I tried to be patient, but by now you can probably guess what happened next. Yes, I called to see if the new modem had shipped yet; and yes, I called Vanessa directly.
Seems that my plan to just sit on hold with tech support so that I could actually get some work done on the net last night has backfired.
[This is the email I sent to the addresses one would expect to have a live person at the receiving end, since my previous emails to the help desk had been ignored for months - help, postmaster, admin and sales. I also CC'd in other network admins and an übergeek, partly to get validation on my concerns, and partly for entertainment value. It's tediously long, but I was being thorough. Ironically, I got bounce messages back on most of the cavtel addys, but did receive an ack from one admin on July 26, who said he passed the email on to the 2nd & 3rd tier network techs. ]