I Have Angered the Internet Gods

(Kudos to you if you recognize the movie frame there.) It’s clear. I’m not sure how I did it, but I must have done something to make those mighty gods of the internet mighty angry with me. Maybe I squashed a bug, or slandered Bill Gates, or made one too many disparaging remarks about cats–but whatever I did, I’m reaping the whirlwind now, my friends.

It started when I came back from Florida. No–before that. The internet would spontaneously just stop working at home. Enough that I got to be on first name basis with most of the Fairpoint tech support crew. (Not really) I hoped that some time away would make it happier.

I was wrong.

The internet completely gave up the ghost on Monday, after a brief flirtation with the abyss on Sunday. It’s not my network–I know that’s set up properly. My guess was that the router had died, but I needed to convince Fairpoint (my provider) of that. Which meant persuading them to send a techie over to the house in person. And because this is customer service, you know that’s not going to end well.

The first “appointment” they gave me? “Tuesday before 7pm.”

You read that right. I asked, “You mean like between 4pm and 7pm?”

No–sometime before 7pm. On Tuesday. Because apparently “specific” isn’t a requirement in the internet biz. (Honestly–what if I tried to run my life like that? “I’ll pick you up sometime before Christmas.” Sheesh.) Oh yeah–and someone had to be home for the techie when he came. Because no one has anything else to do with their life than hang out at home (with no internet) and wait for a support technician.

Thankfully, Denisa would be home that whole day, so everything looked good.

Until 2pm on Tuesday, when a robot called me to inform me that they had to reschedule the appointment for Thursday between 8am and 5pm. (Hey–it was more specific than last time. Maybe they felt bad.) Denisa had to be gone for some of that timeframe, so I had to go home from work early and hang out waiting.

The techie finally showed up, ran a couple of tests, and proudly announced that there was nothing wrong with our internet. The modem was just hot back where I’d stuffed it behind an end table.

We were skeptical, but we also checked to see if the internet was, indeed, working. It was. Now, right before it conked out, it flirted with the abyss–if you’ll recall. It would work for 10 minutes, then stop for 20. Work for a half hour, then die for two hours. However, good luck convincing a technician of this. Apparently the tech support school’s class on “Fixing the Internet” resembles a big game of Jenga. If you can throw a fix up that’ll last until you’re out the door, you’re home free.

Ten minutes after the techie left, our internet was back to broken.

O great and powerful internet gods, please take pity on me, this humble peon.

I called Fairpoint up, of course. Let them know what I thought of their tech support, and how I wanted a new modem. They’re FedEx’ing one now, and they gave me $20 bucks back off my bill, so apparently my Irate Customer voice was working in fine shape yesterday. But in the meantime, we’re back to no internet at home.

Four hours after I got off the phone to complain, a robot called me from Fairpoint. “We’re happy to say that we’ve fixed your internet. Our technician was out earlier today, and everything’s good to go.”

I hung up on the robot. Something tells me he didn’t take it as the insult it was intended to be. That’s the problem with robots.

Anyway. If you see less of me online than normal, know it’s because I’m still just a user in the hands of an angry router. Hopefully things are back to normal by next week. When your internet is your phone, your TV, and your children’s entertainment . . . you’re very thankful you have a good DVD collection.)

PS–And none of this mentions that fact that Facebook has relegated my auto-posts to outer Mongolia. If you haven’t seen my last few posts, scroll down and enjoy them. I’m going to be posting to FB by hand for the next while. You can also always just subscribe to my blog and have it delivered to your email each day. To do that, leave a comment below–when you do, it’ll give you the option. Assuming the angry internet gods don’t decide to monkey with that, too.)

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