Friday, March 02, 2007

Tech Support

I spent over an hour with a tech support guy from my new satellite Internet company. He was very helpful. His name was Nicolas. He may have been from India. He worked diligently to discover what the problem was. He had me try different things like disabling the new virus protection. When that was not the problem, he had me hook up my computer directly to the dish (took off the netgear). That was not the problem. Then he had me test the connection speed – ah, a problem. At one point he apparently put me on hold, but I thought we had been disconnected. I said, "Nicolas? Are you there? Don’t leave me Nick!" He had come back on the line for that last part – I am sure he thought I was a goof, but he assured me he was not leaving me. Then we did some more tests. That is when Nicolas said my transmitter was not strong enough, and he was going to connect me to someone with more tech support – just when I thought we had a strong relationship and I was beginning to understand his English. Eric came on the line with a smooth television type voice. It gave me the feeling I was not speaking to a real person – much too smooth and knowledgeable – much more intimidating than Nicolas. Eric told me to check the lights on the system set-up.
Me: Hey, they are not all on.
Eric: Which ones are not lit up?
Me: Every other one – the first, middle, and last are on.
Eric: Get closer.
Me: What?
Eric: Read me what it says.
Me: Oh, you are right. There are words on it. How about that?
Eric: Is there something blocking your computer? No? Go check? Go out in the yard and look.

The dish is just outside the window from the computer. I could have opened the window and touched it. I could certainly see it plainly without going outside to look at it. I was beginning to think that Eric thought that I was an idiot. There was nothing blocking the dish other than my house, and I told him so. He said that we had been slowly losing transmitter power and that now it was not transmitting at all. He would send out a technician to re-set my dish. It would take three to five business days.

I guess I will be using the old puter for a few days. Well, at least I know my way around it. Have a good weekend.

2 comments:

Buck said...

Thanks to Site Meter, I knew you were back on dial-up before I wandered over here. Your dial-up: Level3, out of Dallas. Your broadband: DirecPC, out of Bonnie, Illinois. In which case, right after you got your broadband I started seeing regular visits from that Bonnie, IL location. It took me a couple of days to figure out it was you, LOL!

That "three to five days" response time for an on-site service call seems pretty poor, to me. But I suppose one takes what one can get, eh?

Bag Blog said...

I got a call from the internet service on Saturday to set up the appointment - maybe it will all go quickly, but the company seems to be based out of the D/FW area.