UPS Finally Delivers, Verizon Finally Works
Finally. Finally today UPS, aka FuckUPS, delivered. Though it took me taping a note like this up on my front door:
I AM HOME.
PLEASE KNOCK!
...And keeping an ear cocked to the window all morning long to listen for the sound of the UPS truck driving up to the end of the terrace.
Finally around 2:30 the replacement wi-fi router for Verizon Home Internet arrived. ...The router for the service I ordered 26 days ago. ...The router I've spent countless hours on the phone trying to troubleshoot with a parade of tech support agents for the past 21 days. The replacement router I've been waiting a week to get.
And now it works. It just fucking works. Oh, it's slow powering up; it seems to need, like, 5 minutes to boot. But once it's going, it goes.
This feels anticlimactic. After weeks of agony and frustrating hours on the phone with helpless customer service agents and managers, it seems like this success ought to be accompanied by drums and trumpets. Or at least the opportunity to personally punch in the face the next person who suggests, "Turn it off turn it on."
Ultimately what this exercise with Verizon shows- which a similar ordeal with T-Mobile also showed, but now it's 2/2 so a pattern is clearly emerging- is that technology companies have built systems so complicated they can't be fixed. Not at the level of an individual customer, anyway. Sure, if it's some PEBKAC thing like connecting the device wrong or forgetting the password, customer service can troubleshoot that. But if the device itself isn't working, or if the network configuration on the provider's side is bunged up, forget it. It's too complicated to fix. All support can do is press "Launch" again, send out a whole new device, and hope that the automation built to launch boxes out the chute works properly this time.
I AM HOME.
PLEASE KNOCK!
...And keeping an ear cocked to the window all morning long to listen for the sound of the UPS truck driving up to the end of the terrace.
Finally around 2:30 the replacement wi-fi router for Verizon Home Internet arrived. ...The router for the service I ordered 26 days ago. ...The router I've spent countless hours on the phone trying to troubleshoot with a parade of tech support agents for the past 21 days. The replacement router I've been waiting a week to get.
And now it works. It just fucking works. Oh, it's slow powering up; it seems to need, like, 5 minutes to boot. But once it's going, it goes.
This feels anticlimactic. After weeks of agony and frustrating hours on the phone with helpless customer service agents and managers, it seems like this success ought to be accompanied by drums and trumpets. Or at least the opportunity to personally punch in the face the next person who suggests, "Turn it off turn it on."
Ultimately what this exercise with Verizon shows- which a similar ordeal with T-Mobile also showed, but now it's 2/2 so a pattern is clearly emerging- is that technology companies have built systems so complicated they can't be fixed. Not at the level of an individual customer, anyway. Sure, if it's some PEBKAC thing like connecting the device wrong or forgetting the password, customer service can troubleshoot that. But if the device itself isn't working, or if the network configuration on the provider's side is bunged up, forget it. It's too complicated to fix. All support can do is press "Launch" again, send out a whole new device, and hope that the automation built to launch boxes out the chute works properly this time.