The Day My Internet Died

The Day My Internet Died!!

I never knew how much I took my internet access for granted, until one day it was gone. One day during a big storm my router went to router heaven. It was a very sad day. I stared at my blank screen on my computer and wished I could access the internet. My whole life is on the internet. What am I supposed to do? Get up and go outside? Arghh!! NO!! Anything but that. SO I sat there and kept pushing the button saying this will work it. If I picture it in my head therefore it will be Right?  Not. I could not get it through my head that I just could not connect. So I had to do the unthinkable and call my service provider. They said oh we will be happy to send you a new router for a small fee.” A small fee “I said. Why do I pay you guys insurance if I have to pay “A small fee every time something goes wrong?” So she put me on hold, don’t you just LOVE when these people put you on hold? You just know while you’re listening to the lame music and advertisements to get you to spend even more ridiculous amounts of money for something that sounds great but never seems to make any difference to your service, there are sitting back in their cubical eating their lunch and talking shit about you. So when she comes back on the phone she says “Oh I’m so sorry I did not realize your insurance covered your modem/router. Why they never look for things to start with I will never know. After all isn’t that why you give them ALL of your information from your name to rank and serial number? So after she told me that they would send my new shiny router free of charge I was happy once again. Until, she said it will take up to 5 business days to arrive on my doorstep. Now this was a Thursday so my internet would be out for a whole week. I thought I would pass out. How will I work How will I tell everyone how great my products are. How will I look for a job? I may have to go outside and actually talk to people?!? I don’t think I even remember how to do that. It was painful and uncomfortable to even think about it. Thank God for TV because if you watch enough of it, it makes the time go faster and before I knew it my bright shiny new router had arrived. I was so happy.

Now I’m not really educated in how routers, computers, and internet work I know if I push enough buttons and keep clicking the next button until it says finish then boom! there is my beloved internet. So in this case I thought replace one router with the other right. Just unplug the dead one, plug in the new one and I’m back in business! Boy was I wrong. I unplugged replugged, reset and went through the DVD for 2 hours and guess what NO INTERNET. Now after a week without it I was chomping at the bit to get it up and going.  So I called my beloved friends at customer support and I’ll be damned, they were closed for the night. What happened to 24 hour customer support? That was a beautiful thing. Nothing I did would work, and it was 3:00am so I went to bed. The next day I came to the realization that I needed help and called the dreaded customer support number once again.

It’s funny to me that after they take enough personal info from you to destroy your life, and ask your issue they always seem to have to transfer you to another department to start the process all over and when you finally make it to someone who thinks they can help you, they put you on hold. Ahh I love calling Customer support! It’s got to be one of my top 10 favorite things to do of all time.

So I tell her what is going I need my shiny new router to work, and I tell her everything I have already tried. I plugged and unplugged, reset, and went through the DVD for two hours the night before, what does she make me do? Reset, unplug, turn off, replug, and go through the set up DVD. Gee why didn’t I think of that? So when that did not work, we went into parts of my computer I never knew existed. We looked at this and that changed a thing here and there and nothing, no internet I was in a panic. My palms were sweating, my heart was racing, Yep I was in full blown internet withdrawal. So I was not hanging up until I could connect. Without boring you with the technical details as if I could remember them but it came down to a password. A simple little password wasn’t matching up. Sounds simple right? Nothing about this is simple. So the customer support person walked me through changing several passwords and when it didn’t work she gave me different passwords to change the passwords we just changed. So we did this about 15 times and I tried to tell her we changed this password 15 times but it keeps saying we need to reset the master password. She said no we have to leave that alone. But that is what my computer was telling me the problem was. I love customer support they always listen so well. Well after 4 hours on the phone with this lady doing the same steps over and over and over I was done! I was coming to the realization that I may have to live without my internet for a while longer. Then I decided to try something on my own which let me tell you my ignorance for these thing are vast so it never works out well when I go it alone!  I have messed up many a computer going this rout but I just had a feeling. So I went and changed that password that my computer kept telling needed to be changed and my wonderful customer service tech told me I could not do. And Low and Behold we have internet. And all is right with the world once again!