When To Have Words With Your Internet Service Provider

• When your call for a repair requires speaking to a computer, who takes your request to reconnect the telephone wires to your house as connection problem that could be fixed by restarting your modem.
• When your call to the repair/service branch of the company is dropped after they’ve obtained a good call back number, and they don’t call you back. Even when the call drop was on their end.
• When your second call to the repair/service branch of the company leaves you on hold for half of your lunch break and you have to clock-in while still listening to bad hold music.
• When you are forced to hang up after letting the Customer Service Rep know that you are at work and have limited time and he promises to call back on the good call back number when he has the date for your repair work to be done, and an hour later you are still waiting to hear back.
• When your new co-workers see you on hold after lunch and get excited because they get to see “Angry Liz” for the first time.
• When you call back to check on the status of your repair request and no one knows what you are talking about and half of the offices in the company are already closed so nothing can be done about it.
• When you’d rather order pizza than call them one more time.
• When you spend an hour on hold waiting before work the following morning only to find out you’ll have a technician at your house four days from today, between the hours of ten and six.
• When they show up at four, two days late. (which is just a guess at this point, based on the level of customer service I’ve been provided so far)

I’d say that depending how far down this list you get, you are totally justified in having words with your ISP. Angry words. Words of righteous indignation. Words that get your bill cut in half. Words that make your Customer Service Representative feel so sorry for you, they quit their jobs on the spot.

I was ready to have some of these words about halfway through the list, but I made it to the end without threatening to yank my service and switch to someone else. I wonder at myself for just taking this abuse when I pay dearly every month for their service. Don’t I deserve to be treated better? Just because they have squillions of customers to take care of doesn’t mean each and every one doesn’t deserve a timely call back if a call back is promised! Doesn’t each customer deserve prompt restoration of service if they are PAYING for that service during the time it isn’t active? Yes and yes. Will I be the one to stand up for customer rights? Uh, unless they happen upon my blog, probably not.

* UPDATE! I sent a strongly worded email to my ISP!  If I had known this was a possibility, I never would have suggested I wasn’t willing to have words with them. Written words! Heck Yeah!

** NOTE! This is my 150th post! For having been at this for a year and a half, that doesn’t seem very impressive. Still! I wanted to announce it!

 

Slight Randomness Regarding the Internet

What’s the point of a computer without internet? Makes it difficult to do just about anything useful. I’m writing a blog post now, in a word processor. How old school! Though if I’m actually being honest with myself, I have written several of my last posts in Microsoft Word. It’s a format I’m comfortable with and have been using for(basically)ever. I think the early years were Word Perfect, but my dad would have to be the one to confirm that. Anyway, at least I’m not attempting to write my posts by hand. On paper. Now that would be old school.

But I’m surprised by how heavily I rely on the internet. I probably spend 65% of my waking hours on the computer, checking my email, [note: I’d like to go ahead and add a link to my last post, but I can’t do that without the internet!] looking at blog stats and writing new posts, reading others’ blogs, chatting with buddies, researching businesses…the list is lengthy. And now all I can think to do with my computer is write.

Not that writing isn’t a productive use of my time – it is. Sharpening my skills and all that. I imagine that I wouldn’t get through a post today had it not been for a lapse in internet connection.

Which, now MANY hours later, has clearly been fixed because it took me from 9:30am (the time of  conception of this post) to now, nearly 5pm, to get back to it. I’m a busy lady! I’m working two jobs! But I’ll tell you, a good portion of what kept me busy today was on the internet. I know I’m not saying anything new and exciting in my praising the wonders of cyberspace, but really, how awesome is the instant connectivity, communication, and the seemingly endless availability of information that comes with an internet connection?

Which is why, when I erect my tent in the woods to avoid real life, an internet connection is a real must have. Right along with water, food, and firewood.

Surprisingly, though, I spent a good deal of my weekend completely unhooked. It was a holiday weekend and my phone was dead half the time (not really a stretch if you know me… chargers are hard to keep up with and considering my deep hatred for the phone…why not let it die?) but more curiously, my laptop was closed much of the weekend. Not all – there was a great deal of football being watched this weekend for which I somehow missed inheriting the love my mother and sister share for the excessive watching of. (That sentence really doesn’t make sense, but I’m acknowledging it, so that makes it okay, right?) So I had to do something and the internet provided endless fun.

Despite these few hours of football induced web-surfing, I was surprised at what little time I spent with computer in lap. I guess that just goes to show how much I enjoyed the company and how un-compelled I felt to do any work whatsoever.

Even so, after this holiday of thanks, I must say that I am VERY thankful for the internet (and you should be too! How else would you get to read my every thought?)!