I spent about three hours and forty-two minutes of my life on the planet, trapped in what I can only describe as the ninth circle of customer service hell. My internet connection- an service I pay for monthly- had decided to transform from high-speed to dial-up, and I thought that calling for help would be a good idea. After performing the rituals of turning the router off and on a couple of times, unplugging random cables, and saying magic words, I decided to call the number showed on the monthly bill.
First came the automated greeting. There was a voice, and in a way that straight away makes my teeth on edge. “Thank you for calling UltraConnect, we are here to keep you connected!” This proclaimation, stated while I was disconencted from the online world, was clearly lost on the programmer who made this gate.
What came next was a nonsensical world of different selections, each claiming to help me but instead taking me deeper into the void. “For inquiries regarding billing press 1. For new services 2.
For technical support 3. Press 4 to listen to this again since I assume you weren’t concentrating the first time around.”
I pressed “3” with what some may argue was needless intensity, as though my finger could somehow parallel the rising annoyance I was facing through the keypad. This resulted in me going deeper and deeper into menus and I started becoming concerned that I had mistakenly called some avant-garde fictional performance piece and not a legit customer support service.
After facing an eternity I was treated with the phrase that has resulted in many angry customers: “Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold. The current wait time is…
approximately… twenty-seven minutes.” “Approximately.” As if the accuracy of the estimate would lessen the pain. I placed the device on loudspeaker and resumed my 19th century hobby of reading a paperback book while, once in a while, checking my screen to reassure myself that yes, indeed I was still stuck in this trend of telephonic hell.
How about the hold music. It sounded like a cheap and brutalized version of what I think used to be Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, but was now mangled into something that resembled a wind-up music box hidden in a fishtank. Every forty-five seconds – I checked – this level of hell was interrupted by the reminder from a robotic woman’s voice, saying that my call, against all common sense, was soooo extremely vital, need I say further.
At thirty-two minutes, when I assumed that I might spend the rest of my life on hold, a human voice finally came through the speaker. I was about to drop my phone because the amount of surprise from this had spread like wildfire throughout my body. “Welcome to UltraConnect, this is Jason speaking.
How may I help you today?” Jason proceeded with monotonous speed that reveals he is repeating this sentence word for word for the thousandth time. Before I could speak, he went on to say, “I would like your account number, the last four digits of your SSN, your mother’s maiden name, and the name of your first pet.”
I started looking for the information requested from my files. I don’t know why, but I began wondering whether this “Jason” guy works at a call center or is some highly skilled identity fraudster.
In the end, I moved on to the stage when I prepared to narrate my issue. “My internet is really slow,” I told him, attempting to remove the sharpness from my voice. “Instead of the 200 Megabits I pay for, I am getting 3.”
Jason responded, “I understand your concern, sir,” in a tone that felt as if he didn’t understand anything.
“Have you tried to restart your router?”
And so commenced the dance: the tragic dance between tech support and the customer where both sides go through the motions, trying not to make it apparent that the call has already been made. Yes, I have activated the router, checked the connections, and yes, I have even tried chanting the company’s terms of service under a full moon while sacrificing a small goat for good measure. Nevertheless, Jason kept me on these steps, his tone still pleasant and the remote, disconnected quality in his voice suggesting he was reading a script, which he probably was, while scrolling through Facebook.
I complied, unplugged and plugged the modem back in, pressed buttons, and held switches, all while knowing with absolute certainty that none of this would bring any results to the actual issue. Jason told me that we will now have to get a Level 2 technician, someone more qualified, to help solve the problem. I now know through personal experience that this means, “I don’t know what the issue is and don’t care to find out.”
“I can take care of that transfer,” Jason said.
Before he finished what he was saying, I was sent back into the terrible elevator music. Vivaldi would be crying into his grave if he could hear what was playing from my phone. Seventeen minutes later, to my distress, Jason had returned to my claim.
I could now see why Jason was so lackluster and vexed. They had pulled him into the depths of unimaginable technical glitches, probably caused by someone not having the slightest clue on how to use an HDMI cord. And again we started.
Verification. Going through the checklist of basic troubleshooting methods. And the annoyed sigh that showed me that yes, I had already completed the checklist.
But this time, I had done it twice. Dimitri is, to give him his due, a little more clued up than Jason was. He told me to open the router settings in my browser, which meant using my data because, as I have been trying to explain for about an hour now, my internet was down.
“I think I know the problem,” Dimitri said, finally, with the solemnity of a doctor relating a terminal prognosis. “It looks like there is an outage in your region.”
Time stood still. The universe seemed to take a deep breath.
The consequences of this claim started blossoming in my head like a toxic plant. “An outage,” I muttered. “In my region.”
“Why, yes sir.
It seems that it began around four hours ago. By the looks of it, our technicians are busy attending to it.”
“And this information—about an outage that affects my service—was available to you from the start?”
“Yes, sir. It is in the system.”
I began backing out of 10, trying to use a technique my doctor prescribed me for staving off stressful moments.
It didn’t help. I spent two hours on the phone explaining my issues to support technicians who are well aware of the problems. My account’s issues could not be fixed by restarting the router.
I was wondering what else is on the list of options that can actually get done? Are my two hours on the phone getting deducted from the bill?”
“That’s correct, sir. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The “inconvenience.” As if my time is treated as a mundane roadwork on his commute.
“What do you guys mean by service restored? Oriental communicators will read ‘not restored without an order from above surrounding session should remain an ongoing boo until further notice’. Do you guys actually want to step away from the brink of insanity and not make yourselves sound like passengers from a Japanese cartoon?”
“We don’t have an estimated clock on restoration at this moment, but ji hajir rasad is being done by our technician.”
Perfect.
Of course they didn’t. Why should they? That would be customer friendly.
Much better to leave me hanging in uncertainty, checking my router lights like unsettled parents looking for a newborn. Dimitri assured me that service would be restored in six months, which is great. But will the robotic voice call me?
Or does he think the technological miracle can be done without mattering the state my area is in? Either way, I thanked him with all the sincerity of a hostage thanking his kidnapper. Afterall somewhere things did get better didn’t they?
The internet came back ten hours later, around 12:19 a.m. I didn’t receive a text message before this happened, so I had no idea this occured. The only reason I knew is because I got up at 3 a.m.
and checked my phone out of habit. This morning, I checked my email and saw an email from UltraConnect asking me if I could rate my experience with their customer service. I thought about it for a moment and wondered how can one rate expression with such a complicated emotion with a five-point scale?
Should a Kafkaesque nightmare get a one star? In short, how do I convey a corporate nightmare which slowly kills my hope in their system? This surely is not a question humans should be asked to ponder.
I did not take the survey. Some experiences transcend measurement. Some wounds are too deep for attempts at healing to ache.
In the end, I decided for the next time my internet goes out, I’m just going to grab a book. The 19th century didn’t have a Wi-Fi, but at least people didn’t have to deal with the form of torture that is trying to contact tech support. Surely, one of modern life’s most refined methods of suffering.
