Frontier’s voicemail service, and have ever since our own voicemail machine tanked.
Frontier’s voicemail was being “upgraded“ (their word).
I will post their exact notification, word-for-word, OCR scanned.
“On June 21, 2011 follow these steps:
Dial 585-955-9500; when prompted for PIN enter the last four digits of your phone number. Follow and complete the tutorial to customize your new mailbox including setting up your new PIN.”
So, do I dare do this?
First of all, society is not very tolerant of stroke-survivors with slightly compromised speech.
I tried the phone-number, and got a machine demanding I do my PIN-number.
First mistake, I used my previous voicemail’s PIN-number instead of the last four digits of our landline number as required.
I tried again, and their system threw me into the ozone.
I was obviously a ne’er-do-well bent on stealing messages, an axis-of-evil.
Naughty-naughty! “Too many tries!”
So much for that. Try again the next day!
That time I tried the last four digits of our phone number, although I probably had it wrong.
I was doing it from memory, and stroke-effects were mucking things up.
After a few tries I was again tossed into the ozone.
Okay, call Customer-Service at Frontier, what I was trying to avoid.
I’ll bet they got deluged about their voicemail upgrade.
“What happened? Where did the penguin atop our TV go?”
“I’m trying to ‘upgrade’ my voicemail, and I ain’t gettin’ the tutorial. I may even be locked out! Your system is not friendly to stroke-survivors.”
The dude reset something. “Well send out a tech!”
“I’m not even sure I’m using the correct phone-number. Do you have it?”
I had to look it up myself on my cellphone, which has it memorized.
“How about if I hang up and try again?”
That time it worked. The so-called “tutorial” began.
(Since when are instructions a “tutorial?”)
First we recorded our identification, what messaging would say to a missed call.
Then we recorded our “greeting,” which in our case was to say we were unavailable.
“That’s it; you’re all set up. Ready-to-roll.”
What about resetting my PIN?
Apparently not a step.
Our PIN is currently the last four digits of our landline number.
And the other morning I called our landline from my cellphone and let it go to voicemail.
No identification; just the greeting.
“Uh-ohhhhhh; another old fogey challenged by our fabulous technological progress......”

• For years “Rochester Telephone” was the supplier of telephone service in the Rochester area. As telephone-service atrophied, it became “Global Crossing,” which was bought by (or became) Frontier Telephone when Global Crossing failed.
• “OCR scanning” is Optical-Character-Recognition, a computer software that scans a printed text-file, and generates matching computer text.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)