Saturday, August 21, 2010

Have a good laugh at my expense

I awoke before five this morning, as usual.  Now that the days are getting shorter, it's still dark at that time of day, so rather than going outside to watch the sunrise, I go to the computer.  This morning, I had no Internet.  
My first thought was to go finish my cup of coffee before calling support for help; I should have hung onto that thought.  But I said to myself, "Let's get this over with."  
Calling Internet support always involves crawling around on the floor looking for wires, plugging them in, unplugging them.  As I get older, I can't read the little words on the back of the modem and router very well and have to use a flashlight to see what's what.  
I hate all that.  But I love my Internet, so what am I to do?  
So I hunt up my list of numbers and call Dish.  
Yes, friends and neighbors, I called my television provider looking for support with my Internet.  
The man tells me I'll have to call Century Link; I grumbled at him, hung up, and then realized what I had done.  I'll bet he thought I was totally crazy.
One good thing about Century-Link (which used to be Embarq, which used to be something else) is that their tech support people are from this country, so there's no accent to deal with.  I told the guy who answered that I had no Internet; I asked him if he wanted me to unplug from the router, because that's usually what they ask me to do; he said no, and then was silent for a good five minutes.  
Then he said, "Oh, I see the problem.  Can someone be at home between three and five o'clock today so we can send someone out?"  
"Well... I guess so."  
And that was that.  I've never had a problem they couldn't help me with on the phone, and I didn't want to commit to staying home on a Saturday, but whatever.  
I got to looking at things after I hung up the phone and saw a blue wire plugged into the router with the other end not plugged into anything.  Somehow that didn't seem right, so I plugged it into my computer in an appropriate hole.  I rebooted the modem and the computer, and viola, I had Internet.  
Now to call and cancel the appointment for this afternoon.  
This time I got hold of a female tech person, and asked her to cancel.  I could barely hear her.  It seems the older I get, the quieter people talk.  Anyhow, she informed me that my Internet connection was "intermittent", I could lose service at any time, and I needed to check the telephone wire leading to the computer.  
By then it was 5:30 A.M., my Internet was working just dandy, thank-you-very-much, and I don't like to play with wires.  I didn't want to fix what wasn't broken.  I told her that if and when I had a connection problem, I would call back.  She suggested I might want to replace the phone cord and we said our grumpy goodbyes.  As I type this, everything is still working as well as it ever has.  
We'll see what happens.
   

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:21 AM

    Donna, Glad you have your internet back! It is amazing how dependent I have become on it. When it goes down, I get really crabby. It is like electricity, I take it for granted until I don't have it. Karen

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  2. sister and me had century tel .net for years and our local computer hook up was at Berryville and over the years more and more people switched to some other company in our area so there were few of us left. I jokes that it was just me and sis so we had a pretty good dial up, we were never kicked off or all thoes other problems with dial up but when we had a problem over at Berryville sis or me would have to call. 1st. problem they didn't think we were thier customer then they want you to do all these THINGS that made me nervious besides I knew it wasn't my machine, it was their fault. anyway I got to where I wouldn't do any of the things they wanted me to do. I would say sister will be MAD if i do what you say and it messes up the computers and I am afraid of sister when she is mad. usually after I talked to them they would find the problem and fix it before sister go home and called them. they finally shut down the hook up over at Berryville and we had to get a new server. I was able to get DSL but sister can't so she has windstream dial up which leave a lot to be desired.
    I guess century tel decided i was so dumb they kept billing me after they took away my service. i finally convinced them that I wasn't that stupid but on the last call I told them they were doing the same thing to sister and if they thought I was MAD just wait until my sister gets you on the phone. They cleared my bill and gave me 8.85 cents credit but of course they have kept the money. I may call and tell them sister is going to call them if they don't send me my money. I have fond memories of my time with century tel.

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  3. I used to be tech support for my neighbor. One night she called me and said her printer wouldn't work. She said "I've tried everything... re-installing the driver, repairing permissions (a Mac thing), checking the cables, EVERYTHING. So I went over, looked at it, turned it ON, and went home.

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  4. Somewhere that day, a tech support person wrote in her blog about the grumpy lady she had to deal with that day! ;) Glad it's working for you now.

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