Tech Support Yeah Right!

Sunday night 12/21/08 We experienced A real cold snap. Temps went down to single digits. After I got home, power cam back up and I found out that I had lost both cable and internet. Called my supplier whom I will leave nameless right now, but not blameless. Hear that RR? Anyway, I digress. Called them up to report loss of cable. Once they determined what account I was speaking of, ( a story in itself) The agreed that there is an outage in my area, and they have A tech ( a, one, singular) working in the area, and will get to it ASAP. Hear that one before have you? Well, was already after 1 AM so i called it a night. next morning, no cable. Go figure!

So, called once again, and of course, all you get is the automated answering service. Press 1 for tech support etc. etc. Once I press 1, the phone disconnects. Tried and tried and tried again with same results. Well, tried cable at around noon, when I got home from errands, and woo hoo, had cable. Alas, still no internet. So, near 2 PM called the dreaded 877 number again, and went to #1 for tech support, and #1 again for automated help where comp talks to you,and you answer after you do what it asks to reboot. Even went as far as being instructed to go thru as far as Command Prompt. I know, Ree, all you hear is Blah Blah Blah, but stick with me. After all that failed, all told about 10 minutes of this, I got a real honest to god person. They went thru the whole script again, word for word with the computer generated one. When that failed, I got switched to the dreaded further "TECH SUPPORT" Now, am connected to a person half way around the world, who has barely passable English.

Now I am in a world of deep doo doo. After repeated failed attempts of them trying to fix it from their end, and with me seeing absolutely no change on my modem, I again remind them that this is the Erie account and not the Ohio account. Oh, Did not see that! Was their response. Sorry Ron, Ree, and Phil if you got interrupted Monday afternoon. 38:53 minutes into the call, eating up the cell minutes, my phone died due to lack of battery power. If I could have reached out to touch someone, I would have throttled them at this point! I gave up for the day just to calm down and regroup.

Bit the bullet once again and made the dreaded call again, and was put on hold for 12 minutes the first time, and hung up with out getting to a live person. Called back again, atleast this was after 9:01 PM so was on free time for the phone. Went thru live operator number 1 again with no positive results, and they said with their syrupy joyful tone thanking me for being a proud customer of their service again, before they transferred me around the world again. After hurdling the language barrier once again, we finally got it up and running. Fingers crossed this never happens again. I am just waiting now for their call back to see how stellar their rr tech service is. They so seem to want to be praised! My personal opinion right now is that they are knuckle draggers. Their arms are so long from patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves on how great their service is, is how I feel they earned the nic of knuckle draggers.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant and raves

Careful In Winter Driving Safety Tips

Here are some things not to do with winter driving. The car on the right was tail gating too closely to a semi. As you can see, he kissed the rear end rather hard. I'll wager he gave a big Homer Simpson, DOH!" when that happened. I'd assume the semi never even knew that it had been kissed from behind. Do not take your eyes off of the road. Pay attention to where you are at all times. Here, someone had crossed the center-line of the road, crossed someones driveway and is now straddling a ditch. Good Idea! Do not drive yourself home. get some one to pick you up. No apparent damage other than the car is ditched. I have been saving these to add on here all at one time. I was going to come up with some witty caption, but I guess the pictures say more than I ever could.