Three is NOT charming!

Okay, I know the old saying, "Three's a charm." but I've got to tell you, today I am not finding the number 3 charming. Not. at. all.

#1 Uncharming incident was getting up and try to check my email, and once again, NO internet service. I called customer support. Let me say here and now, I have a love/hate relationship with Mediacom Internet. When it's working, of course it's wonderful. But when it's not and you have to contact them, it is most decidedly BAD NEWS.

I have called them many, many times over the years. The first thing the system does is ask for your phone number and checks to see if there is an outage in the area. I think MAYBE that one out of 25 times it will actually tell me that yes, there is an outage in this area and that's the end of that because then I know they'll have someone out to work on it.

But usually I get the "There is no reported outage in your area" and shunted over to a different automated system.

This one has an oh-so-cheery female voice that is going to help me figure out what is wrong. She asks a zillion questions, but the bottom line is a) unplug your modem, and b) wait a few seconds then plug it back in, and c) oops, it STILL ISN'T WORKING and she doesn't know what to do so sends your information to a LIVE tech. (About time!)

Of course, all that rigamarole takes about 20 minutes, and is insulting because anyone who has had a problem with their internet going out, after the first go round already KNOWS to unplug the modem so it will reset.

So after maybe half an hour I finally got to talk to a real person, repeated all my information, and was told, "Oh, there's an outage in your area."

#$%@% No kidding!

I told him very politely what I thought of their automated system, and how ridiculous it is, and how it wasted at least 30 minutes of my time to tell me what I already knew! He agreed, but do you think anything will ever be done?

No, it will not. Because Mediacom thinks that stupid automated system is saving them money, because they sure wouldn't want to have to pay another tech. Never mind how much we're all paying them every month for internet service, and do you think we get a refund when it doesn't work? No, we do NOT!

But I mentioned 3 things didn't I?

#2) I work online. I have several blogs. I was trying to do something with one of them I've done many, many times before, but two accounts have crossed wires on one of the wordpress.com systems, and it won't work. I have an email into support, but so far, the problem hasn't been resolved. In the mean time, that blog is sitting there with no spam protection and is not collecting stats. I'm sure it will eventually get worked out. I hope.

#3) Tracphone. Ohhhhhh, tracphone. The airtime on the one Jonathan uses was due to expire today. I always go online, put in my user name and password, and add airtime.

Well, not today.

First off, the system wouldn't accept the user name and password. Here again, this is something I've done many, many times. The information hasn't changed. I thought maybe they had a system-wide glitch and tried to enter the user name and password for my phone. That went right through. So I tried to get a new password for Jonathan's phone. The system informed me that email was not in their records and contact customer support.

So I did.

Trying to get a straight answer as to why I suddenly can't get into my account never happened. I spent well over an hour on this. When it became obvious I wasn't going to get an answer, I was going to let them put the airtime on.

So the first person tried it, and said the system wouldn't take my credit card. What??? I tried to give her a different one then, and she needed to send me to someone else. (It's called passing the buck, ha!)

I explained my situation again, and this guy told me I could go online and put airtime on the phone without actually logging into my account. So I tried it.

It didn't work.

Then he tried it with two different credit cards, both of which I KNOW are in excellent standing. It didn't matter. The system wouldn't take it.

I asked him if this had anything to do with the fact somebody used my name and address and stolen credit card number to buy a bunch of stuff from Tracphone a few months ago. He didn't think so. Okay, then what IS the problem? He didn't know.

The bottom line with this one is that I have a ticket number, and am supposed to call back in 24 hours to see if they know what the problem is, but he also said they'd know in 24 to 48 hours. So I might call and they still won't have an answer.

By the time I hung up, it was getting dark and we needed to go out and do chores. My lady llama was as crabby as me and tried to spit on me. That's unusual. She usually spits at Jess, not me.

When we came back in I sat down and looked at my email.... and saw THREE transaction alerts from the credit card company for charges from TracPhone! Considering someone has stolen my credit card information twice, and NO, not from on-line..... well, I'm more than a little paranoid about my credit cards!

So I called TracPhone back. As I suspected, those charges are from when they tried to put airtime on my phone, but should go OFF the credit card because their system didn't accept my account getting new airtime.

We shall see. You can bet I'll be keeping my eyes open on this one. If I see those charges pop up on my account, there will be a lot more phone calling happening!

In the meantime, I'm hoping the rest of this day is QUIET. Boring. Serene. Peaceful. Nice. No glitches.

I can dream, can't I?