My BlackBerry Saga -- It's A Long Story -- You've Been Warned.

Since my ground is still frozen solid as a lumberjack's mustache in January and I don't have cheery crocuses coming up like some people, all I've got is a long (possibly boring) story. 

You may remember when I got my spiffy new BlackBerry last June or thereabouts.  Everything has been fine with it, but my wireless service at home has gone from not-too-great to truly horrid.  I can't keep a call from dropping.  Many of them don't go through.  Initially the problems were just for the phone calls.  Eventually the problems extended to the emails, and then even text messaging, as well.  Browsing, fuggedaboudit. 

I like Verizon.  I'm starting to think that I have a personality disorder, in that I like and am loyal to these companies that keep treating me like shit.  I wonder what the DSM-V is going to say about people like me. Surely there will be a diagnosis code, or perhaps it will simply fall under masochism, unspecified. But knowing that nothing is perfect in this world, I think they have great good-enough customer service, they answer the phone in a timely manner, and they are very polite and helpful. And dare I say it, they are understandable on the phone. 

So I started making my calls to Verizon to complain about the crappy service at my home.  After many hours of them trying to fix things over the phone, they finally put in some sort of a Help Ticket, which is a verra BIG DEAL, apparently.  The way the guy on the phone explained it to me, they send engineers out -- people with weird little antennae and satellite dishes.  All I can picture is them in a 2001, A Space Odyssey type of deal, around my home and the nearby tower to try to find out WTF has gone wrong.  He said he'd been with these guys when they did their thing in one of those "I" states in the middle of the country, and he described it as quite impressive. 

This was the second such complaint I had made.  They got back to me after the first one and said, "Yes, they were having some equipment issues in your area, but they're fixed now."  Of course you know it:  Nothing changed and nothing was fixed at all.  I'm guessing the guys in the astronaut garb just drank Dunkin' that day and said, "Aw, fuck it. I'm not climbing that hill. Nobody lives around here anyway."

This second guy seemed to have a good sense of humor, so I told him that what I really thought had happened is that the tower had fallen down and nobody had bothered to go put it back up.  He thought I was serious and started to tell me that, "Well, those towers are pretty big.  SOMEone would have noticed if ...."  I cut him off to assure him I was kidding, explaining that I'm pretty sure I know where the tower is -- that I can walk to it and often do when I'm doing my hikes on the hill behind my house.  Sure enough, they have some spiffy software (probably just Google Earth or whatever), and though he was in Arizona (or so he said), he was looking down on my roof and the tower, and he started to say, "I just don't understand it.  The tower is just about two blocks from you."  I repeated that yeah, I've been there.  Many times.  What he couldn't discern, I guess, from his satellite image, is the topography, but whenever I tried to tell him that my house is on the hill below the tower, and that maybe that's a problem, he seemed to deny or not understand that I could actually be sitting sort of UNDER the signal.  The signal, as we all know, does not go EVERYwhere, right?  Like at the foot of the mountain on top of which is the tower? 

Anyhoo, but I still think, given their adverts on the teevee, I should get at least marginally acceptable service, especially since it was marginally acceptable before, but it has deteriorated.  So I called again.  And again.

I did not take them up on their offer to buy a gizmo to improve the signal in my home, for the low-low price of $250.  Actually, that suggestion, cheerfully given, rather stuck in my craw.  Especially since later that day I saw another one of their ads on TV that talked about how GREAT their network is, and especially since the firkin' tower is within spitting distance of my house, and especially since my monthly charges for the BlackBerry are not peanuts either.

Eventually they decided, in their infinite wisdom, that it's got to be my handset.  This makes zero sense to me, since it works everywhere else, but I'm guessing they thought this would appease me.  "Let's give her a new handset.  It's still under warranty, so it's no skin off our nose, but off BlackBerry's, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than fixing the tower or putting up a new one. Maybe she'll go away."

Yeah.  Right.

So of course nothing has changed, except I have a new handset and I feel very unGREEN because I've got more plastic and more crap to send back and still no service.  They wore me down for a while.  Part of it is because I was on vacation for a while so it was not in the front of my mind.  Then I got really busy at work again, so had no time to deal with it... and reminder:  It works great away from my house.

Until Thursday morning.  On the way to work, suddenly the thing stopped receiving emails.  I did all the service tricks I've learned over time -- take the battery out to reset it, sign out and sign back in to the email service, blah blah blah.  Nothing helped.  Email was dead as a doornail.  Thankfully the phone and texting were still working.  We wouldn't want me to be COMPLETELY cut off from the world, now, would we?!

So Friday morning I got up extra-early and called them at 6:45 a.m.  After spending an hour-plus doing all the things I've already done a dozen times before, the woman on the other end of the phone asked if perhaps I could go somewhere else to make the call, because clearly we were getting nowhere at my house, and we're not sure now if it's the handset or the signal or both.  Well, you have to be on another phone line in order to make these tech calls so they can try to fix settings on your BlackBerry. The only thing I could think of was to go to the Verizon store in Burlington, 30 minutes' drive on a day when a cattle truck has not overturned.  She checked to see if they had a tech onsite, and they do, so she agreed that would be a good idea.

I went to Burlington later in the day and stopped in to see the nice people at the Verizon store.  I didn't get the guy I got before who insisted that I needed to change my number when that in fact was not true at all, THANK THE LORD.  Instead, I got a really great, really helpful guy.  At first I did not think it was going to be so good, though.

When I said, "We tried everything," he smugly grabbed my handset and took out the battery, saying, "Except you didn't try THIS."  Hahahahaha, I nearly peed my pants.  Riiiiight.  We did not try to take out the battery.  A trick that every cell phone user knows.  A trick that certainly this BlackBerry owner knows, since the BlackBerry goes kaflooey on a fairly regular basis and needs to be reset by taking out the battery.  "Criiiiipes," I thought, "Great.  Here we go.  Another dufus who thinks I'm a ditz.  This is going to go well.  NOT."

Sigh.

So I stood there biting my tongue, after my acerbic response, "Oh, yes, we did. About six times."

Then it was great.  He took a hands-on approach.  He started clicking things and changing settings and doing all kinds of crap that I really didn't care what it was, as long as the thing worked in the end.  After exhausting all his tricks, he then pulled out a computer and started doing stuff there.  Eventually he asked me again how old this unit was.  Uh, about two weeks.  And when did I get my original one?  Last June.

He had reached his limits.  He said, "Yeah. We're going to get you a new one.  I've never seen a handset that is so.... (he hesitated) .... temperamental."  I leaned in closer and lowered my voice (the store was jam-packed with people).  I said, "It's OK.  You can say it.  I would, and I have:  'so fucked up.'" 

More on the ongoing saga tomorrow. There is some good news -- I hope.

-----

And the winner of the blogiversary contest is:

Comments

[Kristen]

Yee gods. I'd have likely killed someone by now...

[Cathy-Cate]

and the winner is....

not me, evidently!

Oh, I hope the story looks up. A gadget that won't gadge is the epitome of uselessness.

[Leslie]

One day on Kristin Nicholas' blog she griped about her "wonderful" Verizon service - no dsl, no high speed internet stuff. Some turkey from Verizon actually responded in her comments. Since Kristin & I are about 25 miles apart I wrote him too and got "let me look into that for you" as a response. He obviously is still looking. Verizon service here in north-central Massachusetts??? They must all be in northern Vermont helping you!

[Stacey]

I hate verizon with every fiber of my being... and guess who just bought my wonderful carrier? I swear, the week they made the announcement, I started getting dropped calls, etc. They said it was something technical with the towers and would clear itself up. Whatever. :D Hope they fix it!

[sandy]

You are the master of suspense! :) LX

[DebbieB]

What, did you run out of words or something?

[Elizabeth]

Clearly you need to conduct all your BlackBerry transactions ON THE HILL.
So convenient and good exercise too!

[ann]

Verizon store in Burlington. LMAO I hate that place with a passion. But if you ever do go there, ask for Drew. He will do cartwheels for you, really, ask him. If he is still there. I am considering a new phone but dreading going down. Snow,AGAIN.

[margene]

Bastards!

[Bonney]

One time we went to the Verizon store in Concord, NH and got on THE LIST only to have the "hostess" first serve a man that had been in with trouble the day before!! We'd been waiting 45 minutes when he walked in! Verizon; gotta hate 'em.

[Diane]

You're being very patient with this. I would have killed by now. I too have Verizon but since I have a 4-year old cell that doesn't get used much, they do a fine job. Better than Sprint ever did.

[Vicki]

What Margene said.

[naomi]

Wait, the new handset was more problematic than the old one? Yeesh.

[oldcinderella]

But on the other hand: I have blackberry with uscellular - the same enjoyment; my daughter has blackberry with t-mobile - the same; my DH just got his with verizon - we'll see. I'm not glad that people have the same problems as I do.

[Andi]

I'm surprised you didn't get someone on another continent telling you that they ran a diagnostic, and can detect "no problems." That happened several times to me when my Verizon DSL suddenly (after several years of working perfectly) just bit the dust. Very frustrating! I've had Sprint for my cell service, and only drop calls in one "dead zone" inside my own house. O/W, no probs.

[Mary K. in Rockport]

Yeh, about Verizon - I hate Comcast (local cable provider)much, much more. Verizon is great by comparison. Apropos of phones, my husband went through three cells in rapid succession before he finally got one that works. I think we're going to have to assume that a lot of these gadgets are not well made.

[Joansie]

OMG, I had to read this thing from beginning to the end. I have Verizon. I hate Verizon. So, I went into the same store you did when I couldn't make any calls once I was passed Montpelier. I was pissed because I was lost in Massachusetts and couldn't call my daughter for help....no signal. Yet my friends with the same damn phone and with Verizon could make calls.

The service clerk at the Verizon store put me through the drill I had done several times before. When she realized I was not going to give up until they stopped telling me it was the damn battery, she says to me.....now get this......"I'm sorry, I DON'T WORK FOR VERIZON". (she was a contract person) and I said, "Excuse me, but the sign over the door when I just walked in here said "Verizon".

So, on my next trip to Maine, not feeling very safe because the damn phone would not work pass Montpelier, I happened to drive by a Verizonn store in my home town so I walked in. I was greeted with a smile, didn't even get a chance to sit down and was helped. The gal had my phone fixed in two minutes. It was a setting on my phone...and no, I had not changed anything...it was those damn fools at the Burlington Verizon store.

So, see what your post did today.......it got me fired up about Verizon. That is why they have contracts. They suck you in and then you are on your own with a bunch of dingbats.

[Nora]

A pox on all their houses. Maybe we should all rebel and go off the grid.

[Tracy J.]

Yikes. Thanks for the entertaining story, though. I think I'll go buy a present for my neighbor who lets me leech free wireless internet.

[Marilla]

Great post. I hate Verizon too, and the only reason I have it is that it works in Paul Smiths, NY, where my son goes to college, and AT&T does not. It is very frustrating trying to deal with any problem with Verizon. It's a giant crap shoot as to who you will get to help you. A friend's husband worked for Verizon as a sales person for about two months, but quit because of what he considered to be the immoral way they treated their customers. Our contract is up in December, Travis will have graduated, and we will stick with AT&T.

And the winner is?

[Doris]

I feel your pain. Every time we call Verizon we get different information and then they let us try the same things over and over and over! The only service we have that is worse is our cable and internet from Comcast. Our signal keeps cutting off for the internet and our television is often fuzzy. When we call they restart our signal and then things are ok for a bit. Til the next time a bird lands on the wires!

[silvia]

Well my advice is to get an iPhone. Srsly. What a load of crap. Barring that, when you have folks over make them use their cellphones so you can figure out what provider to go with. Clearly Verizon will never figure out why your phone won't work in your boudoir.

[Cookie]

Ya know, you don't need a phone when you live under a rock in a cave. I'm just sayin'...

[Ellen]

While the phone story is interesting (and familiar in parts) the REAL gem of truth in what you wrote was that the person was understandable! Why do companies hire people to do customer service who don't speak understandable English???????????????? I know we are not the only people in the world, but when I call from New York to a company in Illinois or some other state in this country, why do I get someone who I absolutely cannot understand?

[gayle]

I still haven't forgiven Verizon for selling us off to Dipshit Inc. If you think Verizon is bad, try dealing with Fairpoint. We finally got so mad (after being without phone service for a month, with them telling us the problem was in our wiring, and us telling them that a handset plugged into the pole didn't work so it was THEIR problem, and them saying they'd send a repairman on "Friday", and said repairman must have gotten eaten by a bear since we never did see him.) that we canned the landline and went with cellphones.
Which turned out to be Verizon...

We're all hoping the call doesn't drop again next time you try to announce the winner!

[Seanna Lea]

Verizon may not be great, but I hated with the white hot passion of a thousand burning suns my experiences with both Comcast and TMobile. Of course, I want a new phone, but I also want one of those service plans where you just pay for the minutes you use. Even if it was a huge 20 minutes a month (which it never is) for both my hubby and myself, we'd save some beaucoup bucks.

[paula]

Yeah, DH says he wants to see the nerdy looking guy with the network out where we live. I can sit by a window and hold my Verizon phone over my head and maybe get 2 bars instead of 1. It works fine elsewhere. I think there are hills between us and the tower.