I've been saving up a big list of things I want to take care of around the house, mostly tech related. Can I get my iRiver Clix to work? What is the deal with the pathetic speed I'm getting from Qwest DSL? Can I get my second TV hooked up to the DirecTV receiver that I own? Full of hope and optimism, I embark on my journey.
I've installed and uninstalled Rhapsody probably five times, and still had huge troubles trying to synch to the iRiver. Finally, after about half an hour on hold, I got someone in tech support who answered my question -- it was sort of user error, sort of really bad documentation. The insanely long synch times (13 hours) were a result of my play lists *not* being on my computer, but only on the Rhapsody servers. Ah. Is there a single click way of downloading them all? No. How long does it take? Depends on your DSL speed. Well, since that is problem number two, I can safely say it sucks, and it takes about 13 hours. But the device now synchs. Call this one good.
Moving onto broadband. I moved to Qwest DSL when I left Oregon, because I so detested Comcast. But while I started off getting about a 1mb download speed, it kept crashing the DSL router, and I ended up finally having them turn it down to (allegedly) 560 kbps down, 256 kpbs up. Not that ever *saw* that kind of speed, but at least the router stopped dying. So today I called again -- after having to convince a bevy of techs that "optimizing my browser" wasn't really going to cut it, one finally admitted that the phone lines to my area pretty much sucked, and I'd be lucky to get 500 kpbs. Which I knew. Options? Verizon FIOS not available. Comcast -- a company with hooves. Can't do it. Got a Clearwire dude coming out Wednesday to test their service, not ideal, but it just has to be better than what I have now -- so an incomplete.
On to DirecTV. I now have two emails I've sent to them with the subject "Why do you hate your customers?" Here I am, trying to give them more money, trying to use their service and they make it as hard as humanly possible. The most inscrutable voice tree I've ever experience, no signal about how long the wait would be, and invariably I'd end up talking to the wrong person. Finally, after nearly two hours on the phone or on hold, success was near -- until the person told me that having an installer come out meant I'd automatically add another two years to my contract with them, which given how hot and grumpy I was at the moment did *not* seem to be a good idea. Two managers later, turned out front line person was wrong, and I have a person scheduled to come out, but to say I'm not happy with DirecTV is an understatement.
THEN, to top it all off, my Sonos music system, goes flaky. Plays, stops. Can't find the zones. Can't find my music library. Connects/drops to Rhapsody. Finally move to the computer, launch the software there, ooh look -- an update has been pushed down, and some of my zone players have it, my controller doesn't, all is a mess. Downloading and rebooting...a few times....because I just can't let the day end w/o having some victory somewhere with something tech related.
It's playing now. We'll see.
What is clear is that it's not the technology that is killing me, it's the customer service.