When we last spoke, (click link to the left for the previous blog) I had returned to some strange events, many of which were communication related, and I asked, could it be the phenomenon of “Mercury in retrograde”?

This is what has been going on.

Three of us were taking turns plugging our computers directly into the Verizon (Internet Service Provider) Fiber-optic box. And then, one computer couldn’t get on line. All of a sudden. As my laptop continued to be able to do so, I called Verizon, spoke to a “technician” (notice the quotes) and he surmised that because my computer was able to connect, the one that couldn’t must be broken.

Bear that in mind.

Then, strangely, my son’s laptop was unable to connect to the internet. That’s 2 out of 3 computers that mysteriously couldn’t “communicate.”

You recall that the Netgear router was virtually dead when we arrived home Monday night, hence the internet problems.

I spent Tuesday on the phone with Netgear until I was so exhausted I got a migraine. I was told by a customer service person that my “software” had expired and that I would have to pay for tech assistance. And by the way, I should take advantage of the day’s special–a service contract, which not only would hook me up with a technician to ascertain what was wrong with the router, but I would be guaranteed a replacement if need be. All for the price of, well, a new router. Sounded fishy. I felt coerced. I bought the contract and was sent to the tech dept where it was verified that I had a defective unit. I demanded my money back when I found that my 10 month old unit could still be replaced, contract or not.

What had compounded the pain was that I kept getting cut-off, some of the people I was routed to (in India) were inaudible due to miserable phone connections. I must have repeated, “I can’t hear you,” at least 300 times. Literally. I asked one to call me back and she promised to do so. Did she call you? She never called me.

I gave up for the day. I had to get the return merchandise authorization and I was going around in circles, shunted from pillar to post.

In all, on Tuesday, I spent 3 hours in a frustrating phone maze.

And it was all repeated Wednesday. Whoever verified that the router needed to be replaced did not mark it in the records. After waiting on hold for a half hour at a time and watching the clock spin me into the latter part of another day, I had my son (using my laptop) look up the number for Netgear Corporate Headquarters in California. When the receptionist asked to whom I wanted to speak, I said, “the highest person available.”

When she asked, “why?” I had to stop myself from squeezing into the phone line to commit murder. Instead I gave her what for. And I got Winston.

Winston. The man. Not in. Voicemail. I left a 4 minute message outlining my experience with Netgear and my 6 hours on the phone.

You should know…coerced into a contract…product only 10 months old…phone connections miserable…3 hours on the phone…3 hours more on the phone…

The phone rang 15 minutes later and there was Winston, taking in the details of my odyssey. He promised to have the head technician call me back to see if he could resurrect the dead. Fine, great. They want to make me “happy.” I am beginning to like this.

The 15 minutes became more than an hour when the technician called. I explained the tests I had run myself and he didn’t even bother to walk me through his test. Instead, he offered, “we are aware of a chipset issue that affected routers causing them to fail within a year. We will take yours back and give you the latest one.

Hmmm. Now we are into tail between the legs culpability.

“That’s great,” I said, “but you have to understand that we have 4 computers and I can’t wait weeks or days for this exchange, What can you do for me?”

Netgear shipped me a new router within 2 days; I have to sent the old one back. I am beginning to see the light. I take the new one out of the box and I am feeling good. Now to set it up. I can’t. Back to tech support where it seems my case is flagged for the “top technician.” I am back in India, this time with one smart lady. It’s now day 3 of my saga, and I am leaning towards another 3 hours. The lady techster is having problems getting the set up going. I don’t feel so bad. Except that I have to get ready to go out for our anniversary dinner. it’s 2:00 a.m. in India but it’s din-din time in NYC. We finally get the computer on line that Verizon said was dead. Ha! Then my laptop follows suit. Success! My son’s laptop is speeding through the land of binary codes. It’s looking good. I end the call so I can run and take a shower, sure I can get my desktop in my studio on-line in no time.

No go. Mercury is playing tricks again. After a lovely dinner out (and a few glasses of wine) I got back on the phone with tech support again. With a little tweak and a little password protection, my computer is back up and running.

I’m too tired to run. I’ll sit. It’s good to be back.

Addendum: The used to have a Linksys router (check my tech rant blogs) and the service and issues were so unbearable I switched to Netgear, which is a great product–when it works. The N series had a huge range.
I am told it is even used at yacht clubs. Just what I need here on the QE2, where my computer is on the top deck.

Mercury, the culprit?

reply aladybug wrote on May 31, ’08, edited on May 31, ’08 Well, I am glad for that. I try to steer clear of novelty because I have seen people become guinea pigs and I dislike these kind of problems.I don’t know if all these problems are because Mercury is Retrograde. Maybe Mercury stays Retrograde PERMANENTLY within some companies. Maybe yours and Telmex too. I have gotten my modem configured, reconfigured and reconfigured I don’t know how many times. My Internet goes down all by itself at least three times a day, and this is supposed to be very good service (Cable Internet is a mess here; almost as bad as dial-up.). I am using ADSL.This month I used 70% of my free 100 local calls, calling to Telmex 1-800 (free) service number!

reply lynnpolarity wrote on May 31, ’08 l was exhausted reading this. and india drives me insane. who decided india would look after us .. they cant even understand what we are saying and visa versa. they have an entirely different way of thinking, they are too frustrating. ok l feel better for writing that. but the frustration for you still occured. four days, l would have been pulling my hair out. l hope mercury….o nevermind. lol. l hope u have an easier time with it…

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on May 31, ’08 Thanks for the shoulder! I am still exhausted! I can’t tell you how many router issues I have had over the years. Let’s hope I got a winner now. And although the Indian tech support was frustrating, and I swear, after all those hundreds of calls I was talking to the same person, the phone lines were so awful that I told corporate that is was hampering business. And they listened to everything I had to say.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on May 31, ’08 Moni, I think the world is in permanent retrograde! Keep that kitty smiling…I am toddling off to bed! xo

reply aladybug wrote on May 31, ’08 Hahaha…. Laughing at Lynns comment. I don’t know if foreign mentality has to do with it, but certainly telephone line quality is important. If we add the Mercury Retrograde effect to bad phone lines, plus foreign English pronunciations, what a mess!!!Globalization is surely making it worse. When I got my Yahoo email account hacked, I had to call the weirdest “Customer Service” number (that number is nowhere, I found it at a forum where people were complaining of hijacked accounts). Turns out I HAD TO PAY A CALL TO KOREA.Imagine how hard it was! I had to understand Korean English… My English is not that bad, I think (Sue, you understand everything I say despite my accent). These international services are not a good idea. That call I had to pay was expensive because I kept on saying, “Please, I am sorry, I don’t understand”… (it was the accent).

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on May 31, ’08 Haha!!!

reply spoiledkitty29 wrote on May 31, ’08 India…omg…I spent countless hours with India this past week trying to get my connection back that would go out and be out for hours – suprisingly enough, it’s been perfect and constant ever since I told them that I was disconnecting their service in favor for DSL.All said and done it sounds like you had a harder time than me though! All my Netgear experiences have been good – I networked an entire office with it successfully.No one cared when my yahoo account got hacked…I called a zillion places for “customer service”! I finally gave up and opened a new one.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08, edited on Jun 1, ’08 Very funny, but I apologize for the language.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08

reply sandpearl wrote on Jun 1, ’08 India or any other place, it is all the same. It takes eternity to get an internet connection problem fixed. I have lost so many evenings settings things up that like you Sue, I was getting headaches. India has nothing to do with that fact. The problem is that we first get to speak with a less experienced technician, and they do not go to the point. By the time we go through the initial routine, at least an hour is gone, and then, you have to get to talk to the next level, maybe the same day, maybe not… I guess we all had to go through this. Hopefully, it will not happen again. Glad to see you back Sue. Haven`t read your other blogs, hope the graduation has been great. Hugs, and a lovely Sunday to you.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08 This is a riot!

reply arcamun wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Ha, yep you called in one Sooz. Whatever the communication retrograde is its all happenin here, computers, people and even the damned cat isnt talking to me. How long does this go on for did you say??

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Hmmmm, 3 weeks–a little before and a little after!

reply aladybug wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Hahaha!I am dying of laughter with those “accent problem” videos! I was just like those guys trying to understand the Korean English.Imagine my case. I am Mexican. I studied English at an American School. But I certainly did not learn Hindu English or Chinese English or Arab English. I just don’t understand, I am sorry. When I was in Canada and I answered the phone and heard one of those accents, I would just hang up! I couldn’t understand a word. Really. Now, you better tune up your ears because a lot of those service companies are opening call centres here. You’ll have to deal with Mexican accents too. What a mess! LOL! 🙂

reply mindsnomad wrote on Jun 1, ’08, edited on Jun 1, ’08 Recently a friend of mine posted sent this hilarious video. Check it out.(now please read this in Indian accent, me being Indian and all) See, there is every kind of outsourcing accept Exercising.. Now how nice it would be NO, to have other people exercise and you grow thin?

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jun 1, ’08, edited on Jun 1, ’08 Oy vey ! I’m so tired from reading this. Sometimes Matt’s computer goes offline and mysteriously goes back online for no apparent reason. Is your router wireless? If it is like ours, it’s probably subject to interference from other wireless devices or a lousy signal strength.

reply aladybug wrote on Jun 1, ’08, edited on Jun 1, ’08 Lauritasita, wireless devices…Two of my neighbours got into an awful, awful fight over a wireless baby monitor. The mother of the baby could listen to all the phone conversations of the neighbour through it, including when she spoke badly of her… OMG! I thought those days were gone… LOL!

reply aladybug wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Rashmi, that is accent is SO CLEAR to me (but not Korean…)Plus, the video is so hilarious! 🙂

reply lonewolfwithin wrote on Jun 1, ’08 wow… i’ve been using linksys now for the past several years with no problems… only had to upgrade it once when i last upgraded our pc’s, but other than that, i have not had any real issues with it…

reply dangerousmeredith wrote on Jun 1, ’08 mercury retrograde is a bugger. but it does help to be aware that it’s happening. by my reckoning we have only 2 more weeks to go. (hello, btw. hope you are great).

reply lunarechoes wrote on Jun 1, ’08 I feel for you.But I think it is the world that is in retrograde. Communication sucks. Customer service is more or less a thing of the past. Courtesy seems to be on the way out. A sense of personal responsibility also seems to be a rare commodity. As a species, we seem to be sucking a lot right now. We suck more when money is involved, and morality is somehow not, and it seems like, more and more, the mere involvement of money makes people feel that morality does not apply.I think you should know: Reading this blog entry makes me want to do some serious primal screaming. While I think that might be a poor idea at 1:14 a.m. in a quiet neighborhood–at least you know that you communicated what it’s all been like VERY well. 😉

reply strongwilledwoman wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Fun videos to watch. Please Mercury hurry up….I am about to short circuit.

reply greenwytch wrote on Jun 1, ’08 oh, geez! glad to hear your up and running again. those mercury retrogrades make me feel like i wanna pull my hair out…..or maybe someone else’s? HUGS ; D

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08 May I add that I love my Indian friends and this is just a social commentary on a unique situation–globalization and outsourcing. By the way, I did not have issues with accents as much as with the phone connection. Maybe I should ahve gotten a tech on the line and done the “one ringy dingy” Lily Tomlin routine! 🙂 Have a great day, I am running out to see the first morning show of “Sex and the City.” I’ll do a review for Thursday.

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Sans: I experienced this network of hell when my new Dell laptop mysteriously stopped the capability to download pictures. Off I went to India & their on-line support to no avail. Noone could figure it out…but one tech asked if it wouldn’t be okay to just see the words on-line and ignore the fact that I couldn’t see any pictures? (WT*???) Like yourself I was promised call backs (didn’t happen)& finally went up the ladder as you did. Long story and many,many hours later it was resolved…a new laptop was sent out. In my next career I am going to train corporations in the art of consumer relations….somehow I feel being bounced around and having to be agressive just aren’t the makings of good customer service. Yet…after it is all over we feel so happy that despite our long hours of persistence (and mental hardship) we are pleased our efforts prevailed? What is wrong with this picture? Glad you are back….and wish I could join you for SIC..it’s on my list this week!

reply vghozlan wrote on Jun 1, ’08 I am glad you have your computer problems resolved…I am contemplating getting a router…my desktop is on Comcast byt I have an Netzero and an air card, for my laptop…the air card is slowwwwwwwwwwww….

reply aladybug wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Hahaha…I am laughing, thinking of what sweetpotatoqueen says… Look at the positives: “Off I went to India”… What a fast way to travel…. LOL!India is so exotic, spiritual and interesting to me… Plus, I love Gandhi and curry… I wish I could go there… Hmm…. I can envy you guys… LOLOL! 🙂

reply lunarechoes wrote on Jun 1, ’08 You know, this is interesting, to consider the idea that this a bad time for communication. Because I’ve had all kinds of communication problems recently (see my two most recent blog entries–they’re private, but you’re on them) if you want (but they’re long–be warned). But in the end, these problems have brought me a new clarity and a new resolution. I see things more clearly than I have for a long time. And I know what I need to do. And what I’m about to do is scary as hell, but it’s the right thing. And I didn’t realize it until bad communications started happening and communication issues had to be resolved…

reply brian51 wrote on Jun 1, ’08 What an adventure…me I would have bitten a chunk out of my puter table!!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Sweetie, the whole experience you described kind of reminds me of, well. childbirth!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jun 1, ’08 Well Brian, maybe that;’s why I now have 5 missing teeth!