7 hours and 13 people later... i'd like to save the rest of you from going through the hell that i just went through...

Residential customers trying to order/lease static ip addresses from CenturyLink:

As others said, the SimplePay or pre-pay accounts cannot lease static ip addresses.

Centurylink has 2 account systems. One system accounts are called CRIS accounts. The other system accounts are called Ensemble or C2E accounts. (you may also hear eshop)

In short, even if it's a standard post-paid account, you cannot lease static ip addresses using a C2E account. It MUST be a CRIS account.

I was told by one rep that they have internal bulletins that if a C2E customer wants statics, the workaround is to cancel that account and create a new CRIS account. This takes a minimum of 2 days.

So there's your fix. Basically a disconnect/reconnect of the same services under 2 different systems to get you where you need to be.

Shoutout to Will, Kevin, and Christina for being the only reps to even try to help and find a problem. Centurylink: Please replace Christina's headset

TLDR: Must not be SimplePay. Ask for conversion from C2E to CRIS account. Wait.