It was one of those days. It started out normal. We had to get up a bit early because I had a doctor’s appointment and even though we left plenty of time, we got out of the house a bit late. Time slipped away. It was coffee. I needed ONE MORE sip. My appointment was fine. Next stop? Grocery store.
We couldn’t get to the grocery. There had been a fire. Or something. The street was closed. Not the whole street, just the couple of hundred feet in front of the parking lot.
Other than the fire engine with the flashing lights, there was no hint of a fire or evidence of anything. No smoke. No injuries. No water on the street. No crime scene tape. A blocked street where we needed to go. They were allowing cars to drive through from the other direction. So there was no sensible reason why we couldn’t go a few dozen feet to the parking lot. Nope, we had to take the detour.
Uxbridge not being a real city, a detour isn’t a quick trip around a city block. We were in Douglas before we could start looping back to town. By which time they had parked the fire truck and there were no official obstructions.
Shopping concluded, leaving town was our next trial. Civic excitement is rare in our little town, so everyone had to take a long look at the … what? Fire? Crime scene? False alarm? One of the rubberneckers was riding a bicycle. We were behind him, trying to drive at 1 mph. As soon as we (finally) got around him, someone pulled out of a side street, slowed down to about 10 mph. Directly in front of us. We crawled home. Karma is.
Groceries were unpacked. Television was turned on. Surprise! The television still wasn’t working. I tried rebooting again after which, I hold my breath and call Charter. They’ve been having a bad week too and this is my third call in two days. Any day on which I have to call Charter is not a great day.
After a long hold, the agent assures me they are merely doing (more) repair work, but they hope it will be finished any day now. They’ll call me when it’s finished. Maybe even today. Eventually, dinner having been served, eaten, and cleared away, the phone rang. Charter (recorded message) says “Repairs are complete, thank you for your patience.” But it is not fixed. The television wi-fi is still not working.
Any day on which I have to call Charter once is not a good day, but if I have to cal them twice? That is very bad. They tell me to reboot. They send a repair signal. Nada. They can’t get a tech here until Thursday. I am grouchy but there doesn’t seem to be a choice. I realize I’d better write it down because these days I forget everything immediately. I turned on the light.
The bulb exploded.
My day is done. Definitely an early night for me!
Share this:
Categories: #Photography, Customer Service, Humor, Traffic
PLAY TAPS FOR ME – Marilyn Armstrong 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Cox is almost as bad as Charter. The other day, I was watching TV when, in the middle of a program, the TV I was watching lost its signal. The other two in the house were working fine. I called Cox, only to learn that there was a 15-minute wait, so I didn’t wait. A couple of hours later I tried again — the wait was still 15 minutes — and a third time. I decided to wait until morning, except that just as I fell asleep I remembered that when one of the other TV’s goes out I can reset the mini-box simply by unplugging it and plugging it in again. I tried that in the morning, and it worked — but I could have waited forever to have somebody tell me that simple trick!
LikeLike
Ah. You rebooted the modem. That usually works unless the problem is on THEIR end and they are still rewiring their servers. I loathe Charter and I have heard similar comments about Cox. There are so MANY really bad ISPs around and we have to pay them or we can’t get wi-fi. There’s something very wrong with this arrangement.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry but I’m giggling here. We all have days like that, but yours really was a corker!
LikeLike
Nothing huge, nothing life-changing. Just one little aggravation after another. Today is another day.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve come to tolerate Charter a bit more since I dropped their expensive cable package last year. So far, they haven’t sabotaged my internet (too much) for saving $110 a month… but boy are they sending me tons of junk mail to try and get me as a cable subscriber again!
LikeLike
Me too. If they’d made those same offers when I was a subscriber, I might not have left. But what they’ve done instead is raise the Wi-Fi prices hugely. I think we pay almost as much using streaming, but at least we get what we want (baseball — if there was any). I turned of HBO and Acorn yesterday. HBO because only watch it when John Oliver is one and he’s on a three month vacation and we have plenty of movies elsewhere, and Acorn because we’ve watched everything we liked. Until they get some new material, there’s nothing to watch. I read an article which pointed out that you can turn streaming services on and off when the shows you want are on, then turn them off when you’re done. There’s no fees involved. You just have to pay attention.
LikeLike
I wouldn’t know about any of this, as we have no TV. Just as an info: I watch John Oliver’s show on YT, for free…..
LikeLike
That would do it for me….
LikeLike
Honestly, the exploding light bulb was just the finishing touch.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It would rattle me after all that….
LikeLike
Wow. A day from hell for sure!! 😮 That street block with no visible problem MIGHT be the following: When I lived in Salt Lake, there was a thrift store I often shopped at – one could find designer duds (because it was in a affluent area) that hadn’t even been worn; and get them at a very low price. When I got to the store, I found that all the entrance/exits were blocked by cop cars. Nobody was getting anywhere – out OR in. Driving around the block to see if there were another place to park; I noticed some cops with rifles creeping along the back of the store and next door to it, to that store too. There was a hostage situation I learned later. Sometimes the situation is behind doors. I’m glad you got in and got your shopping done – eventually!
LikeLike
Personally, in our case, the cop was probably chatting with a neighbor and forgot to turn off his lights. We do have crime. Not a lot, but some disappearing children who have never been found. Drownings in winter — kids never seem to get that one day of very cold weather doesn’t make a hockey rink. Occasional burglaries, but mostly, not much. There’s not much to GET here.
Nice that you have a second-hand store. We had a pretty good Salvation Army that had a lot of designer stuff. I once bumped into the bank manager shopping there. But sometime during COVID, it closed, so that’s it for second-hand stuff. More’s the pity.
LikeLike
That was an eventful day from start to finish. Holy crap!
LikeLike
And it was all stupid stuff. Just a series of little things that began as annoying and ended in one final exploded light bulb. It all did come back, although there are still a LOT of problems. We have at least a dozen mini-outages every day, where you’re in the middle of trying to save or send something and suddenly, there’s no connection. It comes back — usually — but I’m told that almost the entire country is having the same problem. Too many people using too much wifi.
LikeLike
Yes, we had that problem before we moved here. I believe we had 5 mg. maybe 3 per second. Telus had added so many pvr’s etc to the system you couldn’t be on line and they bill you to come look or fix any problems. They are garbage. Now we are thankfully on a different service provider and soooo much better!
LikeLike
Don’t you just love those days that do not work as they should?
LikeLike
No big crises. Just one annoying thing after another. The problem with wi-fi is ongoing and it’s national (maybe international). Too many people at home all needing wi-fi to work or just keep in touch with the rest of the world. At least around here, no one ever imagined the drain on resources that would occur when EVERYONE needed wi-fi constantly. I think Europe has a better setup but North and South America were always a bit sketchy and now, it’s bad.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wi Fi works OK here. Although I have the habit of listening to music with ear plugs when I am houseworking and sometimes the station disappear for some seconds.
LikeLike
We have the Wi-Fi coming and going all day long. It gets very old.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hope tomorrow is better.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Everything turned itself on by the end of dinner. They have NO idea what they are doing over there at Charter.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That must be a load off your mind
LikeLiked by 1 person
Charter is the most aggravating ISP anywhere and we are stuck with them. No choice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have xfinity here and they are good by and large.
LikeLike
Charter has never had enough servers for the size of the community they manage. They took over a couple of other smaller companies and they cover all of Massachusetts except Boston and it’s local suburbs as well as parts of New Hampshire … and then they have areas out west too. They are bad at all of them. Understaffed, under serviced … and in many rural and semi-rural areas, the ONLY choice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Too bad that they are taking advantage of their monopoly
LikeLike