Customer Service

I like to shop -- for some things. I don't like to make purchases for items I know nothing about like well, lets just make a broad sweeping categorization and say feminine products, running shoes or wireless USB adapters. Until a few weeks ago I was only vaguely aware of a wireless USB adapters. They were like hairless cats. I had heard of them, seen pictures, and laughed quietly to myself when I had imagined owning one. But I had always figured they were not for me.

There I stood in Best Buy looking at cables and routers and wireless cards and yes, even USB adapters. Staggering, I wobbled around doing my best to look confused. I probably looked like one of those actors on an infomercial struggling to remember the proper steps to do something simple like breathing, while a voice over says "Tired of clumsily breathing on your own? Well now you don't have to!"

In hindsight, my acting skills might have been too convincing because when an employee approached me, he said "Can I answer any questions for you?" I said "Yeah, I just moved my computer and it is no longer within a cables distance to the router." He looked at me like I had just said "Breathing is soooo difficult! Do you have a paper that reminds me of the steps to breathing so that I don't die? Preferably with lots of pictures " tapping the side of my head with my finger "I don't read so well. Or... dare I ask? A machine that might do my breathing for me?" He reached down and tossed a USB adapter into my stomach and walked away. I still had more questions. Would a wireless card work? is it cheaper to run an cable through my attic? Why are some of the adapters more expensive? I no longer had the benefit of google at home to answer all of my inquiries. I stared at the price, looked at the adapter and finally decided there must be something better.

I wandered down the street a few doors from Best Buy and went into Staples. Most of the adapters that I looked at were less expensive there. An employee busied himself nearby straightening items and looking busy. I finally called out to him "Do you know if these are any good?" I raised an adapter for him to see. He shrugged and came over and looked at the adapters with me. He seemed to know about as much as I did about them. He did say that the Belkins seemed to get returned a lot and that if I had any problems I could bring mine back. Enough said. I picked up a Netgear adapter knowing that my router was a Netgear and if nothing else, they might play nice with each other coming from the same family right?

I took it home, removed the packaging, installed the software and installed the adapter. It worked great. I was happy. Several days went by and things started to happen to my computer. Bad things. It started crashing and slowing down. If you've read my last post you know my hard drive failed. When all of the dust settled from that fiasco my wireless adapter no longer worked. I tried to take it back to Staples. They told me the return policy was only for 2 weeks. I thought they were just joking around with me. I laughed. They restated their return policy, this time with more fervency. I stopped laughing. I didn't want them to think they were funny. Because they were not. I left knowing there was only one solution -- a call to Netgear customer service.

A few days later when I had strengthened my resolve, when I had steeled my determination, when I had explored any possible alternatives, I finally sighed the sigh of a man being led down the chambers to the execution room. I said my farewells and kissed my goodbyes and picked up the phone and began dialing. "Thank you for calling Netgear, your service is very important to us. A customer service agent will be with you as soon as possible. Please stay on the line and someone will be right with you!" slowly, sounds begin to queue up. At first I thought it was music, but then I realized it was just the sound of baby seals being tortured. The music/tortured wails of tormented baby seals faded "Our team of seasoned representatives is occupied helping other customers at this time. Please stay on the line and one of them will be with you as soon as possible."

I became very worried at that point that they were referring to their customer service representatives as "seasoned" I like to buy products from companies that have novice, beginner, or even bumbling buffoons that have never really had to deal with customer service issues. The kind that sit around playing solitaire and when I call they look at each other in confusion "Do you hear that? What is that? I think... well... I think that sounds like a phone?" and they dig the ringing phone out from under a stack of papers. They don't know how to use the phone and the first few seconds of the conversation is them saying "Hello? Hello? HELLO?" as they hold the phone upside down to their head. A co-worker makes a twisting gesture to indicate the phone is upside down and finally the customer service agent gets the phone figured out and the customer service agents mouth to each other "What do we do?" and they all shrug at each other. That's the kind of product I like to buy. Product from companies like that. Nope, I was the owner of a product that had "seasoned" customer service agents. I sighed. "This isn't going to be pretty"

The music came back. This time I thought I could hear the subliminal messages in the music. I could hear it echoing in my subconscious "You love our product. You love us. Everything we say makes sense. We are correct. You are wrong. You love that we are always correct. Do exactly as we say. Buy all of our products. Send us all of your money. You love us. We are always correct..." The music faded "Your call is important to us. All of our representatives are busy at this time... blah blah blah. We know you have invested too much time to hang up now. We are actually too busy flirting with our co-workers that are of the opposite sex. We used to care, but that was back when they promised us raises, and all of that was a very VERY long time ago. Please hold and perhaps one of our seasoned agents will possibly tire of hearing the phone ring and will rudely answer the phone, not really help you and get off the phone with you as soon as humanly possible. Thanks sucka!" and then the music faded back in. Now imagine this cycle happening 2 or 3 hundred more times. I was drifting into a coma, lost all hope for humanity and trying to decide on the best method to kill myself when I suddenly heard a click and a female say in a thick Indian accent. "Heddo, myie name ees Emily. How cun I be of service to you?" I gasped in horror. This was going to be everything I feared and quite possibly more.

Emily had me run through all of the setup that I had already done. When we were nearly complete Emily stopped in the middle of her script and apologized "Ieem soo very sorry sir" I don't know if one of her flirting co-workers smacked her on the butt or unhooked her bra strap, but her train of thought became completely derailed. She started over and yes, we went through all of the steps again. Finally she said "I cannot help you sir. You will need to uneenstall thee Netgear setup program and try re-eenstalling it. I am very confident sir that this will feeks your problem. Goodbye" Then there was a click and I was disconnected. I felt like I had just gone the entire length of an elephants digestive system and had been deposited somewhere on the Serengeti to fend for myself. I had already tried reinstalling the software. I tried again... just in case, I don't know. Probably because of a soft voice from my subconscious that said "You are never right. Netgear customer service agents are always right. You should send them all of your money."

Surprise surprise, it didn't work. I called again. This time I sat on hold for exactly one hour, where it kicked me out and sent me to an answering machine that asked me what number and what time to call me back. I left a message. They never called back. A few days later after I realized they were really never going to call me and I would have to be like a jilted lover and stalk them until they either resolved my issue or got a restraining order.

This time I was only on hold for possibly 20 minutes. "Heddo sir, myiee name ees Steve. How can I help you?" I recounted my entire adventure to Steve. When I finished explaining to him my plight, Steve said "Thank you for calleeng, unfortunately I cunnot be of serveece to you at theese tieeme. Please call 1-888-blahblah where someone will be able to better assist you." So, I had graduated from the first protocol of the customer service screening process. I had now entered the inner sanctum. I now had in my possession the phone number for the Illuminati. The Jedi's of customer service. If the people I had talked to before were seasoned. I was now talking to the marinated and slow roasted of customer support personnel.

I anxiously dialed. Someone answered imediately "What ees your customer service number?" I stammered. Customer service number? I didn't have a number? I could make one up! What if it was wrong? What if it had too many digits? They would know I was a fraud! "I um... I don't have one?" The agent shot back "Ees thees the first tieeme you have called sir?" They had me on the ropes. I didn't know what to do. I blurted out "To this number yes!" There was a click and I was routed back to the hold system. I immediately recognized its life draining pull, sucking my will out through my ear. Then... someone answered "How cun I help you sir?" I gushed out my entire story to him. He asked a few questions. What sort of router I had. What sort of operating system I had. If I could hook an ethernet cable up to my router. I was not close enough to do so. He laughed "Sir, how cun I help you eef you are not even connected to your router?" I laughed. "That is exactly why I am using a USB adapter, right?" He scoffed "I don't theenk you can expect me to help you unteel you are able to connect your computer to the router. Call back when you are able to do so sir."

I unhooked my computer, dragged it all back into the room where the router was, set it all back up and hooked an ethernet cable from the computer to the router and redialed my secret, black ops, upper echelon customer service number. My phone call was immediately answered and I gave the agent my customer number, that I had made sure I had received from my last call. The agent excused himself while he read the notes on my case and in a few moments he returned and asked if I was now connected via an ethernet to the router. I said I was. He proceeded to direct me through several operating system and router menus and reconfiguring options. Finally he told me to restart my computer. I did. When it had rebooted he asked "OK sir, does eet say you are connected to the router wirelessly?" I couldn't tell. so I opened the Netgear wireless program that came with the installation CD with my adapter. The program that every customer service agent thus far had wanted me to open. I told him it was not. At that moment he laughed a very irritated laugh and suddenly became very angry "How do you know that eet is not connected?" He shouted "Um, because the Netgear setup program says it isn't. It says is still scanning" "Well dat ees why you are not connecting to the router! Because you keep opening the Netgear setup program. Why deed you open that program?" "I-I thought that's what you - I thought that is how I could tell if it was connected. I mean didn't that come with the adapter?" "Sir, close that program eemeedeeutly. I do not want you to ever open dat program again! OK!" "OK!" I said. Then we ran through some more setup options and he asked me if I was now connected to the router wirelessly "I want you to open Explorer dees time OK! NOT NETGEAR SETUP!" "OK! I get it! Never-ever-ever-again" I muttered back.

Finally we finished configuring and he was satisfied that my problem was resolved. Before hanging up he reiterated "And never open Netgear Setup again sir" I laughed "I got it. Never open Netgear Setup" I have never opened Netgear Setup since and haven't had any more issues with it, so it must be happy again. Slowly my faith in humanity has returned and I no longer think about suicide. I still get a craving every once in a while to empty my wallet into an envelope and mail it to an address in India that I have no idea how I know. Instead I end up sending them my toenail clippings or whatever is readily available at the moment and I think my computer is somewhat happy again.

Electronics melt down

This was a bad BAD month for electronics around the house. I lost our phone one day. I found it. It was in my coat pocket. The coat that had JUST been washed. Yeah, the phone hasn't worked properly since.

A few weeks later I lost my ipod. I found it. in the pocket of my other coat. The other coat that had just been washed also. The ipod never made so much as a whimper or quiver. It was just plain dead.

We also moved our computer out of our spare bedroom so that Mandy's sister could move in for a while. I hooked up a USB wireless adapter to the computer so that we could still enjoy the benefits of the world wide super interwebs. You know so, I can update this blog and make sure all of my friends are doing well on their Mafiaville Farm Wars on Facebook.

So I moved the computer and installed the software for the Netgear USB adapter. Everything works as it should and this little plastic doodad magically pulls the intersupernets right out of thin air. I don't know how it does it. It's all magic to me and I am thoroughly impressed and also satisfied with my purchase.

Then one day the computer suddenly dies. I get the blue screen of death. It tells me something about a driver conflict and some cryptic message on how to fix it.

Having me work on a computer is about like your redneck gunsmith who scratches his head with the barrel of your broken pistol, looks down the barrel and says "Huh, I dunno what's it could be? Somefin jis ain't right with it." as he stares into the barrel with one eye closed and pulls the trigger a few times. "If'n it wuz wurkin rightly my face woulda looked like swiss cheez ba now!" he says with a toothless grin.

I start removing and reinstalling drivers, the whole time restarting and cycling the power on the computer. Then one time when I restarted the computer the hard drive started groaning and grumbling like it was a garbage disposal and the computer would not boot. This is the hard drive with the book I am working on. The hard drive with all of our family videos converted from VHS. The hard drive with all of our family photos on it. The electronic device on the end of a series of tragically destroyed devices.

You know that instant when your knee jerk reaction is to pick something up and smash it? That was me at that moment. I wanted to break the computer. I knew it only make things worse if I did. So I sat there for a few seconds and imagined how satisfying it would be to ripe the mother board out and stomp on it. To see the resistors, chips and capacitors spraying off in shattered disarray. Instead I grit my teeth, leaned in real close to the computer and whispered through clamped teeth "You-are-NOT-dying-now! not-on-MY-clock!" and I left it sitting there to think about what it had done. I did not return until several days later when I had some advice from a coworker that sometimes... maybe... if the moon was in the right position in the sky and the prevailing winds came from the right direction and the right speed and the humidity was perfect and the ambient temperature was within the area referred to as "The Golden Temperature" you can flip a decrepit and expiring hard drive over and it MIGHT work if just for a few seconds. I tried it. It worked. It didn't sound pretty but it was booting.

It took a long time booting. I left it and went and ran some errands, cut my toenails, brushed my driveway off with a mascara brush and tentatively checked back on the computer. It was just finished restarting after what it was calling a "recovery" Which I learned at that moment meant. Erase everything and reinstall windows. I sat silently for a few more seconds as I imagined how satisfying it would be to hear the computer crunching and crushing under the weight of the car. I sighed and produced the other half of my two pronged attack. A new hard drive. It came with a program that copied everything, bit for bit over to the new hard drive. I ran the program. Checked to make sure the new hard drive had all of the whatever was left of the information on the old hard drive and then I unplugged the old hard drive and took great satisfaction in taking it apart and showing Walker what the guts of a hard drive look like. I still have the disks from the old hard drive. I plan on showing Walker what the insides of a hard drive look like when they interact with a projectile from a high caliber rifle.

The new hard drive works great. To end on a happy note, I found the old files from the old hard drive before the "recovery" buried deep in the file structure of the hard drive. I found our videos. I found our pictures and most of all, I found my book. But now my USB wireless adapter no longer worked. Join us next time for the exciting tale of me Vs. tech support in India. You don't want to miss it. I get yelled at. Until next time... Hasta