Headcase - Calling Michele Tanner

We’ve been paying for cable television service at our house for years. However, we haven’t had reception the last six months. I don’t mind not having reception since I don’t watch television. But my partner does, and I asked him a few weeks ago why he continues paying for service he’s not receiving.

“It’s easier to pay for it than try to get Comcast customer service to fix or disconnect it,” he said.

This is the same person who decided it was easier to do without phone service a few months when his phone was disconnected in error. He called a couple of times. But when the perky non-support people couldn’t explain why they’d disconnected his service, they simply hung up. He was in the middle of doctoral exams and decided, oh well, it might make life simpler to go without a phone now.

I’ve been in customer non-support hell myself recently. My friend Michael says the only function of technology is to create a sense of scarcity. The more new stuff comes out, the more deprived you feel until you get some of it. Thus, perusing Amazon.com recently, I decided I had to have the new high-tech Nokia camera-phone. I could get the $300 phone free if I switched my service from the horrible Sprint PCS to T-Mobile.

The best thing about this, I thought, would be blowing off Sprint. The worst part would also be blowing off Sprint. Sure enough, it took three calls to cancel service. After two waits that were interrupted by ordinary needs like eating and going to bed, I spoke to someone who tried to talk me out of my decision. When I explained that I am getting four times the minutes on T-Mobile for little more than Sprint’s cost, plus a fancy phone that has built-in defibrillation paddles to revive me after using it as a sex toy, the non-support person was crushed. “Well,” she said, “I’m authorized to match the minutes, but I can’t get you that phone.”

“Then let’s just make this a clean break with no hard feelings, OK?” I said. “I mean it was good for a few years. True, I never got a signal in my house, but I had some great times with you in other areas of the city.”

One assumes that the nightmare of canceling a service is not intentional on the part of companies like Sprint. However, last week AOL signed an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission promising not to make cancellation so difficult. The FTC also charged AOL with continuing to charge credit cards for the service even after customers had managed to negotiate the byzantine termination process. AOL did not admit doing this, but did promise not to do it in the future. Uh, OK.

There’s more! One day, I couldn’t log onto the Internet. I called the script-readers at Comcast and was told that my problem would require a home service call in a week. So I decided to call my computer maker, HP. Suddenly, I relate to all those people in Chamblee who say they can’t understand anything immigrant clerks say in stores. HP has fired all of its non-support people here and moved the department to Bombay.

After hours on the phone with a succession of people whose English I could barely understand, I was given the news: I would have to perform a “nondestructive system recovery.” Nondestructive, my ass. The process disappeared much of my data, removed several programs and failed to restore my Internet connection. In a rage, I asked the woman who directed this for her name. In her thick accent, she told me she was “Michele Tanner.” Right. “I am Habib of Atlanta,” I replied, throwing the phone against the wall.

I then called Comcast back and asked sweetly to speak with someone who might know what they were talking about. An all-business woman came on the line and solved my Internet connection problem in two minutes.

So I got the computer up and running, and then I went to the Windows site to re-install the patches against the dreaded worm. Yep. The machine crashed again, and I knew that I’d have to run yet another system recovery. I got back on the phone with Bombay and this time the non-support person — Joe Blow of New Delhi? — couldn’t even figure out how to get into the built-in recovery program. “We will have to send you a recovery disk. You should receive it in a few days,” he said, hanging up briskly. Happily, I figured out how to get into the program myself. (The recovery disk arrived a week later with absolutely no directions.)

I have abbreviated this story. The Nokia phone had faulty software, for example. It took a week to get a replacement. Honestly, “customer service” is now a euphemism for torture — a poisonous piece of cheese in a maze consumers run through in our hunt for the next best thing.

No wonder we all so willingly believed Y2K would destroy technology. It was a dream of revenge on non-support people.

cliff.bostock@creativeloafing.com

Cliff Bostock’s website is www.soulworks.net.