Well, That Was Fast! (Car Fixed)

The car breakdown we suffered last night turned out to be a simple repair. Barely 5 minutes after I left the shop the owner called me back to say the problem was solved. I missed his call because I was still walking home (it's a 6-7 minute walk) and didn't notice the phone ringing in my pocket. 🤣

The problem was even simpler than the starter motor. It was a bad battery. That was weird because the battery still held charge, could power the accessories, and could turn the starter motor. But the mechanic replaced the battery, and everything worked normally.

Now if only I could find someone that skilled and quick to fix our broken Internet connection— which has been busted for 72 hours and counting, and won't be fixed for at least another 8 hours. 😡

Fuck T-Mobile, Day 3

Thursday evening we had another frustrating round with T-Mobile trying to get our home internet service working again. Actually, it was two frustrating rounds on Thursday, one at 5pm and one from 6:15 until about 7:30. The folks in the retail stores were yet-again unable to help us. Not only are some assholes, but even the good one(s) are hamstrung by the people on the phone giving them the same runarounds that they give us customers. Here's a recap of what's happened so far.

Tuesday morning: Home internet service down. We call support. Tech asks lots of time wasting questions. When he starts to actually troubleshoot the problem— by which point we've been on the phone for at least 30 minutes— the call "drops". He doesn't call back despite having promised to do so.

Tuesday evening: We call support again. We couldn't call back earlier in the day because we'd already used up our available break time on the earlier call. We escalate to 2nd level support. The L2 tech tells us it's a bad tower in our area. He reassigns us to a new tower. It works for 2 minutes then breaks again. By then he's concluded the call (which at that point had been over an hour) with a promise that if we called back right away we could be connected to him again.

Tuesday later evening: We call back less than a minute after hanging up on the previous call. We're back at L1 support. They want to ask us lots of time-wasting questions, forcing us to re-explain the problem from scratch. They tell us it's impossible to reconnect us to the previous tech. They tell us he's not even working. Hawk insists on being escalated to a supervisor. The sup actually bothers to read our account notes. The other L2 tech isn't available; apparently his shift just ended. But the sup works with us for an hour. She diagnoses that the problem is our home device is busted. She offers to have a new one sent. The problem is, it'll take about a week. She offers us the alternative of us picking up a new device in any T-Mobile retail store. She says she's notated our account so the retail store staff know what to do.

Wednesday morning: I go to a retail store. They refuse to help me because the service isn't in my name.

Wednesday evening: Both of us go to a retail store. They refuse to help both of us because now we need an appointment. We make an appointment for 24 hours later.

Thursday afternoon: The store calls to cancel our appointment. They've decided to close early. They reluctantly schedule us an appointment with another store. (The employee at Store 1 clearly didn't want to be responsible for that.)

Thursday evening: At Store 2, now with an appointment, they tell us they can't do the exchange. It's specifically disallowed in corporate policies. Why they couldn't tell us that in our 3 previous store interactions is really irritating. By this point we've escalate to the store manager, who offers to make some calls. Support hangs up on him, multiple times. He becomes sympathetic to us once he shares our pain of being given the runaround. He escalates through a few different levels. He can't overcome the policy that forbids home internet exchanges from being done in retail stores— WHY the sup on Tuesday evening assured us this works smoothly irritates all 3 of us at this point— but he does reach another sup who promises to ship us a replacement device on Friday via same-day express delivery.

So that's where we are after 3 days of no home internet service. We still don't have the problem fixed, and all we have so far is a promise— which frankly I am very skeptical of— that a new device will ship Friday morning and arrive same-day Friday. I believe there's a strong chance it doesn't arrive until Monday or later. And meanwhile, we're just about out of data on our cellphone plan from tethering for 3 days while working from home.