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Stupid Inept Verizon A-Holes

19 Nov

from June 12, 2009

“Hey,” you might be wondering, “did Mr. Blog  get his cell phone battery yet?”
First, thanks for you touching concern.
Secondly, and to answer your question, no. My cell phone battery is sitting in East New York, among a few thousand other undeliverable packages in a FedEx warehouse.
“But what,” you may ask, is your battery doing there?”
Good question. Answer- The people at Verizon are not capable of typing their own names.
Stupid fucking inept Verizon A-Holes.  

LAST THURSDAY NIGHT
My cell phone was safely sitting its cradle, like a baby. In fact it was softly snoring as it dozed. I gently lifted it out of the cradle, careful not to drop the little pink baby blanket, and saw that the baby’s bottom had a full load. In other, less metaphoric, words, the back of the phone, which is the battery, and is normally as flat as a cat on the Belt Parkway, was as round as a beach ball, which is what that dead cat would look like if it was chucked over the seawall and decomposed on the bottom and later floated to the top. (See, I was less metaphoric, but more, um, simile-aphoric (?) and a whole lot more annoying.)  

I popped off the battery and it shot out of the phone and bonked me in the head. I assumed that something was wrong.  

 LAST FRIDAY
I took the phone and oddly bouncy battery to the big Verizon store on 86th street. The place was packed but I was swarmed by a trio of three (try being swarmed of a trio of two. Can’t be done.) sales associates who seemed competent but just below the surface were actually steaming bags of ineptitude and stupidity.  

 One of them, a middle-aged guy in a suit that looked like it was originally tailored for his grandfather, elbowed the other two aside and asked what he could do for me. I explained the situation and, as his face registered almost the correct pattern of human emotion, showed him the battery. “Wow. Is that your battery?”  

Indeed it was.  

Now it turned out that the guy who asked how he could help me could not help me at all. His job was to put my name into a computer and point me to the other end of the store. “See that counter there?” It was ten feet away. I assured him that I could see it.

“They’ll call your name.”
Pause.  

I didn’t say anything because I naively assumed that he would go on after that.
He did not.  

 “They’ll call my name,” I prompted him.
“Right. And they’ll-“
I was already at the counter.  

AT THE COUNTER
The counter was staffed by three (or four, one was sort of there and not sort of there. I can’t explain it any better than that.) people whose job it was to listen to people complain. I’d feel sorry for them if I had a shred of compassion but, as you may have heard, they fucked up my cell phone battery.  

When it was my turn (after the woman who broke three phones by opening them too hard) I explained, again, the problem and showed, again, my battery.  

I was informed that he had never seen a battery that bad. I was honored.  

“What would you like us to do?”
Really. He really asked me that with a straight face.  

 “What I would like,” I said with what I thought was a great deal of patience and composure, “is a new battery.”  

He typed awhile on his keyboard.  

Type type type.  

Click click click.  

I waited.  

 Type type type.  

Click click click.  

I waited.  

 Type type type.  

Click click click.  

“We have one left in stock.”
Pause.  

“Would you like it?”  

 “Yes, of course I would like the fucking battery, you monkey brained suit-filler. That is what I fucking asked for!” I didn’t say to him.  

 “Yes,” is what I said.  

“That’ll be $29.99.”  

Ah ah ah, no it won’t. “It is still under warranty.”  

Type type type.  

Click click click.  

“I’m sorry, um, sir. Your warranty expired six days ago.”  

If there is one thing I hate more than something breaking right after the warranty expired, it is being called “um sir.” What the hell is that? Did he have to think for a second, decide if I was a “sir?”  

 “OK, but I have insurance.”
“But that only covers the phone.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The battery is an accessory.”
“Huh?”  

I tried to explain that the battery, which came with the phone, in the same box as the phone, and is attached to the phone, is an integral part of the phone without which the phone will not and cannot work. Therefore it is not an accessory.  

Well, it turns out that Verizon does indeed consider a battery an accessory.

I told the feeb behind the counter I’d take it.  

Type type type.  

 Click click click.  

“I’m sorry, it was just sold.”  

While I was arguing with the fool, the last battery for my model was sold. If I believe him, that is. I think the guy was just a Stupid Inept Verizon A-Hole.  

The guy told me they could ship me one the next day, which would be Saturday, at no extra charge. Fine, no problem.  

Type type type.  

Click click click.  

“Same address as the account?”
“Yes.”  

Type type type.  

Click click click.  

“Same address.?’
“Uh huh.”  

 Type type type.  

Click click click.   “2 –?“
“Yeah, yeah, 2-.”  

I was ready to leap over the counter and, after planting my foot in his left ear, through his skull, and out his right, just type it all in myself.  

 Type type type.  

 Click click click.  

“OK, you’ll get it tomorrow.”  

Now I really doubted that. Other people were being told that their orders would arrive by Tuesday, so I just assumed I’d get it on Tuesday and left. As I walked away, the guy from the counter called out “thank you and –“  

 I kept walking.  

SATURDAY
To the shock of no one, my battery did not arrive.  

 SUNDAY
No battery.  

MONDAY
No battery.  

TUESDAY
I rushed home from work, not really like a kid on Christmas morning, just like a guy who hates work, and lo and behold! No battery.  

WEDNESDAY (AND OH HELL, THURSDAY TOO)
No battery.  

FRIDAY (TODAY)
I went back to the Verizon store and the first thing that struck me was the fact that not a single person who was working there last week was working there this week. However, I was swarmed by a (totally different) trio of willing and eager brain cells.  

 The one who pushed to the front first was a very Irish woman named Jamie. How Irish was she? Her freckles were drunk. (Just kidding, Irish! I love your whiskey.)  

I explained the problem to her, and clearly told her that “I was here a week ago.”
“They have until 7pm.”
“It has been a week.”
“Oh!”  

I’ll skip the details because, believe it or not, Jamie was helpful and competent. Here is the timeline of what really happened to my battery, and read it carefully to witness the wonderful fraud that is “2-day shipping.”  

Friday (day one)- my order went into the system.
Saturday (day two)- the Verizon warehouse is closed.
Sunday- the Verizon warehouse is closed.
Monday (day three)- Verizon sent my battery to FedEx
Tuesday (day four)- FedEx receives my package.
Wednesday (day five)- FedEx does not make the first attempt to deliver.
Thursday (day six)- FedEx does nothing.
Friday (day seven)- via Jamie, FedEx explained that I would have to pick it up at their warehouse.  

So what happened? FedEx had the wrong address, a non-existant address. Jamie gave them the correct address but they could not update it because it came from outside of the system, i.e.: from Verizon.  

Verizon could not fix the address because it had left their system, i.e.: to FedEx.  

Verizon’s solution was to let them return the package to Verizon. They would credit my account, then repurchase the battery and send it out again, and maybe it would even have the correct address.  

How long would that take? About a week.  

I picked option two, which means that tomorrow I’m going to East New York to get my cell phone battery.  

PREDICTION: Since my ID will not match the non-existent address on the package, they will refuse to give it to me.  

 I’ll let you know.

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*WARNING! CATASTROPHIC ERROR!*

16 Nov

from October 19, 2008

I’ve never had a problem with email. I love it. In fact, if it wasn’t for email I’d have to talk to people and that would just make me miserable. But email had a problem with me.

It’s grade time in the NYC school system, and you know what that means: fail ’em all! Fail ’em if they’re stupid, fail ’em if they’re ugly, fail ’em if they passed every test. Just fail ’em.

Usually they fail themselves but try to convince them of it.
“Mister, why you fail me?”
“I come everyday.”
“I took notes today.”

I used to love the bubble sheets. No one else did but me. All you had to do was bubble in the right spots and you were done. I’d give the kids some work and while they were on task (ha) I’d bubble in their grades. Then I’d just throw away their papers because it was just busy work anyway.

But no no no. No. That was too hard. (Somehow.) Let’s make it all technological and stuff. Let’s do it with a computer. Let’s email the grades. Because no one has ever, in the history of man, had a problem with a computer. Even HAL simply needed to be rebooted. C’mon people- didn’t anybody ever see WarGames? I know it had Matthew Broderick in it but it was still a good film. (And yes, that is the proper spelling. I checked. Who says I need an editor?)

Trouble started when Jeff, our programmer and all-around laid back dude, tried to email me the files for my grades. He couldn’t explain why, and I doubt Bill Gates could either, but the “system” wouldn’t accept my DOE email and would not send me my files.

I smelled Twilight Zone. That’s how it starts. First the computer doesn’t recognize you, then your friends don’t recognize you, then you find Rod Serling recording an introduction in your bedroom and before the final commercial you cease to exist.

He gave me the files on a floppy disk and asked me to return it by Friday, 1 pm. This was Thursday but entering grades only takes a few minutes so that deadline really wasn’t bad.

Due to this and that, and some other stuff, plus the fact that I am a derb, I got home at 10:30 that night. I zipped over to the computer and popped the disc into the drive. It banged into the USB port.

Hmmm. That’s strange.

I reinserted it and it stuck in the DVD drive.

Odd.

By the time I had tried to jam it into the vents in the back I realized that my computer doesn’t have a floppy drive. This is the computer I got from my Dad, brand new in 2007, and there simply isn’t a call for floppy drives anymore. No worries, I thought, I’ll just use the laptop.

You know what’s coming.

So both of my home computers were out. I’d have to do it between classes at work on Friday. Schools are the last bastion of obsolete tech. Just last week I recorded some notes on a reel-to-reel Wollensak that took up half the room.

I turned on the computer, ignored the damage the kids did, popped in the disc, and tried to open the file.

Nothing.

I stopped everything, opened Excel (the files were Excel files) and tried to get Excel to open the files. Nothing happened at all, for awhile. Then my computer stopped responding and I had to do a restart. When it was ready, I tried to open the file again and got this message:

Warning! The last time you tried to open this file a serious error occurred. Do you wish to continue?

Oh Hell yes I did. What’s the worst that could happen? It isn’t my computer anyway.

I was disappointed that there was no smoke, no high-pitched whine of agony from the processor, not even a cool flashing warning symbol. It simply shut down.

I had two more classes to go and by the time I got down to the program office it was after noon. I explained the whole situation, and after he got through laughing (and calling me “Doctor,” for some reason) he gestured to my flash drive and said he’d put the files on there.

He popped it in and waited. And waited. And, yes, waited some more. The computer, though sending power to the flash, wouldn’t recognize the flash. Kind of like how I ignore people I just the day before had a long conversation with. He popped it back out and tried my other drive. For no real reason I carry two around.

Same deal, no worky.

It turns out that his DOE computer will not recognize any drives with security enabled. Despite the fact that I have used my drives in many such computers, this particular was a stickler. It was the Felix Unger of computers. (Not to be confused with the Doris Unger of computers, which would be a very confused computer indeed.)

Let’s stop and recap. A medial summary, if you’ll forgive me for sounding like a teacher.
Email had failed me.
Three computers had failed me.
Two flash drives had failed me.

The logical solution was, of course, to give me bubble sheets and I’d be done in fifteen minutes.

However, no. This is the DOE. Mr. Programmer put the files on his own flash drive and let me take it home over the weekend.

Remember what I said about schools being the home of obsolete tech? This flash drive, I swear, looked to be straight out the 1970’s. It was big, square, and bulky. I’m sure it had a dial on the side and a UHF antenna. It had to be analog. This drive was black, but had been handled so much that it worn grey spots. The part that goes into the drive was bent. It didn’t even fit comfortably in my hand. There were sharp edges, a small tin plague peeling off (“—rop–ty of Ne- York -ity Boar- of ——-on”) and it was bigger than a bread box.

Still, I was relieved that I’d be able to do it at home. When I got home I put it in my computer and, rubbing my hands with anticipation, waited for it to open.

It didn’t.

You see, this particular computer doesn’t have Microsoft, er, stuff. When I want to open a Word file it opens it with WordPerfect. Any other type or Microsoft file gets some kind of equivalent. And the Excel equivalent didn’t open the file. (Did I mention that I would have had the bubble sheets done two days before?)

But my laptop came through! YES!

But not right away.

I don’t use the laptop too often, and when I do I have to sit through updates to this, scanning for that, restarts, destarts, and upstarts, before I can use it, typically two to three hours later. When nightfall came I had the file opened and saved to my desktop.

And as of this writing, Saturday night (Sunday morning if you prefer) I have not yet entered the grades but I’m sure I’ll be able to do it tomorrow.

What can go wrong?

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