The Perils of the Geek and Tech Support

My father-in-law and I both have the same job title of Software Engineer. We both sit a computer for a large portion of the day and analyze algorithms and code, debugging problems or finding new and better ways to get the required jobs accomplished. However, there is a very large difference between him and me: I consider myself a professional geek while when he gets home he wants very little to do with the computer. At least he did before getting his new laptop, but that's another story. Anyway, since I'm a professional geek, I'm always trying to learn more about the latest in technology and what is coming up and how it will impact my life. I'm always drooling over the latest toys that are out of my price range. The FIL calls me when he has tech questions. This leads me to my current predicament.

As I type these words, the call counter on my cell phone has reached one hour and 20 minutes worth of call time; most of which has been spent on hold waiting for someone to pick up the phone and talk to me. The FIL thought it would be a good idea to save some money and switch his phone service to a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service. This is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. The quality of phone calls over the internet has been improving to the point where, if you have a good connection, it should be indistinguishable from a normal land line. However, instead of using the router which is provided by the VoIP service and pay a monthly rental charge, he decided to buy his very own router. Now, keep in mind that this router that he purchased says right on the box that it will work great with the specific service which he is using. As I'm sure you can imagine, this means that my in-laws have not been able to use anything other than a cell phone in their home for the last two weeks. This is where I come in. We're in town as a stop-over on the way to my families for the weekend. I decided that I would solve their problems. Mistake number one. After taking a look at the router configuration, I see that the router was not able to register with the VoIP service. Since the FIL said that he had to give them a MAC address (the address that's hard-coded into every piece of hardware that you use in a computer), I was fairly sure that he might have given them the wrong address. So, I decided to call technical support. Mistake number two. After a bit on hold, I talked to someone who was very obviously reading from a "choose your own adventure" tech support manual. He wasn't all that helpful. When I asked him for the MAC address that he had on file to use, he said that it was the one on the modem they sent to us. I informed him a couple of times that, in fact, it wasn't since the FIL had changed it. I asked him again for the MAC address that he had associated with this account. He put me on hold. Again. After a few minutes, he came back again and said that he didn't have that information. Would I mind being transferred to the department that has that information for me? I said no, I didn't mind. Mistake number three. This has caused my current predicament of waiting for them to pick up the phone while listening to a horrible recording of "Canon in D" by Johann Pachelbel. The recording was choppy and of horrendous sound quality. If the goal was to have hold music that would annoy customers to the point where they hang up in frustration, mission accomplished.

We are quickly approaching the two-hour barrier of being on the phone. I'm sure 3/4ths of that has been spent on hold. I have determined that if I end up going over my cell phone minutes on the month, I will be sending the VoIP company the bill for the overage.

After crossing the two hour barrier, feeling like the Enterprise crossing the "Great Barrier," I hung up. Oh wait, I forgot that Star Trek V never actually happened. (Apologies to Bill Simmons). I'll probably call them back on Skype or something that doesn't cost me any money once my core temperature lowers a bit. Just breathe, Jeff. Just breathe.