Technology

An open letter to Ken who may not have been thinking straight.

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments
Ken Arndt
President
Frontier Communications Inc.
39 Public Square
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18773

Dear Mr. Arndt:

I think we’re off to a bad start.

For reasons I didn’t understand, Frontier decided to buy the customer base and infrastructure of Verizon’s troubled dealings in West Virginia. I can’t imagine what you folks were thinking. While on a smaller scale (by far), it’s akin to someone buying BP’s gulf operations. Perhaps y’all needed a tax loss. Anyhoo, y’all took over the reins on July 1st.

In any event, you’ve inherited me. And hundreds like me – the same folks that overwhelmed the Public Service Commission and the Attorney General of West Virginia with complaints about Verizon’s equipment and nonresponsive customer service. Your website greeting indicates that you were aware of at least some of the problems.

The State’s response was to fine Verizon and impose sanctions that included proof of improved customer service and a significant outlay of cash to improve equipment and coverage. Verizon, responsible corporate citizens that they are, effectively said, “Hell, no” and sold you their mess.

I have to ask. What were you thinking?

My problems with Verizon span about 20 years at a single address with a single phone number. The most concise synopsis of the problem is: when it rains, the equipment doesn’t work. West Virginia boasts possession of the largest rain forest in North America or maybe just a big rain forest.  I can’t quite remember.   Either way, it rains here. A lot. And, by the way, we’re having a fabulously wet July.

A few years ago, Verizon sent me an email taunting me with the news that I could have a DSL connection in my home. I was dubious. At that stage of my relationship with Verizon and their equipment, I could not make an outgoing phone call more than half the time for 3 years. On a somewhat irregular basis, I called the phone number that connected me to what was euphemistically known as Verizon Customer Service and reported, yet again, the problem. With varying degrees of civility, I was told a technician would be dispatched to my house.

Of perhaps the 45 service calls I had in that 3 year period, a technician showed up at my house maybe half-a-dozen times. The technician always arrived when it wasn’t raining and couldn’t find a problem.

Far more often, the technician didn’t show. I would burn vacation time to be at my home between 8 and noon, or 10 and 2, or 12 and 4 or some other four-hour window of time I’d been instructed to be here at risk of having my ticket cancelled if I was not.

The four hours would come and go. I would call. Someone would tell me they’d peered at my phone line from a distance, determined it was working fine and cancelled the ticket.

I was not a happy camper as you might imagine.

So. When I got the invitation to sign up for DSL, I did. I did so in part because I knew they had to send someone to my house to hook it up.

I almost felt sorry for that guy. First of all, it was raining. Nothing worked. He left. He came back. He talked to people at Verizon. He scratched his head. He did this. He did that. He brought in another guy. Another modem. One thing led to another and they assembled things in a nonstandard way that worked around whatever the problem was. It took about a month. They told me, definitively, they didn’t know what the problem was but that this “fix” seemed to allow me use of my phone and DSL connection.

I was happy. For roughly three years things have been peachy. In the most violent of thunderstorms, provided I keep power, I can cruise YouTube while talking to my Sweet Baboo on the telephone.

Well. All coinkydinky, beginning with the first rain after July 1st and continuing through the present, any time it rains there is so much noise on my line that I lose my internet connection altogether. Voice works, but there’s a lot of static on the line that renders it pretty much useless.

Color me unhappy.

It’s a long story that isn’t particularly flattering to me and I won’t bore you with it, but I ended up even replacing the DSL wiring which ensures the problem isn’t on my end. I did it correctly (or at least as correctly as Verizon did) because it worked just peachy until it rained again on Sunday.

I called Frontier Sunday afternoon.

But first let me just copy a quote from your website here real quick. (You’ll want to refer to this often while thinking about me and West Virginia and Verizon and my mastery of Public Service Commission complaint forms.)

Welcome, West Virginia.

We are excited to be serving you.

Over the next few months, you will see that we do things a little differently than your previous Service Provider. Because for us, serving you is more than just a day-to-day operation. Our work is all about you, our customer. We have an ongoing commitment to servicing the communities we work and live in. It is about giving back, growing with our communities and supporting your needs.

It is remembering that you are a person, not just a customer.

I was heartened by those words, though not too much. I am a realist.

(Goodness! What were you people thinking?)

I talked with a very nice gentleman who actually did listen to what I was telling him. He and I agreed I had an unusual setup and he would put through a ticket for a technician to come to my home. I was instructed to be sure and be here between 8 and noon today.

Having to get up at 0’dark thirty so as to be sufficiently caffeinated to be articulate while technically on “vacation time” from my employer is kind of annoying, but I did it cheerfully high on the fact that y’all remember that I’m a person, not just a customer and that y’all are all about supporting my needs.

Well noon came and went.

So I called, my ticket number handy, and was told decisively there was never any intention for anyone to come to my home as my call had been lumped together with a bunch of others in another town for what y’all are calling a widespread outage. Through gritted teeth, I explained the situation and explained that my internet wasn’t out at the moment, but would be the minute it rained and that I had been told unequivocally that I had be here from 8 AM to NOON so that a TECHNICIAN could LOOK at my equipment.

In that false, ever-so-annoying, “I’m sorry for your inconvenience, ma’am” tone of voice, I was told nobody was coming to my house. And that no, I couldn’t schedule a visit because there was a widespread outage in a town near me and my problem had been lumped into that problem without anyone, it seems, reading the ticket or looking at the name of the town I live in.

Did y’all hire all those Verizon people?

What were you thinking?

So. It’s been my experience that online chat with tech support is a better way to go. I chatted with a guy who refuted what the woman on the phone said. He and I went rounds for awhile about my wanting to speak with someone who could unravel why I was being told two different things. Here’s part of the chat transcript:

12:40 PM Connie: James, I took off work to be here. It is after noon and I’ve heard from no one. When I called Frontier, a woman told me there had never been any need for me to be here.

12:40 PM Connie: I’m a wee-bit perturbed.

12:41 PM James A: I definitely understand, and I do apologize for any trouble you have experienced.

12:42 PM Connie: Moreover, the tech I spoke to on Sunday went through my history of connectivity problems with Verizon and the “fix” they finally settled on. He agreed this necessitated an inspection of the outside box.

12:43 PM James A: The engineers will determine the need for onsite access, after diagnosing the lines and equipment on our end of things. That is all the information I have. I apologize.

12:44 PM Connie: I don’t mean to take this out on you. What I do need is the contact information, etc. to file a formal complaint.

12:45 PM James A: I understand. Complaints should be directed to our Customer Service department at 800-921-8101. You can also discuss possible reimbursement for the time that your internet was down.

12:46 PM Connie: I believe that’s the number I just called and was given erroneous information. I’d like a contact name, please.

12:46 PM James A: I do not know what name to give you…

12:47 PM Connie: Is your supervisor available?

12:47 PM James A: We have many Customer Service representatives. I do not know any of them by name.

12:48 PM James A: Unfortunately, supervisor request via our chat platform, are difficult to comply with. If you’d like, you can call our Internet Help Desk at 877-352-7011 opt 2, and speak with one of our supervisors, or you may try Customer Service aswell.

So. I called that number (Option 2, mind you) and spoke with a very pleasant woman who I warned up front that I had my Super Bitch cape on. I vowed silently to myself. I was going to read your website statement to her if she started in with robot speech, but turns out it wasn’t necessary.

She listened (always a good thing) and apologized (without sounding smarmy) and (gasp) called dispatch to find out what she should tell me. I now have a third version of the story of my ticket. She tells me there is a ticket to come to my house, the widespread outage takes precedence, but there are plans to have someone at my house before 8 PM unless they call me. I just fervently hope that technician isn’t wandering around that town I don’t live in looking for my address.

So, um, it’s now 3:00 and I haven’t heard from anyone, but there are miles to go before we all sleep. With any luck, y’all will be here before the 72 hour legally mandated response period is up. And before I’m out of vacation time.

I’ll keep you posted.

And, um, by the way. You should probably make arrangements for your customer service folks to meet their supervisors and learn their names. It’s got to be damn confusing to not have a clue what to tell people like me who can get rather insistent. I once had a Verizon guy tell me that yes, indeedy, he had a time card, but at the end of the pay period he didn’t know who he gave it to, but that, yes, he did give it to someone. And he’d worked at Verizon for 12 years. Imagine! Twelve years and not a clue as to your boss’s name.

And co-workers! A company picnic maybe? Poor James tells me he doesn’t know a single one of his co-workers’ names. (Is this like a sweatshop or something? Or was today his first day?)

Oh. There’s an old geology principle that states the past predicts the future. I know from past experience, the more vacation time I burn, the more PSC complaints I file. Just sayin’.

Sincerely. . .

Please

/ wvfurandroot / 11 Comments

For the past couple of hours I have listened to distant thunder rumble. In a spirit of prayer, I have breathed in and out – please.

The sky darkened. A few large raindrops fell. The deluge began.

It’s a wonderful rain. It’s the kind of rain they record for those nature CDs one is supposed to listen to for calming of the spirit and mind.

I have the big white floor fan parked in front of the patio door and myself parked 6” in front of it. I am not nauseated by heat for the first time in days. I am also drinking my first cup of coffee in this house of the past 8 days.

Oh yes…there’s almost a chill in here. Almost.

To keep the heat down as much as possible in the house, I have kept lights off and appliances (especially the dryer) off. The house is very dark and I finally turned on the dragonfly lamp the better to see my coffee cup lest I dribble coffee on the keyboard.

It’s been a bad technology week and I don’t need Something Else. During a fit of heat stroke, I had a tantrum upon calling my DSL provider and what with one thing and another scissored my DSL connection. It was an accident. In the hideous heat that was yesterday, I dangled out the second floor of my window running new DSL line. While I’m very tickled at my ability to figure out how to do this (seemingly correctly), I am very ashamed of my tantrum. I seldom lose such control of my emotions and the venom I spewed all over the woman at Frontier Communications was unprovoked and undeserved. The accidental scissoring of my DSL connection was, I’m convinced, instant karma.

The rain has already slowed down. I was once told that big raindrops heralded a fast, intense storm. I hope that is not the case; otherwise this storm will prove to just make conditions worse.

Deep breath.

Please.

The sky is clearing and the rain has stopped. I can still hear distant thunder.

Please.

I cannot bear much more of this heat.

I have solaced myself by telling myself everyone used to live without air conditioning. And did so while wearing unbelievable amounts of clothes. I have consoled myself by telling myself that millions still live without air conditioning. I have chided myself for not doing yoga because it’s too hot when the practice originated in a country that is the Mother of Hot. I have read myself the riot act for my incessant whining about it. I have told myself this is the last July 25th I will spend without air conditioning.

I have had quite the conversation with My Self. When it’s all said, there is me and there is heat. We’re going to have to learn to live together – at least for another month or two.

I can still hear thunder, but the sun is shining and the fan that just a moment ago nearly chilled me is now merely circulating hot air.

I can still hear thunder.

Please.

Addendum:  My DSL connection is not fixed.  My original assessment, prior to the tantrum, was correct.  Everytime it rains, my DSL goes out.  I was no sooner ready to upload this post than it went out again.  I have a dozen or so posts sitting on the hard drive that never got uploaded due to my intermittant DSL problems.  I called Frontier, kept my emotions in check, and went through the long ugly history of my whole-house filter, line noise, and inability to reach Cyberia when it rains.

As for the rain.  It petered out and then a gentle misting replaced the storm of a few hours ago.  I’m using the time of comparative coolness to tackle laundry.  The dryer is heating the house to nearly the temperature it was prior to the rain.  I hate being a grownup.

Thanette

/ wvfurandroot / 10 Comments
Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s Thanette was better,
but this will have to do until I clean that damn closet.

The internet has been very good to me.

I’ve been hanging out on the ‘net since before sound and pictures – before there was a web. As for social networking, I dived into the Usenet groups somewhere around 1990.

There I met a significant number of people who became friends, sometimes good friends. The Ex referred to them as my Invisible Friends which seemed apt and so I adopted the description..

The arrival of the digital revolution was so new that home computers were a rarity; and trying to explain to folks how it could be that I was making friends was daunting. It can be a tough thing to explain. Nonetheless, I blathered on and on about my cyber-life to anyone who would listen. Over family dinner, I would talk about the funny things people said on the ‘net.

One bright Saturday the phone ring and my son, who was practicing his telephone etiquette, answered. I heard him say, “May I tell her who’s calling.” He ran to get me, proclaiming all the way that Thanette was on the phone. I searched my memory banks and could not summon any memory of anyone named Thanette or Annette or anything similar. Curious, I took the phone and said hello.

The caller was Jane who lived near Perth, Australia. She and I bonded in the rec.food.cooking group on Usenet. Chef Boy ‘R Mine, bless his heart, had listened to me babble on and on about the ‘net thinking it a person, one person, named Thanette. I asked Jane what she had told him in response to the who’s-calling-thing. She had announced herself as Jane, Jane from the ‘net. It’s curious that my son didn’t think of Thanette as a place. Of course, with her accent, it’s a wonder he understood anything at all.

I asked him to draw me a picture of what he thought Thanette looked like. The end result was a portrait of a woman with brown curly hair, glasses and a big smile. [Damn it all, I saved that artistic work and it’s probably in The Closet I’m Afraid Of. Resurrecting that drawing could be an impetus to start that project. I don’t want to start it, but I do want to find that drawing and frame it.]

My Invisible Friends were far flung. Most of them were in the states, but a good number were scattered about the globe. These were people I had never seen, but who I counted good friends – the kind you tell secrets to.

They lived in Mexico and Scotland and England and Denmark and New Zealand and Sweden and Australia and Canada and, I’m pretty sure, most of the states. Eventually, I started meeting up with people – to meet in 3D – learning what they looked and sounded like.

In the early days, my Visible Friends were shocked that I would travel, one time all the way to London, to meet people I found on the internet. They were sure my brutal death at the hands of a serial killer was an inevitable destiny given my loss of common sense.

Last night, I met and had dinner with the infamous Buzzard Billy. She represents the first Invisible Friend from West Virginia that I’ve jumped in the car to go meet. I’m sure it’s a badge of honor that she’ll wear close to her heart – Hillbilly Thanette.

Lucy and Ethel Build Shelves

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments

Before

Bit by bit, the Great Study Remodel of 2010 is approaching conclusion.

In February, I dragged everything out of the study. I patched the walls and ceiling. I primed. I painted. I whined.

All that stuff I dragged out? It’s been sitting in the upstairs hallway plotting ways to do damage to my body as I tunneled my way to the master bedroom. It’s been sitting there devising diabolical plans lo these many weeks.

Amongst the flotsam and jetsam was the world’s ugliest dresser used to store sundry computer crap dating back to the early 90s, various plastic containers housing yet more junk, boxes of old college papers and unfinished short stories, and my son’s taekwondo stuff. There are boxes of cards sent to me, boxes of old photographs, and a box of all my reading glasses from the olden days when I used to coordinate such to my wardrobe. (Alas, they are now all too weak to correct my eyesight.)

And books. Lots of books. Feet and feet of books. Some of the books were shelved on the world’s ugliest bookcase.

After I dragged all the crap out and put it in the hallway thinking this would be a quick project, I began painting. After finishing the painting, I was stunned by what an attractive room it was. A room that didn’t need to be cluttered up. A room needing to be somewhat spare, yet housing all my treasures.

I vowed (yes, I did) that 90% of the crap I hauled out was not going back in there. In fact, all that crap was going to a landfill.

And functional. I want the room to be a correctly appointed room for me to do Something Worthwhile.

[That’s a tricky thought. The past couple of years the study mostly served as the place where I scan photographs and stare out window while drinking coffee. I have high hopes of doing something constructive in there once I get done.]

Still. Even paring down to what I consider bare essentials was going to result in a lot of surface clutter. I also vowed that ugly dresser and ugly bookcase were not going back into the room. I also pondered how to get the computer crap off of my 1920s library table.

I peered at the closet.

I measured.

Almost After

I decided. Oh, yes I did.  And it was a good decision. I hate looking at computer equipment when it’s not in use and stuffing it all in the closet seemed like a stroke of genius.

By mid-March, I was down to 3 tasks – build shelving and a desktop into the closet, shampoo the carpet, and sort through all the crap only dragging back into the room that which I truly loved. Oh. And stain the leather chair brown – more on that later.

The first project was to complete the shelving in the closet to turn it into a miniature office. First it was too snowy and then I was too busy and then I was sick and then it was too rainy and then I was too busy and then I couldn’t summon any ambition.

Ambition welled during this 3-day weekend when I have much more time than usual.

Today, my mother (69) and myself (50), dragged out old shelving left over from the Great Master Bedroom Remodel. The plan was to cut it to width, cantilever it on the walls with wood laying around here and there, touch up the stain and paint the supports. [Cantilever is not the exact term I want, but I can’t summon the correct one. Trust me, a true cantilever is way beyond anything I’d ever try to do.]

Two old-ish women bearing bifocals and hot- flashing in 90F weather shouldn’t be allowed near power tools. Nevertheless.

The first three shelves we tortured on the table saw were too short. (Twinky tape measures, sweat and astigmatism are anathema to good carpentry.) We eventually prevailed without (a) a trip to the emergency room, or (b) angry words spoken to one another. [During this stage of the adventure, my father ambled out to see what all the noise was about and quickly returned to the safety of his study.]

We couldn’t find screws long enough and when we did they weren’t wood screws. We dug through workshops, toolboxes, and kitchen junk drawers collecting wood screws one by one. It’s difficult to explain exactly why, but attaching wood to walls with a corded drill required both us to stand on the ladder at the same time – one to hold and one to drill. It’s a small closet. We’re full-grown women. The ladder was a traditional size. I looked at Mom and said, “Lucy and Ethel build shelves.” We both got the giggles and had to sit a spell while we discussed which of us is Lucy.

Future Brown Chair

We  did, in fact, attach shelving to the walls.  We also put a shitload of books on one of them to make sure future concussions were out of the question, and declared the project done. Before we could gather up the debris, we got the  bright idea to cut a hole in the desktop portion (actually two shelves shoved together) to pass computer cords through. Playing with table saws and hand-held drills was exciting enough, but finagling the drill press was especially exciting.  You kind of had to be there.  Picture Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory.

We did not do any of this in a way a carpenter would recognize as best practice. Still, there is shelving on the wall to house books and a desktop to hold the monitor, keyboard and printer. There’s room under the desktop for the CPU, the ensuing rat’s nest of cables and, perhaps, a box of junk or two. [I have to be realistic – there will most assuredly be absolutely useless crap that I can’t bear to trash, but don’t intend to use.]

I’m tired. I’m hot. I’m sweaty and there’s a thin layer of sawdust in my hair and on my glasses. It took way longer than I had anticipated. I had expected to have everything done today except for weeding through the crap in the hallway.

Tomorrow I will touch up paint and stain the shelving and shampoo the carpet. I hope to at least begin the Great Purge of the hallway. The Trash Guys are going to hate me.

[As for the leather chair – I have a blue wing chair that is Entirely The Wrong Color for the study, but which I love. Back in February, I dabbled some walnut stain to the bottom of the seat cushion to see What Would Happen. It wasn’t bad, but it took a couple of weeks to dry. I’m going to do the whole chair. Not today. Or tomorrow. Or even next week. Eventually.]