Modems, Routers and other Nightmares

If any of you folks are even bothering to check in here anymore to see if I’m posting, please know I would LOVE to be posting; I’d love to be a working blogger again, even on a limited basis, but as I mentioned in this post below, one unfortunate call to my provider, followed by one disastrous visit by a technician who seemed to know less about things mechanical/technical than I do – and I am hopeless – and the nightmare has simply gone on and on over here. I’m routinely out of phone/internet service, and am rushing to at least post this – just to let you know I’ve neither died nor lost interest in you – before I (inevitably) lose service again.

When I say “nightmare,” I mean it. The bulk of my days have been taken up with hanging on to my cell phone for hours upon hours while I go through the automated service to finally reach a human being, who puts me on hold for a while, who comes back just in time for the connection to be lost (it’s a cell phone; you go down to the basement to reboot the modem, the phone goes out) and then – since the company policy seems to be that a phone service rep is not permitted to call the customer back if the connection is lost…well…that means the customer has to call up, go through the automated service garbage again, finally talk to a human being, go through the whole story again, only to be put on hold again for another 25 minutes…..”we can get a technician to you next Sunday but it’s a ‘when can’ appointment so you’ll have to be home from 8AM until 4PM…”

Six days into this adventure, I finally lost it this afternoon. The third time I got disconnected and went through the routine again, I finally started yelling, “I have elderly in-laws with heart problems and no phone! I make part of my living online, and I have no internet! My cell phone bill is going through the roof and I’m probably getting brain cancer to boot from having this stupid thing glued to my ear, and if we lose this connection again, I’ve been told you can’t even do me the courtesy of calling me back in order to spare me from yet again running the obstacle course of your automated system, before getting yet another rep and having to go through the whole story from the start; I realize none of this is your fault, but dammit, I’m losing it over here and someone has got to help me!”

Yelling at least got a supervisor on the phone who was allowed to call me back when the inevitable disconnect occurred again. Right now…well…we’ll see if we can stay up for an hour.

But Mama ain’t happy. And that’s never, never a good thing.

I just wanted to let you know…because if you’ve sent an email or left a comment, I simply have not had the means to respond or moderate. And I can’t even begin to tell you how backed up everything is.

With gritted teeth, though…we’ll press on.