Like most of you, I have become "dependent" upon some of the electronic gadgets we use everyday. I not only depend upon my cell phone (for business and pleasure) but I enjoy my satellite dish and my internet, when they are working. In all fairness, and for the most part, they have performed pretty well over the past five years or so. I expect the satellite to not perform very well during a hard rainstorm but I have learned to adapt with that shortcoming and it hasn't been much of a problem. Fortunately it hasn't rained hard during the Super Bowl or the Daytona 500 or a close UK basketball game in the NCAA Tournament.
About five or six years ago, I decided to sign up with AT & T high speed internet service and until recently, it's been pretty reliable. I had an issue with it about three years ago, I dialed their Tech Support network (which at the time was manned by Americans), they had me try a few quick maneuvers and determined I needed a new Modem. The following day, a technician from AT & T showed up and in ten minutes fixed the problem...all at their cost (well actually, it was included in the fifty bucks a month I pay them for service at my home). It has worked fine for the past three years.
Last week, we lost our service so the next day, my son called their tech support line. He was greeted by a young geek named Matthew who spoke some language between English and Swahili. We assumed Matthew was certainly a nickname for some muslim name that has fourteen syallables and no vowels in it. We envisioned him sitting in a cubicle in the middle of the Calcutta Desert smoking a cigarette made from camel dung and wearing a turban while drinking a warm glass of Yak milk.
He put us through a battery of tests while at our computer, many of which we had to ask him to repeat several times because of the language barrier. After about forty minutes, it appeared he had somehow restored our internet service and we parted company. Later that night, it went down again, but my son (who can be somewhat of a Geek when it comes to computers) remembered the battery of instructions from Matthew earlier that day and he went ahead and performed them himself. It worked...for about three hours. He repeated it again and again it worked...for about three hours. The next day, when I was attempting unsuccessfully to get on the Internet, he kindly showed me how to do these tests and get the Internet going again. This went on for about two or three days and finally they got to the point where it would only stay on for a matter of minutes or wouldn't come back on at all. This time my son refused to called tech support and made me do it.
After pushing a variety of buttons entering the "Abyss of Tech Support," I finally reached a human voice from a guy named "Herbert." "Herbert" and "Matthew" were apparently classmates in the same English Class because both of them talked alike and neither of them could be understood by anyone claiming to be "reasonably American." I'm sure Herbert could sense how frustrating I was becoming as he put me through the same exact battery of tests that Matthew did and even a couple more. The phone call took a total of fifty minutes (minutes being "burnt" from my cell phone) and when we got done, the internet service was working again. This lasted for about twenty minutes after I hung up. I decided to wait until the next day (which was this morning) to call back because I knew I would have said things I would later regret if I had called them then.
This morning, I got up in a good mood, ate a nice breakfast and read the Sunday morning paper. When I was done, I decided to call AT & T tech support and made up my mind I wouldn't say anything out of line, but that I would be firm in demanding a service technician be dispatched to my home in Kentucky. This time (after the same twenty minutes of pushing buttons to get to a human), I got to speak to Stephanie. Stephanie's demeanor seemed more "friendly" than Matthew's and Herbert's but her English wasn't any better. I explained as calmly as possible what my ordeal had been over the past few days and told here I wasn't interested in any more "tests" or anything of the sort but I simply wanted to request a service tech to bring a new modem and head my way. Apparently, this couldn't register with her tiny brain because she began talking like a "Droid" and asked me to perform the same battery of junk her predecessors did. She also asked me (in a kind way) to disconnect the modem, including the power plug, phone line and some other yellow cable and leave them disconnected for about five minutes. Since her voice was more pleasant than the other guys and since she was a female, I decided to follow her request. She then had me hook it back up and see if it came back online, which it did. She promised to stay with me as long as it took to insure it stayed online this time. She asked me to search some sites, get on facebook...simply do what I would do if she wasn't there and see if it stayed connected. I did this for some fifteen minutes and it appeared to work. Stephanie even promised to give me a call Monday to see how things are going. After several minutes, we parted company. Ten minutes later guess what? Yep, it crashed again! Can't wait for Stephanie's call tomorrow.
Finally, in desperation, I call them once more and this time I get somebody named "Chris," which I think was a man but still can't be sure. I tell "Chris" to listen and not talk but that I am very "frustrated" with AT & T's tech support and that I intend to quit them ASAP unless I can get a service tech out to my house. I demanded to speak with (1) the highest ranking manager he/she could connect me with or (2) someone from Kentucky who spoke my language. "Chris" tried desparately to get into "Droid" mode and perform the battery of tests again but my constant yelling apparently convinced him/her I was serious so he/she said they would connect me with a technical support office in Henderson, Kentucky, which I quickly agreed to. I thought that meant he/she was going to give me the phone number for this fellow Kentuckian, but instead he/she transferred the call direct from Calcutta or Bangladesh or wherever he/she was. When the phone rang, a recording came on asking me to please call back during regular office hours. It left no phone number and when the recording ended, I got a dial tone. End of conversation.
The first number I intend to call tomorrow is 1-888-321-2375 to tell AT & T to permanently disconnect my Internet Service.....FOREVER, ending a forty-plus year business relationship! The second call will be to someone else to provide me with an internet service that is (1) high speed, (2) reasonably priced, (3) reasonably dependable and (4) can be serviced locally.
Now Dish Network better hope my TV doesn't go down for awhile!
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