DECEMBER 20, 2024 – Yet again, my fingers—if not my brain—wanted to turn out a screed excoriating President Musk for having displaced the autocrat-elect as leader of United Plutocrats of America. But this still being the cheerful season of the year, I shifted gears to write something . . . well, cheerful.
That was until our household internet connection was interrupted, taking our TV down as well. I then had the not-so-cheerful experience of listening to my spouse battle our provider in an attempt to restore service. I heard the entire process via the speaker on my wife’s phone. The “technical support” group was so technically helpless they were downright comedic. There were moments when I nearly burst out laughing. Fortunately, I exercised sufficient self-control in that regard. If I’d laughed out loud my wife would’ve hurled her phone at my head, doing serious damage to both. She was in firm fighting mode, not a laughing mood.
We all have our stories about bad over-the-phone service, but what unfolded for over two hours takes first prize.
The problem originated with a light switch. Yes, a light switch—or was it the light fixture connected to the light fixture? I’m game for a range of DIY home repairs, but I no longer “do electricity.” My reasons are twofold: 1. I have a standing personal policy of not electrocuting myself; and 2. I know from experience that replacing outlets and switches in our old house can be a major challenge. My wife had summoned our good electrician “Eddy” to fix the problem, which he did in half the time that it took Beth and Eddy to figure out which switches on the electrical panel in our basement were mislabeled.
An hour after Eddy had packed up and left—leaving our entryway fully illuminated—is when we discovered we were marooned. In the course of identifying which switches were which for purposes of fixing the entry light, the power to our built-in modem had been shut off. Flipping the switch didn’t result in restored internet connectivity. Thankfully, we still had our phones.
That’s when Beth called our provider, and that’s when the fun began. She had to initiate five calls, each forcing her to claw through multiple prompts until she was patched into an “advocate.” Great. A real live person. The only catch was that each of the first four calls was rudely and inexplicably cut off. Each of these interruptions required going to the back of the line and starting over.
The fifth call wasn’t cut off but turned into a strong case of emotional distress. Part of the problem was language. The “advocate” was difficult to understand, and the problem wasn’t entirely her accent. Background chatter often overwhelmed her soft monotone voice. For the first few minutes, the conversation was a case of “Who’s on first”; that is, who was the named principal on the account. Only two possibilities existed: Beth or I, and not being certain which of us it was, Beth tried both. I can’t remember a circumstance where I heard our names spelled out 10 times in a row.
Beth strained to understand the “advocate’s” baffling questions, such as what is the “Hobble gobble [or some such description] number on the modem?” Once Beth grasped the question, she had to lie on the floor to search the built-in modem for the magic number. She found several series of numbers, each too small to read. And where was the “hole” at the bottom of the modem where a pin was to be stuck “until the light changed from green to red and back to green again”?
“For being a communications company,” said Beth, “they sure are bad at communicating.”
The laughable absurdities continued for another hour but with nothing to show for them except continued non-connectivity. Beth finally threw the figurative eraser at the blackboard of frustration and demanded that a real live technician be sent to our house as soon as possible. When the “advocate” said the earliest date was next Tuesday, Beth replied sternly, “That’s unacceptable.” The “advocate” insisted that Tuesday would have to be the day. When Beth threatened to change providers, the “advocate” wisely said, “Let me see what I can do . . .” A minute later, Beth was informed that we could expect a “service representative” to appear between 8:00 and 11:00 tomorrow morning.
“That’s more like it. Thank you,” said my wife, who for good reason is also CEO of the household.
By noon tomorrow I fully expect to be working on a cheerful blog post while listening to my favorite Christmas music on YouTube via our regular internet connection—fully restored—not by the personal hotspot app on my iPhone, which is how I’m now listening to the Messiah for the 25th time since the advent of Advent.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
