customer service – The Hermits' Rest

I Deserve a Medal

Whew. Today I exhibited more patience than I knew I had, and finally triumphed over the maze of confusion known as AT&T/Direct TV customer support. I win.

My actual reward is a glass of lemonade. I deserve it, too.

Refreshing, though everything makes me choke since I was sick.

You see, last week our DirectTV stopped working. I called to get repairs scheduled, because Lee is easily annoyed with service providers. I believed I had it scheduled for today.

I was as relaxed as Penney in her cool, freshly dug hole, guarded by the Giant Shedding Machine.

In the meantime, we joined the modern world, and hooked the Apple TV up so we could watch television on it. Well, except that DirectTV and Disney are quarreling again, so we had to watch ABC on the antenna.

Aaron Rogers, shown in antenna TV, expresses my frustration.

Over the weekend we used streaming, which we’d been avoiding due to our rural bandwidth issues. It feels so modern to watch football on Peacock and Tulsa King on Paramount +. Kathleen will be very proud of us.

Then came today. No repair person showed. So, I dialed the number someone had left in a text. It was a magic number. It let me actually get help and service. In a mere 2.5 hours I got all my telecommunications needs met. It was a LONG 2.5 hours.

First I talked to a nice woman who determined that no repair person came because there is ONE technician in our area (Waco) and they got injured last week. Apparently they tried calling me but it came up as Spam Risk so I didn’t answer, and they didn’t leave messages. Grr. DirectTV is looking for a substitute, but as of now, I have no prospect of getting the dish realigned.

What a load of bull. Wait, that’s a cow.

Next, I talked to a billing guy. He was hard to understand, but tried to figure out my bill and my two different accounts. What he accomplished was to get money taken off our bill since we have no satellite. He was also able to tell me what phone numbers were associated with our account. Holy cow, there were eight. Four phones, a hotspot, two watches, and a “device” of some kind. That was unsatisfactory. I now understood why Lee said the phone bill was so high. That had to change. But billing guy couldn’t do that.

Beautiful Mabel approves. She grew a mane!

That fellow successfully transferred me to a very nice young woman who works for the mobility department, which is extra separate from the television department, the billing department, and the internet department. This woman and I spent at least an hour straightening things out. The bill is now halved, with fewer gigs on the RV hotspot, only phones for me and my children (yes, even the uncommunicative one), and no watches. We determined they don’t need to have their own numbers. I’d been trying to get these things cancelled for months, but the “helpful” app wouldn’t let me get to my phone info.

Modern life is hard.

But I’m stubborn and persistent as a Fiona.

I did enjoy talking to the agent about camping, Native American history, and the weird weather lately. That’s what happens when you’re kind to the people on the phone. She worked hard to fix my account, too.

However, she could not help with my final issue, which was to get the wifi setup cancelled on the Red House, since we aren’t renting it out anymore. That was a different department. So she transferred me and because the system only wanted to give me a call back on my landline from when I lived in Round Rock, I had to wait on hold.

Waiting, like all these Scissortails are.

That’s okay, I spent 15 minutes weeding nut grass in the pool flower bed. This made the next customer support lady laugh when I told her I had to crawl out of the flower bed to find my account number. But by gosh, she was able to cancel that account! All I have to do is return the equipment. Ugh.

Still, I did it! I finally got the right people to help me, didn’t get disconnected, and didn’t lose my cool. This is a true sign of modern competency.

Listening?

What do you listen to while you work?

The prompt for today was easy. I listen to things at work, but not music or podcasts. Here are the things in the background when I’m working from home:

Dogs barking. The most annoying sound. Love the dogs, not as fond of being notified every time a cow moves.
The ice maker. This went away for a while when it moved up to my bedroom (and was turned off at night) and in winter, when the residents don’t need so much ice for basic survival. It hums, whirs, and clatters along quite briskly.
Swallows. They may not be breeding, but they are still swooping into the semi-enclosed area outside my office and yelling at each other.

That’s not so bad. I like to write in quiet, so I think I’m pretty lucky.

Today, however, I worked to the sound of music on hold, as I patiently waited AT&T out. I knew if I just let them yammer on and try to sell me shit, they’d eventually realize they’d been charging me for a broken modem that they no longer service and come groveling back. I did a lot of deep breathing, attended an online conversation with friends, and just kept saying Okay when I was put on brief holds for 2.5 hours. I ended up getting refunds for the broken equipment back to the beginning of the year, no charge for my hotspot that I use in the RV because it’s no good at home, and $55 a month off our satellite tv for a year. HA!

I was so busy today the only photo I took was my fingernails.

I’m glad that went well, since I messed a bunch of other stuff up and was displeased with my lack of attention to detail. I messed up an Airbnb reservation, but if I PAY ATTENTION I can end up making money. I just need to wait two months.

Then I realized my reservation for my next Myrtle Beach trip was for only a one-bedroom condo. I was just sure it was two, because I didn’t look hard enough. There goes my visit with my stepsister, who needs a good bed. I’m gonna visit with them somehow in the not-too-distant future. Or else. And I doubt my other friends will want to visit either. Not much privacy.

There’s a reason I’m not in charge of business stuff usually. I can’t keep all the details straight.

In better news, the reason I skipped blogging yesterday was that I drove over to the ever-expanding suburbs to see my friends Susan and Brian, who were in Texas to meet their newest grandchild. That was a happy reunion. The baby was doing well and had bright, white hair. Really cool. We ate at a nearby Pan Asian restaurant. I got phô and sushi both. Heavenly.

Susan and I are trying to look friendly across a table.

Mostly we talked and talked. It was good to talk and talk in person rather than on Zoom. Susan and I are old friends with much history and much in common, so there’s much to cram in during just one meal. Brian did get in a few stories, too. It was quite cathartic. New grandparents have to do a lot of tongue biting, you know. I did do listening last night, so I’m barely sticking to my topic.

I did take another photo. Spotted Cucumber beetle (*Diabrotica undecimpunctata*) — a major agricultural pest.

Other than that, I’m still having trouble with the heat, as are the animals. The horses are very jealous of shade patches and are grumpy. Fiona is especially full of territorial kicks. No listening there. At least the Zyrtec is helping Apache.

Yes, Good Customer Service Exists

So, Lee and I are headed to our yearly South Carolina condo stay. We left after work yesterday to get a few hours in, and stopped at the same Hampton Inn we stayed in last year.

When we got there, one front desk person was on the phone. She had obviously been on the phone a long time, helping someone with a complex reservation. I was so impressed at her kindness and support for the person on the phone.

Meanwhile, I discovered I’d made my reservation for the wrong day. The young goth guy helping me was just great about fixing the error, which was made harder by the fact that I’d used points to make the reservation. He, too, was cheerful, friendly, and patient. It made me feel so much better.

Then, we realized a dude had been waiting behind us a long time. The phone call finally ended, and the front desk woman started to help us, but we said to help that guy. He was SO nice about having to wait, saying he’d had the same problem. We all ended up laughing and talking. What could have been a group of annoyed people ended up being uplifting.

Once we deposited our stuff, we headed over to the pizza place we ate at last year, where we had loved the calzones. Lee suggested we sit outside to eat. Our server ended up being the manager.

Well, the manager, named Leigh or Lee, made our meal a true joy. We had such fun talking with her about her life, adventures in the hospitality industry, and what it’s like to be the child of a very outgoing father (she and I are). The calzones with Cajun seasoning were great, too.

At the end of the meal, Leigh/Lee told us she’d been bummed that she had to come in to work, but that we’d made her evening great.

I guess I was happy, since I made this weird Snapchat.

I’m so glad we’d been able to meet and enjoy conversation. It was the end of the evening, so the crowd had thinned. She was able to do all her work AND meet new people. We got great food and laughed at all her stories.

I hope our trip continues to feature kindness, good service, and patience. Not being so stressful about COVID helps, for sure.

We Face TV Challenges and WIN

My goodness was yesterday a total pain in the butt and other places. Today, however, we kicked our challenges in the butt.

Yesterday I mentioned it was really windy and that the satellite television receiver was damaged. Today it finished falling over. So, we had to call DirectTV. Lee couldn’t find the customer support number, so I found that. Much dialing, redialing, cursing, and knitting on hold ensued. Finally a guy answered. And after some combined effort and cursing, we actually got a repair scheduled for tomorrow.

Next, I wanted to watch football. The customer support person just said, in a chipper fashion, you can use the app! This set me off toward many hours of trying to figure out how to log in.

Then I discovered I needed to sign on to AT&T to get to the television app. No password or user info I had worked. So I got to enjoy another customer support person. At least they answered fast. After 20 minutes explaining that I’d give them my 8 digit passcode if I had any idea what it was, I got many things reset.

Next, I tried to log in with all the various numbers and letters I’d gathered. Everything I did required a text or email verification, half of which went to me and half to Lee. By this time, even I was getting testy. They make things so damned secure that legitimate users feel like they’re being interrogated. I kept typing in the special secret passcode the nice lady had set up for me, but I could not get in. Turns out they needed the shorter passcode that had reared up way earlier in the day.

At long last the DirectTV and AT&T accounts are merged. I know the username and password, not that dang passcode or the other passcode. I watched football. Ironically, I watched it on Paramount+ not the thing I took hours to set up. Can’t watch live TV on the app without the upgrade. Crap.

Today I also wanted to watch football. We had been unable to get the phone to stream to the TV on Bluetooth yesterday, also frustrating. So, today I got the game on my laptop. Woo! Then Lee moved a shelf into the house, found an HDMI cable, and got the thing to work. Ta da.

You may be a millennial or younger person, which means you’ve been watching television on many different apps for years. You may find our challenges funny. But I have an excuse!

We never watch streaming services here at the ranch, because we don’t have good Internet. We can’t stream without using up our limited data. No 5G. No cable internet. No fiber. No nothing. So, we never had to set all this up before.

Now I have some choices for emergencies. I’m not gonna get Netflix until we have something more viable. But that was sure a lot of work.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Both the hot tub and the satellite dish should function! And maybe our sick relatives will be on the mend?