(Funny) Have You Ever Felt Like You Aren’t Being Heard?

Dean  (the husband)
Shalane  (the wife  :O)

I think most of you have had to call and get help from technical support before.  The majority of you that have had the chance to have such an opportunity will really appreciate my experience yesterday with our satellite dish provider.  If  you haven’t, I'm sure at some point you will.  Be afraid….Be very afraid! 

We brought our DVR from our Satellite Dish Provider all the way from Nevada to Kansas so my sister-in-law could watch all 16 episodes of  the TV show Survivor.  When we got here, we realized that we had forgotten the remote.  Without it, there is no way to access the DVR recordings.  Fortunately, my sister-in-law uses “The Bowl Network,” so she had an extra remote.  We will call the company “The Bowl Network”  to protect the innocent.  He's nice.  I would be more likely to reveal the company's name to expose the ignorant.  I decided that all I needed to do was call the company and ask them how to program her remote to my DVR. With my TV set and DVR already on, and after I had pushed "4" for technical support and explained to her what I wanted to do with the remote, the conversation went as follows:

The young lady said, “Do you have your TV plugged in right now?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Will you please push the power button on your TV?”

“Okay.  Done.”

“Did the TV shut off?”

“Yes”

“Push the power button on your DVR, please.”

“Okay.  Done.”

"Did the DVR shut off?”

“Yes”

“Please push the power button on the TV again.”

“Okay. Done.”

“Did the TV come back on?”

"Yesssss."

I will spare you the rest of the 20 minute conversation, because it went much the same way.  It did include having me pull the plug from the wall to check if the device was now off.  I AM NOT LYING ABOUT THIS!!!  It is the honest truth!  During the conversation, I stressed to her several times that I just wanted to program my remote to my sister-in-law's DVR.  Finally, she said, “Oh, then let me transfer you to technical support.”  I THOUGHT I WAS TALKING WITH TECHNICAL SUPPORT!!! 

I do want you to know that after another 40 minutes, I did get Lisa's remote set up with my DVR.  Even as I write this, my wife and sister-in-law are enjoying their ‘Survivor” marathon.   I am thankful that the Good Lord has blessed me with patience.  I have a feeling that if my wife would have made this call, it would not have been pretty.  There would be little pieces of cell phone and remote scattered on the floor and imbedded into the wall.  Hey!  That's not nice!  Okay, it's true that, though I'm basically a pretty patient person, I have little tolerance for technical "support."  They should call it technical "torture."  And, though I'm not one to throw things, my poor husband would have had to listen to me rant for the next couple of hours about the lack of common sense and the abundance of stupidity in the world today.  Yup, it's probably best that he made the call and not me.  :o)

Again, I am providing this blog today as a public service announcement.  Consider yourself warned!  Have a great day and HAPPY TRAILS TO ALL!  (Even those of you working for the “Bowl Network”!)