Walmart on a Sunday Night.

When we heard on the news about the virus that might block internet access at midnight last night, I immediately check both of our computers to ensure that we didn’t have it. God forbid we lose internet connection. Both machines were clean.

I was watching a movie on Netflix in the afternoon and we were having some pretty odd weather. It was dark and thundering like crazy but not raining. Then there was a giant clap of thunder right overhead that scared the crap out of me. Yes, I jumped and screeched a little. Hubby just laughed. It did sprinkle a bit and a little while later, I lost my internet connection. No big deal. I figured it was from the weather.

So, I went to the computer and reset the modem and the router and nothing. Then I started trying to get a network connection and no luck. After a while, I ended up calling tech support, and spoke to “Francis”. Yeah….I guarantee that was not his real name. I will just say I have never heard that accent come out of a Francis, and leave it at that.

After going through all the steps they require, even though I had already done them before calling. Francis determined that there was an outage at the server and he would report it. He said it should be back on-line in 3 to 4 hours and if it wasn’t, I could call back for the status.

I waited about 4 ½ hours and still had no internet, so called back. This time I got “Patrick”. Yeah, he had the same accent. And guess what? You would think that I had never called in the first time. He made me go through all the same steps I had on the first call. I got a little annoyed. He insisted there was no server outage reported. I told him that “Francis” was going to report it 4 ½ hours ago. Anyway, this guy was annoying, but I still went through all the steps. I asked, “Do you think my modem could have gone bad?” He assured me that it hadn’t. Then for some reason, he decided that I needed to change out my Ethernet cable. Huh??? I had another one, so switched it out. He assured me that would fix the problem. It didn’t.

Then, guess what?! He decided that my modem must have gone out. And it was not under warranty. I said, “No shit, I got it about 10 years ago.” He, of course, offered to send me out a new one for the amazing price of $75. I told him we would find one locally, thanked him for his time and hung up. I am NEVER rude to tech support. I know they get all kinds of calls, but usually, once one realizes that I know a little about my computer, they stop treating me like an imbecile. This one did not and just pissed me off. Hubby thought it was hilarious.

So, since the AT&T store was not open, we headed to WalMart to see if we could find a DSL modem there. I am not waiting to have one shipped. We need our internet! We got to WalMart a little before 7 and it was so NOT crowded. If it were not a Sunday night and I had to go to work the next day and I was not pissed about my encounter with Patrick, it would have been pretty nice. It was the perfect time to go to WalMart.

As luck would have it, our store only carried one brand of DSL modem and it was out of stock. We picked up a few other things, then left. I gave Hubby specific details of what I want and told him to go to Radio Shack today and if they had a modem for $75 or less, to buy it there. If not, he could go to the AT&T store.

I have not heard from him today. I hope he is okay. LOL!

(Oh, and yes, for some reason, I can access Blogger from work. We will see how long that lasts.)