First off, checked NT's Sallie Mae account to see if the payment had posted -- it hadn't. I thought of Foxie25's encouragement to stay aggressive, and I called Direct Loan to see if they'd done anything yet. They said they had sent it off to Sallie Mae! So that's one step closer to this nightmare being over. I'll check the Sallie Mae account daily and if it hasn't posted by Friday, I'll call them to see if they've at least received it.

Then, I saw creditcardfree's advice to email the dentist and lawyer who haven't responded to my last emails for over a week. I thought what the heck? and sent them both very polite emails, just asking whether they'd had a chance to consider my request further, and if so whether they recommended that I look to someone else for help. This way, if they don't get back to me this week, I'll know it isn't because they forgot about my email, and I can go back to the drawing board to look for a new prospective dentist and lawyer.

Then, I saved us a bit of money for good measure! Last night we got the modem for our new internet service. I was able to get the ethernet working (hooking the laptop to the modem by cable) but couldn't figure out how to access it wirelessly. So I'll have AS try and do it tonight, and we can chat with tech support if she can't figure it out either. Once we confirm it works for us, I'll cancel Comcast.

The new service (CLEAR) sent me a welcome email, so I went online and looked at my account. I saw that my next bill will be due 3/1. Well, that kind of irritated me, because even though I signed up with them 2/1, I haven't been able to actually use their service until last night (2/5). Since I'm already facing some likely overlap of charges between my old and new providers, it bothered me that I'd pay for 4 days of the new service that I didn't actually get.

Bolstered by my aggressiveness on my other issues today, I hopped onto chat with a customer service rep and asked if they could change my billing period to start on the 5th of the month, so it would reflect the actual start date of service. They said they couldn't do that, or they could move it but service would be inactive between the 1st and the 5th if I did that.

It occurred to me then that not only would I be getting fewer days of service for my first month's fee, but that since it was February I'd only be getting about 24 days! That bugged me more and I asked the rep to escalate my complaint, explaining that $49.99 for 24 days was as (if not more) expensive as the provider I was switching from.

He went to ask someone else, and then came back with an offer: They absolutely could not change my billing cycle, but they'd give me a $4.99 credit on my next bill, to compensate for the lost days of service this month. Uh, that's way better! I said yes of course and was very pleased that I'd bothered. It took about 10 minutes, but I was able to do work in between responses from the rep, so it wasn't even 10 minutes of my time.

Isn't it funny how a small victory like that can totally make your day?