while i wait for a brighthouse internet technical support voice to come on the phone, i grumble here with you hoping the magical moments that would have been tonight are not stolen by my so called friends at brighthouse... to depend on the internet connection for sharing these words truly brings the reality of how powerless we are to actually communicate across cyberspace whenever and however we want to we truly are... beyond the power to sit across from each other and have a conversation, we are completely dependant on others, in this day and age mostly out of control corporations, to grant us the means to communicate any other way... the phone company, the cable company, the internet service providers... they have the power to, at the flick of a switch, send us back into the stone ages (or at least the 19th century) in terms of how we communicate with each other... pony express, anyone?...
it has been eight minutes and forty two seconds, approximately, and there has been no sound from the phone since the voice said it was connecting me to an internet support technician and the phone says the call is still connected...
so i ate a peach yogurt that i would not have eaten and finally a tech support person comes on and asks for the same information that the recorded voice already had (are automated recorded voices really more intelligent than humans?) and after sending a series of signals the allegedly human voice claimed to have found a note about some maintenance work being done on the internet in my area and that is likely causing my outage and the note the human voice found said it is anticipated the work will continue until 6am, or at least five hours, and the voice apologized for the inconvenience and asked if there was anything else my friends at brighthouse could do and i asked for a credit for my inconvenience and whil waiting for the credit to process i suggested that brighthouse offer an option that other companies (like banks) do that send an automated text to a customer cell phone when service interruptions occur, especially when they are scheduled maintenance... the human voice said she put that in a suggestions box with a bit of a chuckle which suggested the whole finding of the note about maintenance might have been a lie just to say the internet will be back up and running any time now, or at least by morning, so stop trying to use it and leave us alone, friend...
i get a tech message from my bank every time i use my credit card as any random gas pump (among other reasons), so cn it be so challenging to write a program that sends a text message to selected telephone numbers (customer's wh've requested such notifications) whenever internet service is interrupted in an area?... apparently it's beyond the technical savvy (or customer service) of brighthouse... they may be not so bright, alas...
so anyway, the human voice reads me the suggestion she allegedly put into some sort of customer suggestion box (i picture a waste paper basket or toilet icon on their screen, if it exists) and then asks if there is anything else she can help me with tonight... i reminded her about the credit for my inconvenience and she tells me they upgraded all the cable in the area to fiber optics which will increase my internet speed at no charge, rambles on a bit more, apologizes for my inconvenience once again, and then asks me again if there is anything else she can do for me tonight... i resisted the opening and asked once again about the credit and she said she gave me two days credit... she's lucky i was in a good mood...
alternatives welcome...
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