#146: Three Minutes and Two Hours

Today is the first day that both the kids are in school for a full day.  Wow.  Of course, I thought I’d spend much of my new free time running Hudson’s snack over to him just in the nick of time…

I’m still getting my neighbor’s computer situation straightened out.  I got the impression that the internet security company didn’t want me to call, but once I did, I was on the phone for two hours.  And, I think I got nowhere…

Check out Seth Harwood’s Jack Palms Crime at sethharwood.

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15 thoughts on “#146: Three Minutes and Two Hours

  1. I am also a father and i know it is a tough job to get your kids ready and get them to school in time. I also find it hard to do it and know what, my wife blames me when ever they get late. I feel more like a maid rather then a husband and father.

  2. Hope you took some pictures before they left for school in the morning. I have a son and daughter in university and it sure is nice to look back at their photos through the years and reminisce. Best of luck!

  3. Mr William Gates and his associates who use his software have a lot to answer for. I think the amount of human misery they have caused me over the years is far more than any small benefit I have received from their products.

    I have had the same anti-virus problem in the “dark days” (when I used Microsoft products) and had to renew the anti-virus. No telephone number at all on the website here though – had to use my ingenuity and call the Norton corporate HQ in Ireland (where they have based themselves to pay less tax) and had them tell me the number. Did you not get the message – they don’t want to call you, they just want your dollars!

    Personally I would have driven to a shop, bought new software with a disc and just installed that. Or buy a Mac. The upgrades don’t work and cause utter misery, as you have found. You are a true saint though Dan for helping Gene.

    Don’t know about the USA, but here we have an even worse option now than the endless list of options when you call up a “helpline” (ha ha) – a psuedo real person that you have to talk to and provide answers to to get to the right section of the company. I refuse to talk to a computer voice like it is a real person – this ain’t AI yet and I am not “David”. So I get about 5 minutes of the psuedo person saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you” or”you must give me an answer”, while I ignore them. I am often tempted to say “give me a real person, robot boy”, but usually I find if I ignore it, a real person in India will pick up the telephone. The sadistic companies are the ones who don’t let you get past the psuedo person and just keep asking you to talk to them. The answer – don’t buy their products. I tell you, it’s the work of the devil.

  4. Dan, great show as usual. Sympathise with your neighbour’s (and your) pc problem. The first thing I do on new Windows pcs is to uninstall Norton / Macafee / Symantec etc and install AVG free. Check it out…

    Tim

    PS. I’m not associated with AVG at all!

  5. I’m telling ya, as soon as I get a bit of money together I’m getting a second laptop and putting Linux on it. One laptop went ‘splat’ recently and another got a spybot.

    Enough is enough!

    To Jasmeet: You need to get yourself in a ‘comfortable place’ where you can speak bluntly to your wife, if you are in the right. People take advantage of you because you let them.

    Unfortunately today, with the divorce laws, a man is often at the mercy of his wife; an unnatural situation.

  6. Dan, you and I seem to have somewhat parallel lives. I, too, recently went through customer service hell with my virus software. For me it was a sudden “auto-renewal” that hit my credit card a year after I’d bought my new computer. Although it’s more than possible I had agreed to that at the time, it didn’t sit right with me that they don’t send you a notice before they do it. What if I want to use a different form of payment? Anyhow, I called to get rid of the “auto-renewal” option and it took a long time to explain to the person on the other end of the phone what exactly I needed. He kept saying that I would not be “protected” if I didn’t renew my software, and I kept saying, I’m not saying I won’t renew, I just want to be able to control that renewal.

    Long story short, when I finally completed the call I was sent a survey on my customer service experience and the last question, as typical, was “Did this call solve your problem?” To which I replied, I can’t answer, as I won’t really know until a year from now when the auto-renewal either will or won’t happen. This apparently broke the system, as I received 5 phone calls wanting to understand my concerns – 5 calls which were made to my home phone during the workday, even after I’d replied to one of the 7 emails they sent with my work number. You’d think that “Call me at this time, at this number” would be pretty self-explanatory, but, nope.

    They finally gave up. Now I have another 11 1/2 months to forget about them until renewal time. I can’t wait!

  7. I had calling tech support, I always get someone reading off a screen that will not listen to me, and then after an hour they move me up to a new tier in tech support, not to mention that 90 percent of the time it is a outsourced call and I can’t hardly understand the person on the phone. I would rather watch paint dry then have to call tech support.

    Great post!

  8. Whatever happened to service? I just dred every time my laptop has an issue and I have to call tech support. Support is outsourced to India and it never fails…I always get the guy that I can’t understand 3/4 of what he’s saying. Then he decides he can’t help me so he transfers me, the connection doesn’t work and I have to start the process all over with someone else who I can’t understand! They shouldn’t call it “support”!

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