It all started back in February when my Norton Antivirus subscription ran out. Naturally, I renewed it, and in the process of renewing I decided to upgrade from the 2002 to the 2005 edition, which was a $20+ extra, but I figured it was worth it. No problem.
This little thought started something in my brain, so a couple of weeks later I upgraded from Windows 98 SE to XP Pro. This caused several minor problems that were pretty easily remedied and one that was not: My antivirus no long worked. I followed all of the instructions on the Symantec troubleshooting site, and their database decided that the remedy was to uninstall all traces of my former Antivirus program and re-download and install it from the site. Fortunately, I had paid a little extra for the right to redownload the program multiple times from Symantec. “Good thinking, vibro!” I thought. So I redownload and attempt to reinstall, but now the installer freezes up during the inital instllation phase. More mucking about on the database does no good. Days pass, then weeks. Every night I’m fucking with this thing. I exchange emails with a number of different Symantec employees, all of whom assure me they can help, and none of whom are able to do shit. I develop a working theory on what went wrong: I uninstalled the entire Antivirus program manually as I was instructed by the troubleshooting database, but what I redownloaded and attempted to reinstall was only the upgrade, not the full app. So when my upgrade tries to run, it freezes up because it cannot find anything to upgrade. The solution is simple: give me a link to a fresh copy of AntiVirus 2005 to download. For some reason, even though I have at this point paid about as much for the upgrade and subscription renewal as I would have for an entire new app, I am unable to adequately communicate my plan via email to the numerous Symantec techs with whom I am in contact on a regular basis. Meanwhile, even though I’m out $40, my poor 'puter sits defenseless. The last thing I haven’t tried yet is to call the customer service line because it costs $29.95, unless they determine that the problem is the fault of their product. I believe this to be the case, but another concurrant life experience does not give me confidence that a call to tech support will either a) fix the problem or b) result in a finding in my favor on the issue of whose fault it is that my damned antivirus program has now been offline for over a month.
You see, my mania for upgrade that began this winter extended to my cell phone. The old one was 3 1/2 years old, its battery wouldn’t hold a decent charge anymore and it was starting to drop calls. My contract with Sprint ran out on the last day of February, and after considering many different providers’ plans and availalbe phones I decided to re-up with Sprint, who promised me a $150 rebate on the phone of my choice. I therefore decided to purchase a more expensive phone than I would have otherwise chosen, which included a camera, voicedial and speakerphone. I placed this order over the phone with a Sprint representative and ordered all of the relevant services needed to support this upgraded tech. My calculations indicated that I would end up paying about as much per month for the services in quesiton as I was paying currently paying.
Naturally, when the phone arrived and I activated it, nothing fucking worked. Two weeks of daily calls to Sprint PCS resulted in numerous promises that the multiple problems would be solved, but they never were. Meanwhile, of course, the rates I am paying assume that my phone IS recieving all of these services that don’t work. Finally, after much wailing and nashing of teeth, everything works, and I am currently pretty satisfied with my phone and the services I am recieving.
Except for one thing. Can you guess what it is? I’ll give you a second.
You guessed it: the rebate, which I was told to expect 30 days after placing my order, never arrived. Does anyone at Sprint PCS know anything about that, or have any idea when I might expect my rebate? What do you think?
Which brings us to the present. Last week, my dishwasher stops working. No problem! I’ve got the American Home Shield warranty serivce, which I have never used, and which my beloved and I have paid $1500 in premiums to over the past three years. In fact, we had just sent them $500 to renew the warranty mere days before the dishwasher decided to stop working. We place a service order over the internet, and the next day, a repairman arrives to work on the dishwasher. He messes with it for an hour, takes it completely apart and puts it back together again, and it starts working.
Oh, you know there’s going to be a catch, don’t you?
The catch is that he says he has no idea what is wrong with the dishwasher. It was not working when he took it apart, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and when he put it back together it worked. He doesn’t know what happened. Fortunately, the service call fee we paid is good for 30 days, so if it stops working again, which seems likely since he has no idea what is wrong with the thing, we are not to touch it and put in another service call and he’ll be back to check on it again.
Two nights ago it stopped working again in exactly the same way as before. We didn’t touch it, put in another service call over the internet like before, and, as per instructions from internet form, we waited to be contacted by the local service provider to set up an appointment. The call never came. I called the customer service line and talked to a human being to re-request the service. She said the message had been sent and that we should expect a call shortly, to just be patient. Does the call come? Nope. We call the service provider directly and leave a voicemail. This morning I am awakened by a caller from the service provider who informs me that they never recieved anything from American Home Shield and therefore can’t schedule an appointment. I call AHS AGAIN and for the THIRD TIME I request service. An hour later the same woman from the local service provider calls back to tell me that they can’t come until Monday. Neither I nor my beloved can be there on Monday, will Tuesday work? Nope. We’ll have to wait until the NEXT Monday, which is just as bad for us as this Monday! Finally, after much negotiation, we arrange to have a tech come tomorrow (Saturday) morning. The catch is that it’s the same tech who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the dishwasher in the first place.
Let’s review: I have three unresolved customer service issue with three different unrelated companies, and there is no end in sight on any of the three issues. What the fuck is going on? As I wrote this excessive OP, my anger has been replaced with a deep existential dread–yeah, I’ll call it angst. I have the feeling that I’m caught up in three different horribly designed beuracratic machines, and I will be here for the rest of my life. If it were any more Kafkaesque, I’d wake up a goddamn cockroach in the morning, just in time to not be able to answer the doorbell for the incompetent dishwasher repairman!
