cell phones

I’m having issues with ATT Unverse and one of my tvs. First world problems.

I noticed that they do anything they can to avoid having the tech come out, even if they are charging me $150.00 for a “house call.” Even though I pay them a lot of fees every month for their service, or lack of it.

When you call them, they try to have you fix the problem yourself over the phone. I never know what they are talking about and while I understand most English accents, they use another country to answer calls and I can’t understand most of what the people on the other end of the phone are saying.

But they tell you dumb things, like, “Go to the other room and disconnect the box and see if it works in the room where you are having issues.” Or this one guy told me it was my tv that was the issue, it wasn’t their box.

In the end, when the first tech finally arrived a few weeks ago, he assured me, it was the cable box and nothing was wrong with the tv. To be fair, the idiot on the phone did tell me he had a list of issues he was reading from. He wasn’t a tech, he was a guy reading a list in order to keep the tech from coming over.

But the problem existed and I had another tech come out a few weeks later. I literally had to beg them to send him out.

I know I need to cut the cord. I have to. But I don’t like change – so I pay ATT through the nose not to have to change.

Interestingly enough, I also pay for a lot of streaming services, aside from the cable company, but I don’t usually watch the streaming services. They are just sitting there, waiting to be watched.

I’ve switched from Adobe to Affinity, now it’s time to charge from the big phone and tv companies to something else.

But herein lies the rub – I finally had someone at ATT tell me what it’s all about. The tech that came out yesterday told me they are doing away with ATT Uverse, it’s something they don’t want to deal with anymore.

He said the reason they charge me so much each month is so I will drop them for another service! Instead of just asking me to move to DirecTV, which is the service, they want me to move to, they screw me with high fees.

This is ATT for you. Horrible.

So the one great thing that came out of the second ATT guy’s visit was that he told me that the cable box is going the way of pay phones. He said I should switch to DirecTV and I will pay one third of what I am paying for cable now.

I finally had a guy who looked me in the eye and said, this is the way – I’m overpaying for an obsolete thing and if I make a change, I could save tons of money and will no longer have tv issues. And I should stop watching tv and start reading books. Just joking, he didn’t say that last part.

I checked online, I could literally save up to one quarter of what I am paying now! And it’s all digital, there is no cable box and it works via wifi. I will look into it this week. It’s time to join the 21st Century.

Till next time . . .

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This cartoon is from 1919 – 106 years ago. It’s about “pocket telephones,” which of course were not a thing back then. Regular landline telephones were barely a thing, so it’s amazing that cartoonist W.K. Haselden came up with this concept.

And the thing is, all of these scenarios have happened to us at one time or other with cell phones today. So Haselden was really predicting the future.

When cell phones first became popular, I used to think of what a Seinfeld episode would be like with cell phones, you know, how would it fit into the show. I’m not sure why I thought of Seinfeld, because it could be interesting with any show from the past.

I pictured the characters in a store or something and a bunch of phones would ring at the same time and everyone would grab their phones and hilarity would ensue.

These days, most people text. I gave up answering my business phone years ago, which sounds strange, but I own an online business and most of the questions people ask need to be in writing – quotes, things like that. So I don’t answer the phone, I have a message that says, please email us at this address . . . “

A couple of people in my life, one of my cousins and one of my sisters-in-law will call me if I text them. I can text either one of them, “What time is the party on Saturday,” and they’ll call me back, rather than text me the time. So whenever I am going to text them, I make sure I am available to take their phone call which invariably is two seconds after I send the text.

When I text, I usually do it with one or two words. I’m quite famous for my, “OK.” For instance I’ll get a text telling me to meet so-and-so at 1 pm, I respond, “OK.” Or I get a text telling me not to forget the milk, and I’ll respond, “OK.” People didn’t like the one word answers, but they are used to it by now.

One of my brothers texts back “Okay” for “OK.” I asked him why he fully spelled it out. He said it’s because it just auto fills that in as he is typing.

I’m on a lot of text chains with family, friends, my condo neighbors, etc. Some of them are on silent, because once a text starts, it goes on and on and the beeping alerting me of next texts is non-stop.

At our building, someone will text, “I’m looking for my Amazon package, has anyone seen it?” And you get a dozen, “not me,” “not me,” “not me.” People feel the need to respond.

One friend sends out about 20 or more photos at a time. If it’s someone’s birthday or the Miami Dolphins scores or something to do with The Beatles, who he loves, he sends out images and text by the dozens. I have that alert sound off, so when I look at the phone and see 40 new text messages, it alarming, no pun intended, until I see it’s him sending us 20 Paul McCartney photos on Paul’s birthday, and the other 20 messages are from people responding.

I left my house without my phone one time. I felt totally naked and lost, but after a while, it turned out to be one of the most peaceful days I had in a long time. It’s hard to remember back to a time before we had cell phones.

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