Living in the twenty-first century, as most of us do, we have to wonder. Something went seriously wrong in the last half century.
We have replaced people with machines for many menial functions. For many of those functions this is a good thing. But, somehow, we have replaced human decisions with machine decisions to the point where almost everybody ends up pissed.
Everybody loves to hate the telephone company. In all the ways that the telephone companies annoyed us the cable companies are at least as bad. Scott Adams says that people who work for cable companies are people who couldn't get jobs at telephone companies. Maybe so, maybe not, but I can't point to any individual and say the bad service I got was that person's fault.
Our systems just don't work anymore.
What I want in my utilities is pretty standard stuff in 2003: electricity, water, telephone, television, Internet. In my move to Arizona, the first three went fairly well. The last two came from Cox Communications, the local provider for cable television and Internet.
I'm want basic techno-geek utility service:
I want my electricity to be clean, steady voltage with few dropouts for my hifi. I never had cleaner electricity than I got in Justin, Texas. I lived in a small town, so we had power outages from time to time. In Atlanta the power was so erratic that I blew about two light bulbs per month. Here in Scottsdale, the computers work, the hifi sounds decent, the microwave oven cooks my vegetables, but the lights dim when I turn on my hifi amps.
My water is included in my homeowner association fees. So far I have had no complaints or concerns about it.
I want my telephone service to work all the time with a static directory number (DN). The static DN means I can receive incoming calls at the same telephone number day after day; they even publish those static DNs in the "white pages" of the 'phone book. Not only did I not have to ask for a static DN, the folks at Qwest even offered me five choices for my telephone number.
In Atlanta, on the other hand, I had serious trouble getting telephone service from BellSouth. First it took them several visits just to figure out that I wanted an ordinary voice telephone line and then it took a few months to get my telephone so it would still work on rainy days. (Click here for the full story.)
Television is cable because I enjoy "Law & Order" which is primarily on TNT, a cable-only station. There are a couple of spinoffs that I also enjoy and these are primarily on USA, also cable-only. The primary cable provider here in Scottsdale is Cox Communications. For $15/month you can get "basic" cable which is rabbit-ears-antenna without the static and it costs another $20/month to get the cable-only stations.
So that leaves Internet. Back in Atlanta, it took me three tries to get decent Internet service. I first went with a small outfit, ATLnet, that went out of business, but not before their computer guru wiped all the files off of my computer when I hired him to do some work on it. I switched to a big outfit, DirecTV, that went out of the Internet business. Finally, I ended up with Netcentrix, a small outfit where a friend of mine works. I have been happy with their service and my friend has been more than helpful when I needed him.
None of these three providers had a problem giving me a static Internet protocol (IP) address, just as the telephone company had no problem giving me a static telephone number. A static IP address means web-browsing weenies (like you reading this web page) and my e-mail can find my three-computer network in the midst of the entire Internet.
Here in Scottsdale, on the other hand, getting a static IP address is a major hassle. All the providers I called wanted major money for it and Cox was the least unreasonable. Their "residential" Internet rate is $40/month and I would have to jump to their $80/month "business service" with a five-year commitment (or $250 up front for a two-year contract) to get a static IP address. Ouch!
Okay, there are workarounds for dynamic IP addresses and I'm using one of them, http://www.dyndns.org.
So here I am calling
Cox Communications.
It took four visits to my home
a total of seven hours late.
It took over a dozen telephone calls
and a lot of grief.
(Click here
for the full story.)
It isn't to prove that I'm more of a victim than you are.
When I tell this kind of story,
I often get a response like,
"Well, you think that's bad?
You should hear what happened to me!"
Of course it happened to you.
I'm not special,
I'm not being singled out as a victim,
I'm just an average Joe in this technology world,
and this is how I'm being treated.
I expect most technology customers
get the same treatment I got,
not much better and not (I hope!) much worse.
The scarier response is
"Well, I never noticed these problems."
The implication is
either that I am particularly picky and sensitive
or that this is some kind of unusual story.
I'm not and it isn't.
I believe that those who do not notice
that something is terribly wrong
with our service infrastructure
are missing something basic in their powers of observation.
As our manufacturing in the United States has gone to pot
to the point where we can't seem to make anything anymore,
the economists try to brighten our outlook
by telling us the United States is now in
"a service economy."
I don't believe it.
We certainly are not getting the service part right
in our service economy
any more than we are getting the making-stuff part right
in our manufacturing economy.
Instead,
I believe our society here in the States
is losing the vision to do anything right.
(Fortunately, our ability to compete in the world economy
may be maintained by having the rest of the world following us
into nonproductive oblivion,
good for us, perhaps,
but maybe not be a good thing overall.)
Let us use our rage
at the poor service we are getting
as motivation to start doing things right again.
Maybe we'll never regain what it took to get a man on the moon,
but maybe we can get our telephones and computers working.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Today is 2009 January 6, Tuesday
01:04:21 Mountain Standard Time
275
visits to this web page.
