The supposedly ancient Chinese curse saying: ‘May you live in interesting times’ is starting to make sense. It turns out that age of communications has become a curse in so many ways. What started as human progress has become an inexorable trip into our own Hell of perpetual communications problems that dominate our lives.
This thinking was aggravated Thanksgiving weekend when Bell Canada pulled one of its service cut-off tricks. What Bell does is perform what is called a system audit on long weekends. It is all done by computer today but the process is the same as going down one of the old central office frames and unplugging customers who are in arrears or have otherwise displeased someone in Bell management. They did it last Saturday night to this customer’s Internet service. You find out on Sunday morning when you try to connect with the Internet to update this blog: no sync, no service.
But Bell had no right to do that. While it might be a Bell Canada line and connected to a digital subscriber line amplitude modulator (called a D-SLAM) in Bell’s local central office, it was not Bell’s to cut off at a whim. That line and the D-SLAM connection were leased to Yak Communications, a third-party services provider. The Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has very strict rules about how Bell has to handle third-party connections and I could have arranged for a very nasty letter to Bell if I had a little more time available.
The first concern is to get reconnected. Sunday on a long weekend is not the time to do that. The people manning call centres on long weekends are not always from the deep-end of the gene pool. They are, at best, able to read a script (slowly). They are so bureaucratic, they are actually funny. You are smart not to laugh at them as they tend to hang up on you if they think you are making fun of them.
And never tell them something that might not fit their scripts. The genius who answered our call (after an appropriate wait on hold) told me that the problem was in my router because it was not the right make. I could see that there was no DSL signal and he blamed it on the router. He was going to send me a $10 router for $40 plus shipping. It would arrive in five days and then he said he could help me re-connect. I decided not to go that route.
At least this user is smart enough to have his web site located in New Jersey, his Montenegro e-mails based in San Francisco and a book of codes. There are other computer hook-ups for emergencies. One option was to go to a new supplier. That was investigated.
This one was one for the books. I called Rogers Cable. I had a benevolent attitude towards Rogers that day because, through a fluke, I called Rogers recently and actually got a sentient human who understood the problem I had with their cable TV billing and struggled to fix it. Not being a curmudgeon, you appreciate efforts such as that. An add-on of high speed Internet service would have been an easy sale for Rogers. I called a Rogers Internet call centre and got a gentleman who was eager to make a sale. We agreed on what was needed. The offer was made to connect that same Sunday afternoon. The only problem was price. Yak sells 6 Megabit Internet service for less than $25 per month, when you know how to negotiate. Rogers thinks their equivalent service is worth $47 per month. The gentleman from Rogers had no power to negotiate. He lost the sale.
It took until Wednesday to fix the problem through Yak. Despite the disapproval of my router, it works just fine thank you. We are up and running.
But we need to talk about this unsavoury slavery to communications. It is insidious. We will have more to say.
– 30 –
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]