Expertise Matters

After months of inconsistent performance, my computer now works fairly normally.  It had accumulated three glitches.  The most serious involved access to my email.  Xfinity does not connect me to the internet pretty much every day.  It will loop me to an unfamiliar starting screen, denying me access to their site.  When I simply type www.xfinity.com which should take me generically to their site, it automatically adds a slash / which diverts it.  A few times a week I telephone Xfinity which I find agonizing as they will do anything to avoid transferring me to a person.  When I get a representative, they read me their script without ever listening to me explain what I encounter.  Eventually, I get the problem patched up, only to reappear the next day.

My computer does not always shut down.  Sometimes a popup called RealTek impedes this.  I will indicate that it should shut down anyway, which it does.  I do not know what RealTek is, never asked for it to appear on my screen, and when I asked the ISP to fix it, they tell me the problem lies in my computer.

Finally, I have a change in how my computer recognizes USB ports.  When I put my flash drive in a new port, it gets a message that says it is in Port D://.  The same used to happen when I plugged my phone into the port, but now it bundles it with the rest of my computer.  I could not navigate the phone from my computer. Calls to Samsung turf the problem back to my computer.  These corporate giants can do no wrong. Their agents are scripted to placate the caller without fixing a problem that they likely do not understand themselves.  

General Message:  they are not there to serve ME.  The megacorporations put barriers to even accessing expertise.  And these guys are proficient relative to the agents at my local Xfinity Store who are in the business of selling me stuff, not making stuff that I already have work at top form.

Out of exasperation, I considered shipping my laptop for service.  When I purchased it four years ago, I took Amazon up on their offer for a four-year warranty.  It expires in six weeks.  I've almost mailed it twice, and once spoke to a representative who expertly guided me through a programming glitch within weeks of purchase.  My problems, typing all caps and some similar annoyance, ran their course.  The insurer had emailed me mailing labels.  Having to back up all my data before shipping served as a deterrent to unnecessary utilization.  But with the warranty in its final weeks, I needed this resolved.  A not-so-easy email search through a temperamental email service identified the contract and a phone  I dialed it.  An agent answered promptly.   After she confirmed my policy was still active, she took my information, including a description of the problems.  Rather than ship my computer, she recommended that one of their 24/7 technical support people could probably guide me through this.  

Within a minute or two, I got connected to a representative, a man with a hint of an accent to suggest he had to learn English as a second language, but mastered it well.  He tried to share my screen but that got blocked by my protection software, so we did this verbally.

He explained that all major programs now automatically add a slash / with destination to their generic web address.  Mine takes me to a loop.  What I need is a slash / destination that takes me where I want to go directly.  He suggested www.xfinity.com/login.  It took me to log in.  I created a shortcut on my Google Search intro.  Subsequently, Xfinity changed /login to /email, but so far I've not had diversions to non-functional Xfinity opening pages unfamiliar to me trying to sell me something.

He addressed RealTek in a straightforward way.  It is apparently a factory-installed feature that allows the laptop's speakers to function. Why it pops up doesn't matter, as long as I can override it, which I always can.

For the Samsung issue, he accessed my telephone screen.  From its camera, I could now show him my laptop screen.  He brought me to the Samsung entry on File Explorer, opened it, and should me how to navigate my phone from that screen.

Total time, 38 minutes, not much different than the time it takes me to bypass the endless Xfinity automated messages and resets.  All solved.  This fellow did not read from the script.  He let me explain what I had experienced.  Were he able, he would have looked at my laptop screen and navigated it himself.  As he went along, he explained to me why I encountered what I did, along with its significance.  I do not remember what Amazon charged for the supplemental protection.  Worth everything I paid for it.

Having devoted my career to serving not only as an expert but with a responsibility to explain what patients sought in a way that they would find understandable, I connected well with the warranty representative.  Expertise matters.  He had it, and he conveyed it.  I valued it.  Our corporate giants accept a lesser interaction with their consumers.

Fixing What's Wrong

When I tabulate my monthly expenses on or about the 17th of each month, a Comcast bill on autopay takes a significant cut.  I put it in the Entertainment column of the Excel spreadsheet, though I'm hardly entertained.  For that sum I have landline telephone, an ISP with my email address, and cable TV.  People who need to reach me largely call that number.  Organizations do it from their wired phones, people reach me from their cell phones.  Yet I prefer to call others via that telephone access.  I never really logged how many calls I receive and from whom, or how many I make.  Mostly relatives and those who want money.  Virtually no idle chat, while exchange of serious ideas uses other forums.  I'm on the internet all the time, often idly so, enough times purposefully so.  It's failed twice via hacking.  Xfinity did their best to undo the damage.  Most of my monthly fee goes there.

And then TV with streaming.  When I sign on with my Roku/TCL unit, I get a message that they are now connecting to my entertainment experience.  Most of the time I don't really want to be entertained.  I seek out documentaries.  But it is still learning.  It's not exclusively to Comcast, as Netflix also gives me options of what to watch.  Indeed, in recent months I've been watching more series on Netflix.  But it still came as a major annoyance to get blocked by Comcast when I wanted to browse.

Instead of connecting to my entertainment experience, the screen asked me to authorize that I want to be there.  I typed in the six code numbers onto a nearby laptop.  This has happened before.  Normally I would receive a terms of agreement to click and my entertainment experience would ensue.  Not this time.  The PC said success.  The TV gave me another set of six code numbers.  After a few cycles of this, I called the customer line of Comcast.

The NEJM had an op-ed in a recent issue trying to separate work that requires thinking from work that is repetitive or process oriented.  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2202511  In medicine, the ease and repetitiveness of the Electronic Record has shifted medical care from expert analysis by physicians to data entry with processes and pathways.  Comcast took a similar approach.  When I called the customer service number, there were steps to get to a human being, one who reads from a script, as after telling my story, they ask me what I just told them.  When I called back for the umpteenth time, they have no record of what I told them last time.  Just an algorithm to unplug this or move to a different screen and click that.  After about six tries when I tried to sign on I did not get to my entertainment experience, blocked by recurrent code numbers to type in as before. 

Eventually they sent a technician, one with considerable experience who went through his motions concluding that my barrier was not with Comcast but with my TV. At least he is a person and could tell me what he thought.  And he listened to what I told him and watched what I showed him.  I could buy another TV.  So I called the TV TCL line, where they took me through their steps, including resetting the TV.  No better.  He concluded that my TV was functioning much as their factory intended.

So now I am the patient who cannot breathe with a cardiologist blaming the lungs and a pulmonary doc blaming the heart.  So I sought Google as the arbiter.  Sure enough, I was not the only person with a TCL/Roku unit who could not implement their Comcast subscription.  And there were solutions proposed, a message board with Comcast reps messaging in to Private Message them, but no solutions.  

Locally we have an Xfinity store, one used to having exasperated, even irate customers who wonder whether they should upgrade to former customers, traipsing in.  I spoke to the site manager.  He informed me that they have a TV specialist who deals with this and would ask him to call me.  When he did not call in a reasonable time, I tried to call the store back.  In the modern age, they have no phone number, just a central toll free number that takes you back to processors when you really require a thinker.  So I drove there, to find that the manager I spoke to was on vacation this week.  While the manager thought it was Comcast, the person filling in thought it was the TV, giving me two options.

1. Buy a new TV but only Samsung or LG that does not have to go through Roku.  Cost $400
2. Get an additional cable box for the current TV so internet would not be required.  Cost $8.50/mo

We settled on a middle ground.  Wait for the boss to return from vacation and see what their best expert could do.

In the meaning, electronic peasant me went back to the TCL site where they offer advice on what to do from their end.  I followed it step by step.  Clicking on the series of pathway, I reset from factory settings.  No risk if the alternative was to buy another TV, though I had already done that the last time the TCL rep ran me through the procedure.  Then another pathway to check for a MAC number.  I do not know what a MAC number is but I had one.  Then try to get back on Xfinity.  Another code number to authorize on my PC.  But this time, it took me to a user agreement, which I accepted, followed by a return to the world of streaming TV.  Elation.  A binge of viewing come nightfall.

I still solved this with process over thinking.  Perhaps Comcast, medicine, and everyone other than me is right.  Reasoning and expertise are overrated.

Email Goes Kaput

Something happened to my Xfinity Email.  Somebody who I only interact with electronically called me to tell me my email had been hacked.  He received a note from me asking to add to an Amazon account.  Another friend told me the same as well.  I sent myself an email, but my address no longer appeared as I typed a few letters.  I typed the whole thing, sent it but never received it.  My Sent Folder recorded it though.  Changed password.  Then sent myself email with the clue to help me remember the password.  It never arrived.

After finishing what I was doing, delaying supper, I headed over to the Xfinity store.  By the time the agent had completed her thing, I had a new password that even I couldn't remember, my Sent Folder had been moved to the Trash Folder and when I tried to move both folders back to Sent so as not to lose professional and legal communications, both those folders disappeared to.

I called Xfinity Security where the agent guided me through a few steps, told me it would reset but it never did.  I called again.  This agent couldn't fix it but referred me to their swamis who will eventually do what they in the next day or two.

I cannot receive emails.  When I send messages to myself, they now appear in a newly restarted Sent Folder.  I checked my Address Book, which also disappeared.  Since my Inbox still works I can retrieve the addresses of people who had sent me by searching the Inbox.  Sent two messages to people who can let me know verbally if they received them.  Those appear in the Sent Folder.

This can pose quite an ordeal, but I have had to change my email address once before.  We'll see if the Xfinity geeks rise to the task.