Adventures In Service Providination

 

We have crappy TV service. There's nothing on, although there is a whole lot of it, and even the remote control is tragic. If you accidentally hit the wrong button there's hell to pay to get the TV screen back in the proper corral, and it's easy to hit the wrong button because you have to hold the remote over your head to make anything go. Also? We can't turn the TV off without getting off our asses and walking over to it, and what century is this, anyway? What are we, acrobats?

But we don't want to change it, because we do not like change.

CenturyLink made us change anyway. They said they're no longer offering our crappy TV service and we should look over their many fine alternatives. Really, there's nothing I like better than calling a Service Provider on the phone, because I so rarely have anything to do for any given four-hour period. 

The fine choices boiled down to having a dish bolted onto our house, which we reject on aesthetic grounds, and ATT. ATT wanted twenty bucks up front to get the ball rolling and that took a couple hours because something went wrong with the nice lady's computer and it kept ralphing up my credit card. The nice lady was distraught and whimpery, because, I believe, she is accustomed to being screamed at, and I kept reassuring her that I was fine. I was so happy that she spoke English that I wanted to luxuriate in the experience. I don't want to be that person who complains about people with accents, but I admit to a strong preference for it in my Service Providers. Anyway I told her I could happily listen to her all day long, and then I did.

I could have walked a twenty over to their office faster. It was my idea, ultimately, to plug in my landline and try to get the transaction through that way, and it took me a while to find the cord. It has been unplugged for four years although we still pay for it because evidently taking the landline out of the Internet-TV-Phone Bundle doesn't make it cheaper. Basically, our landline is serving as packaging twine for our Bundle. I plugged the old workhorse in, the very same lady called me back on it, and we were in business.

Then all I had to do was wait for a new device to thud onto my front porch and plug it in, plus they were going to send over a Service Technician. I wasn't clear what the Service Technician was going to do, but I said okay. "Okay," the nice lady said, brightly, clearly relieved that ATT had my credit card number now, "how does Tuesday work for you?"

Quite well, thank you.

"And what time of day is good for you?"

This, as it turns out, is a little Service Provider joke. They are howling in the break room.

"Anytime after nine would be fine."

"All right, we'll set you up for Tuesday, with a Service Window between 9am and 5pm."

"That's some window," I said.

"But no later than 7:15," she continued.

At this point I am laughing myself snotty. I'm not sure the nice lady is used to that, but I think she wanted to keep the conversation going so she didn't have to talk to someone mean.

The service window between nine and five but no later than 7:15 reminds me of our newspaper service. When The Oregonian went digital, they offered a sort of hybrid deal: they would deliver papers some days, and the other days would be digital only. They trumpeted this change as "Newspapers Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, with a bonus paper on Saturday!" Awesome! It's not like we went from seven papers down to four; we get a bonus! Whoever in Marketing came up with that probably still gets a bonus just thinking about it.

Anyway, the "no later than 7:15" Service Window proved to be a bust. Tuesday came and went with no Service Technician. Two days later I got another call explaining that the technician never made it to my house but they'd be happy to send one out Monday if I wanted. Sure! When?

She had a window between nine and five. But no later than 7:15. I can't wait. Actually, I can.

Being Serviced

TV was on the fritz again. This happens a lot since everything went digital. It never makes sense, which means it's probably related to hormones or some planet being in retrograde. Usually I can fix it myself with some combination of unpluggings and holdings-in-of-buttons, although the precise order is a mystery.

Sometimes, I think, it just comes back on as a sort of blessing. It's like God. You might get the dropsy or win the Irish Lottery, but it won't be because of anything you did.

Not this time. This time I scared up a screen that promised Software Is Being Updated, but I was dubious. The progress dots were just loitering. After about five minutes they gave way to an Error screen in big red letters. I unplugged more vehemently and jammed the plug back in like I meant it, Mister. It didn't budge. I unplugged the toaster and the slow sink, to no avail.

Somewhere there was a suggestion I chat with someone online, so I gave it a go. First thing I see is that I'm really important and the estimated minimum wait time is 127 minutes. I kept the window open and farted around on the internet.

Cool! The estimated wait time kept coming down fast until it was down to five minutes after only a half hour. This is a winnowing technique. They know perfectly well they lost half their complainers right off the bat. Smart! Then every two minutes they updated to say I was down to five minutes. Five minutes minimum wait time, which would include, I now realized, 127 minutes.

Then I got a new message! Hi! My name is CenturyLink and I'll be with you in a moment, as soon as I figure out who you are and whether you are packing! Followed thirty seconds later by "All our agents are busy. Try again later."

Oh, no you di'n't. I gave the chat window a wicked bitch face and then typed in "Are you there?" To my surprise, it came back with the message that someone would be right with me, and thanked me for my patience, which I believe was rather an assumption on their part.

"I'll be with you in a minute," it said. That would be Nick ("The Nickster") and his imaginary friend Nurse Skippy, who is still in the bathroom. Nick isn't allowed to chat on his own without a nurse in the room since the Incident.

Every two minutes, I got a slightly different version of this message and then--1-1/2 hours in--the "agent" terminated the chat. Would I like a transcript of our chat? Oh yasss. Yass indeedy, I would. I'll need it for the murder trial.

Used to be we had ourselves a fat monopoly called Ma Bell. Ma was all-powerful. She owned our phones and unless you had a postage stamp or a ham radio that was the only way you were going to communicate with anyone who wasn't in the room. When your phone didn't work, you went to a neighbor's house to call Ma and she sent out a nice man in a spiffy suit to fix it, no charge. He'd come in and frown at the phone and then go outside with a loop of new line and a bulge in his pocket and come back brandishing a dispatched squirrel, either a relevant one or an alternate that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then your phone worked again.

We used to complain about Ma Bell. I don't remember why.

Strange New World

Well, it's a dang miracle, is what it is. The dude from CenturyLink came out here to hook up our new high-speed internet and fancy TV service and now he's gone, and every little thing is working. I was cringing for an hour or so in anticipation of the explosion wherein all of my data in The Cloud would rain down and ice up the internetular driveway, and now I'm starting to straighten up. I'm still wary, but it's looking like a new world over here.

The old world had been a tableau of the stages of grief. We have been learning to accept our losses for a couple years now. That web page is going to be real pokey tonight? Okay, as long as it loads eventually. Not going to load at all? Okay, we'll shut down the computer and turn it on again and pull the cord on the modem and plug it in again if it buys us fifteen more minutes of acceptable internet speed. Not going to have acceptable internet speed? Everything will freeze up and hang on our computer screen like a museum display of what we used to care about? Okay. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow not looking so good? Perhaps it is time to become philosophical about the fact that we are not in control of anything, and recognize the folly of having become dependent on something that didn't even used to exist.

And I could have lived in that old world for quite a while longer if Dave wasn't such a whinypants. "The computer doesn't work," he'd point out, and demand that I fix it, because I know about two more things about it than he does, only I didn't know how to fix it, because I don't know how it works when it does work. And I didn't know if it was the computer or the connection. Or if it was just acting like a savvy old horse who knows when it's being ridden by someone who doesn't know anything about horses. I'm just going to stand here and bite grass, it says. You can yank on those reins all you want to and kick me in my massive impassive belly with your teeny weeny feet, but we're not going anywhere.

But I got tired of Dave whining about the computer, and thus reminding me that I'm an idiot, and when some guy cold-called me to offer me a shinier internet, I went for it. But I wasn't very hopeful. Especially after I spent two hours on the phone with him about it, mostly on hold. Okay, I'm going to put you on hold here for a moment, while I and everyone I work with go out for pizza, but I'll be back. Okay, I said. And then I'm going down to the DMV to get my new driver's license, but I'll be back right after that. Okay, I said.

in exile...

And yet this morning here comes Andre three minutes earlier than my four-hour window opened up, and Dave was here to steer him to the basement and crawl-space instead of wrapping wire all around our house, and after an hour or so he pops up and declares us wireless, which means the fairies are now in charge of toting our emails and such, and he punches in a wireless code, and sure enough it doesn't work. But he hmms and hmms some more and five minutes later he's found the virtual cord to my old internet service and snipped it in two, and everything worked, and it's still working. So is the TV.

"You can pull the plug on that modem--you don't need it anymore," Andre said, and I held my breath and pulled, expecting the tinkling sound of data crashing out of the ether, but nothing happened. If I shut my eyes, I can almost make out the fairies, with their CenturyLink overalls and their little names stitched on their pockets. I can almost hear them buzzing. It sounds like tinnitus, but without malice.

I Got A Nice Rack Rate

I wrote recently about my experience trying to get someone from CenturyLink, my phone company, to sell me some upgraded service. I spent well over an hour on my cell phone on hold, and then another fifteen minutes listening to my service representative's immediate environs, while he tapped at his keyboard and periodically asked me if I was still there. I was, but he couldn't hear me, and eventually he hung up. I don't know why he couldn't hear me. I visualized him in front of a bank of wires pulling the plugs in and out and mine wasn't in all the way. But that's probably not how it works, or in this case, doesn't work.

Well, things happen. I get that. I could imagine being in his situation myself, reaching way over my left shoulder for the telephone while standing on the recorder pedal for the transcription machine for eighteen minutes like Rose Mary Woods, and all of a sudden all my boss's incriminating conversation is lost in the ether by accident, because things happen. It would have been my hope that someone from my phone company could figure out how to maintain a conversation because he's in the communications business, but such is not always the case.

Because when he gave up and called me on my land line, which he happened to know because he's from my phone company, he was still having problems with the communication aspect, particularly in the area of saying something I understood and getting an appropriate response back from me. The last time I spent that much time on the phone, I was talking to someone in India. I had been on the phone so long I could have set up medical insurance through Obamacare by then, and I no longer remembered why I'd called in the first place. Oh yes: we were talking about rates, and bundling, and what services I could get when.

I was confused, so he explained very carefully. It was something about my modem, and how many phone jacks I had, and what they did together in their spare time, and the fact that I'm in a GPON zone, and whether or not I get a rack rate.

"Rack jack what now?"

GPON. GPON. He explained I had copper in my wires, or didn't have copper in my wires. I don't remember which, or why, but it sounded personal.

The service representatives at CenturyLink go out for beers after work and rag on about how stupid people in the GPON zones are. I know they do. I know this because I also used to be in the communications business.

Some poor postal customer with a legitimate complaint would call up the station and get the boss on the line--our ring was twenty-five "shorts," and he had to wait for all 25 to be sure they wanted us, and not the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is 24--and he'd listen for a minute. Then he'd say "well, ma'am, I cain't do nothing about that, because your carrier is on LWOP, but the T-6 is over there helping out with the nixies, and I'll put a note here for the 204-B to give you a call once he's done entering the MSPs," and then he'd hold the phone out from his ear for another minute, and hang up and say "what a bitch." Then go out for beers.

So answering the phone is not all there is to communication. Most of us letter carriers were better at it. Here's what it looks like. Customer complains. Carrier nods sympathetically. Agrees, in standard English, that this is a truly awful problem. Promises to try to get to the bottom of it. And says "I'm sorry."

Then goes out for beers.

My Call Is Very Important To Them

I've told you about my internet service provider Spiretech before. You call them up and someone answers on the first ringy-dingy. They fix what's wrong. Twice they even had me bring in my computer--they're right in town--and decontaminated it for free and got its vaccinations up to date.

But the best they can do for me is DSL through the phone company, and not the fast kind, either. It's way better than dial-up of course but there are problems. More and more my computer acts like it's taken in a bolus of data and it can't swallow. I really need an internet service with a bigger esophagus.

So I was ripe for the picking when I got a cold call from the phone company offering me super duper fiber based speed-of-light internet service, and if I signed up today they'd throw in extra fiber, and vitamins and minerals and TV. And candy through the mail slot. I signed up. I hated to do it. Poor old Spiretech. They've been so good to me. And now I'd have to change my email address and probably about a thousand usernames. On the plus side, I'd be able to send Comcast packing for my TV connection. Everybody hates Comcast.

We shook over the phone, the salesman and I, and he promised to send an installer by on October 16th and email me a raft of information about what I'd agreed to, and that was that. And that was two weeks ago. And no email. I did scrawl a confirmation number on an envelope I managed to not recycle. So today I called up and asked for my information. Well!

The hold music was peppy. There was a boogie-woogie element to it that I approved of. I waited only a couple minutes and then got a guy who knew a guy and I got put on hold again so he could connect me to the guy he knew.

That guy was popular, all right. He didn't come to the phone for another ten minutes, during which time I was able to ascertain that the boogie-woogie element was but one segment in a medley that included a Europop offering that got old quick. "Logan," once he showed up, had a nice voice that appeared to originate in this country. So that was innovative. We talked. He had to put me on hold to check my status.

And that status was that I hadn't gotten an email because someone (else) put my order in wrong, and he wasn't sure if anyone was really coming out on October 16th or not. Did I remember what I'd signed up for? Well, I thought it was the whole works. Did I remember how much I was supposed to pay? Not really. All that was supposed to be in the confirmation email. Logan didn't know what I was getting, or when I was getting it. He suggested we start over. Fine! But before he could start over, he needed to make sure my other order was not merely dead but really most sincerely dead, so that my orders wouldn't trip over each other on the way to my house. He put me on hold.

Really, the boogie-woogie element wasn't that great. I mean, all boogie-woogie is just fine, but the bridge was lame, and the refrain was totally derivative. The segue was a complete rip-off from the Doobie Brothers. They should sue.

Logan checked in periodically to see if I was still there, and I was. Because my cell phone keeps track of such things, I noted that I had now been on the phone for 64 minutes. You don't give up. It's the Vietnam War syndrome. We've already lost 50,000 of our boys, and it would be a dishonor to their memory if we didn't sacrifice a few more platoons.

Logan came back on. "Mary? Are you there?" I'm here! I shouted into the phone, like a trapped coal miner. Can you hear me?

Apparently not. The hold music was off, and I heard random clicking from his keyboard, and also the entire conversation of the woman working next to him. She just had her toenails done. I know! But sometime you just got to do things just for you own self, am I right?

Logan came back on every two minutes or so to see if I was still there, but he didn't answer when I bellowed back. It was clear he could not hear me. I began to consider hanging up. I thought back: was this phone call being recorded for quality purposes? I sincerely hoped so. I didn't remember. That would have been--check the phone--79 minutes ago. Then the phone went dead.

A few seconds later my land line rang. It was Logan, clever dude. He was pretty sure he'd gotten to the bottom of the problem. So we were going to start over. Next Tuesday.

"Is that when you're sending someone out to hook me up?"

No. He'd call me next Tuesday to place the order. I didn't ask why we couldn't do it now. I was too happy we weren't going to do it now. I'm going to send Logan a Christmas fruitcake, I'm so grateful we aren't doing it now.