Redial, Redial, Redial.........

I can't believe it's Friday. The last couple of days are a blur. I've spent them on the phone, hitting redial over and over again, trying to get AOL to answer my call. Correction, a nameless, soulless, automated voice actually did answer my call, but I was unable to get a live body on the other end of the phone for hours and hours and hours.

It all began on Wednesday around 4 PM. AOL dropped me and I couldn't get back on line. I kept trying to get back on line periodically for the next couple of hours. Around 6 PM I made my first call to AOL. Little did I know that it would be the first of many, many calls that I would make over the next 20 hours. The only response I could get was the flat, human-less, humorless and falsely cheerful voice of an automated female persona.(Is there anything worse than falsely cheerful?)

She asked me questions and I answered, she gave me instructions and I followed them. She implied she would resolve my problems and return me to computer viability, if I would only do what she asked. I complied. I allowed her to order, instruct and direct me to perform certain tasks, all with the hope that I would have my computer up and running soon.

Pointless! It was all pointless. Every time I progressed to a certain point in the process, believing I was almost there, the line would drop yet again and again, and I could do nothing but start the process over. Each time I called back I was informed that AOL was experiencing an unusually high number of calls, and I would have to wait. And so I did, wait and wait and wait. After cooling my heels for an interminable amount of time, I was once again rewarded with the soulless, mechanical, inhuman voice of the, now all too familiar, female persona.

Each time I would do everything she told me, only to be disconnected at the most critical point. After numerous attempts we finally finished the process, but it did not work, *gerrr* and she still did not offer the option of talking to a live body. No, she did not do that at all.

I mentioned that I started this process at 6 o'clock on Wednesday night. I finally gave up around 11:30 and went to bed. Thursday morning at 6 AM, Herman and I started again, fresh for the fight. By 1 PM in the afternoon we were ready to stick a fork in our eyes. It would have taken our minds off of our frustration, and that's exactly the moment we finally heard the sweet sound of a human voice from AOL, just in the nick of time to prevent self inflicted wounds.

Herman talked to the guy because by this time I was sitting in a corner drooling, and babbling incoherently to myself. I've been married to Herman for 36 years, and I have never seen him so frustrated. Never. It takes an earthquake, fire, a swarm of killer bees and an angry rash all on the same day for him to even break a sweat. He's a cool customer, but not yesterday. No, not yesterday.

He told the guy that we had been trying to reach a real person since 6 o'clock Wednesday night. He apologized to Herman, and asked him if we had Norton Anti Virus, explaining that Norton had made some recent updates that were blocking access to AOL. (Just a little side note here, AOL sells McAfee, not Norton. Not that I'm into conspiracy theories or anything.) He said that Norton was the problem, and we needed to call them, and they would tell us how to get around it. He just couldn't help us, though he really, really wished he could. NOT!

That's when we began the process of trying to reach Norton. We called and they said all lines were busy, I hung up and hit redial and repeated this process for over an hour. When we finally got an answer it was the male counterpart of the flat, soulless, inhuman female voice at AOL. (Someone should introduce them. They could reproduce, and provide corporate America with untold numbers of little non-humans. )

He put us through another drill similar to the one the female at AOL had. I will admit that Nordon did have an interesting little touch though. There were long, very long pauses in between little bits of encouragement to stay on the line because help was on the way; during those pauses they played bagpipe music. I guess it was a special treat because of St. Patrick's Day.

We never reached a true human at Norton, but finally they gave us a website to correct the problem, however, they said it so fast that even though both of us were sitting poised with pen in hand we could not write it down fast enough. After giving us the website he did not offer to repeat it and once again the line went dead. We began the process all over again and went through it twice more, and finally gave up.

Herman then described AOL and Norton in some of the most descriptive, accurate and precise language I've ever had the pleasure of hearing. He then proceeded to disable Norton so he could get on line (remember, we couldn't get on line because of Norton) and found the right place to go for help by wading through endless stuff on the Symantec site . He then fixed it himself. *My Hero*

I don't expect AOL to fix the problem, (who knows who's fault it was, AOL blames Norton and Norton probably blames AOL.) but I do expect AOL to give the website that has directions to correct the problem, to it's customers. They actually didn't even tell us that the info. was on a website. They told us we had to contact Norton and Norton would tell us what to do. (Do you think it's possible that they wanted Norton to be flooded with phone calls too?) To force us to spend more hours trying to reach Norton, after finally reaching AOL, was unconscionable, especially after making it's customers spend hours and hours calling without getting to talk to a real person.

Herman said AOL's biggest mistake was in not offering a short message on their recording, informing their customers that if they used Norton Internet Security, and could not access AOL their problem could probably be resolved by contacting Norton. This simple solution would have prevented thousands of AOL's loyal customers from enormous inconvenience and hours of frustration. Instead they forced us to repeat over and over again a useless exercise with an automated voice, continually disconnecting our connection at a critical point. If they had given the website on the message it would have been even better. As for Norton, they should have said the website in a slow and reasonable way and repeated it. The speed with which it was said was ridiculous and useless to the customer.

Today I signed up for Comcast High Speed. (My son's comment..."Finally!") It will actually cost $12.05 less than AOL because I won't need the second phone. I can't wait. They will be here Friday. Yipee! I will never darken AOL's door again and vice versa. I have to wonder how many customers AOL lost because of their inept approach to the resolution of this fiasco.


One last comment here: Today's world is becoming more and more impersonal. We all know that sometimes "stuff" happens, and all our problems can't be resolved in the span of a few minutes. Most reasonable people just want to be treated fairly. My friend, Patsy, who has always tried to sooth my furrowed brow over the years, sent me a website that may be of help to some of you in the future. gethuman.com is the perfect name for this site. It tells you how to get around the inhuman automated voices that you come in contact with when you call a company for HELP. Put it in your favorites and check it out next time you reach out for help and get nothing more than a faceless, humorless, automated, inhuman voice.