Net Neutrality and the best Congress money can buy

Open Secrets had a link to a list of Senators and Representatives who took money since 1989 from AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon and whether they voted for or against net neutrality.  Every Senator took some money and only a handful of Representatives took no money from these three.

“We have the best Congress money can buy” is attributed to Will Rogers.

Maybe we need a Constitutional amendment that politicians can only accept money from individuals who can vote for them.

Whose responsibility is it to correct for computer inconsistencies?

It’s obviously the user, who may or may not have an understanding of the problem and its solution.

Once again, no matter what I did, I couldn’t make my iPhone a hotspot.

I would turn on Cellular Data.  The slider may or may not work.  I thought maybe it was the extra hard screen cover I have.  But other sliders don’t seem to have the same problem.  If the slider for Cellular Data came on, then the Personal Hotspot slider may or may not come on.  Sometimes it would; sometimes it would not.  If it didn’t, then the Cellular Data slider would turn off.

If I gave up and asked my MacBook Air to join a network, it might or might not.  I think, but can’t be sure, if I make mistakes twice in entering the password, then I can’t get on at all.

Now, comes the kicker.  How many users know about General>Reset>Reset Network Settings?  You have to be a user who visits the Apple “Community” or can think of keywords to find other sites with the appropriate answers.

But once you reset your problems are not over.  If you ask to join the network on your other device, it won’t work.  Why?  Because the name you thought your iPhone had has now become iPhone.  Either you use iPhone from now on, or you go to General>About>Name and change iPhone to the name you had given your phone.

“The Computer for The Rest of Us” from 1984 slogan has long disappeared.  We are almost back to the nightmare of “1984” in that we don’t really have a clue what Big Brother Apple wants us to do.

Simple solution to a very annoying computer problem

My iPhone has been getting more and more difficult to set up as a hotspot.  I ignored the advice on Apple to reset the network setting and went to ATT chat.  Daniel walked me through several things, but I couldn’t do any of them without breaking the connection to my MacBook Air which was linked to AT&T via a hotspot.

I did follow his advice to reset network settings, and I am back to quick connection to the hotspot.

After I had things working my wife mentioned defragging, a term from our bad old days on mainframes.  Periodically we would have to move pieces in memory around to have enough big pieces to do what needed to be done.  We never thought of Powder Milk Biscuits to give us the strength to do what needs to be done.

With more and more storage on our devices, it is easy to forget about the problem of fragmentation of memory.  As the pieces of memory get smaller, it takes longer to put together larger pieces.  In "ancient" history, 64KB was a lot of memory.  Now with 64GB we assume we will never run out of memory.  Surprise!

“Seamless" came apart at the seams

At about three last night, I was woken by constant thunder and lightning.  It was continuous, more continuous than I have ever heard in my life.  Then strong winds and heavy rain were added.

Fortunately, we only had one set of windows open and I was able to close them before much rain came in.

Then the lighted clock went dark.

I tried to sleep, but the light of every lightning bolt went right through my eyelids.  I laid on my stomach and hid my face in the pillow.

I don’t know how long it took the storm to pass, but it did.

At about seven, I woke up and checked Duluth news on my iPhone.  It was quite a wide ranging storm causing outages and deaths.  Trees were toppled blocking roads and damaging houses.  No travel was advised.

All day our cell phone service has been erratic.  Sometimes our phones work, sometimes we can’t even get a signal.

I can see a cell phone pole from our house, but I can’t remember if it had visible equipment at the top or not.

My wife couldn’t even call on her phone.  The call could not be completed.

The strength of signal was one bar most of the day; my phone is now up to four.  But instead of 4G or LTE service, it only shows E, whatever that means.

I was able to get websites, now loading some of them gets stuck.  I wonder how much local data there is.  Just now I could not load Yahoo! Finance, but I could get most of the New York Times.  But going to a different article is going very slow, but maybe that is because convention news is so popular.  On the other hand, the online banking page of my bank is not making any progress loading on my iPhone.  Meanwhile, I started and finished reading a convention article.

So much for the seamless, at-our-fingertips operation of our gadgets we rely so much on.  We are retired and it is only a nuisance.  But there are many people who depend on these gadgets to do their work.

Now, how long will this take to post?  Essentially, quite a while.  As soon as I typed the first sentence, I tried loading blogger.com.  Firefox could not find the page!

Finally!  At 4:30 pm the web seems back to normal.  I have five dots and LTE on my cellphone and Yahoo! Finance came right up!

Can our electricity be far behind?

Corporate inefficiency

“Conservative” politicians and billionaires keep touting corporate “efficiency”, but I keep finding case after case where they are efficient is inefficiently interacting with their customers.  How many times have you received a satisfactory answer with your first call or email?

I dropped my Republic Bank accounts (including VISA) last year because they blamed Consumer Cellular for the errors I received trying to access my Republic account through my iPhone: both the app and the online account.  Republic said the problem was with Consumer Cellular.  Consumer Cellular said the problem was with the bank.  Neither seemed really interested in pinpointing the problem.

My wife had no problem accessing Pioneer National Bank through her Consumer Cellular phone.

After I opened my Pioneer accounts, I transferred all my funds from Republic Bank to Pioneer.  I wrote Republic to close all my accounts including my VISA account.  I no longer receive monthly statements from Republic.

However, this week I received a notice of a statement from VISA for my Republic card.  Oh, boy!  Did I forget to notify somebody that automatic payments should no longer go to Republic VISA?

When I finally looked at the statement, it was to notify me of my renewal fee!  $0.00!!

I did find a “Contact Us” button that allowed me to call this unneeded statement to somebody’s attention.  I also stated that I had requested Republic Bank to close my VISA account.

Earlier in the week I received from AT&T “Exciting news - your wireless bill from AT&T is now on video.”  Who is it exciting new?  The producers of the video and the advertising department.  It was just a bother to me.  The email didn’t say whether the data for the video was to be charged to my account or was free.  I didn’t bother to find out.

However, I did open up MyATT account, saw the current bill, and paid it, also asking that all future bills be automatically be billed to my credit card.

Imagine my surprise to receive an email today that my bill was ready!  i double checked and the online balance was zero.

I tried to send a message to AT&T and found a page:

Contact Us
AT&T Support - quick & easy support is available 24/7.

I looked and looked for an email form, but I only found two choices: call an 800 number or Online Chat.  I don’t want to wait for “the next available operator",  and I don’t want to wait for the next chat person, type what I noticed, and “hang up”.

I wonder if AT&T uses one of the reputation services, and if so, will the service find this blog post and will AT&T act on it.

Don’t stay tuned!  We may never know if AT&T even read this post.

I think it was the New York Times that had an article this past week that said most telecommunications companies really don’t want to solve your problems: just pass you from one person to another.

“Hello, Melvyn Magree.  My name is ______ and I will be glad to assist you.”  This is generally followed by some generalized gibberish that doesn’t even address the problem, like completely reset your device.

An exception that we’ve found is Apple if you have a device under an Apple Care warranty.  My wife’s iPhone either wouldn’t come on at all or would only get up to 30% charge.  A search of the Apple Support Community came up with over 23,000 topics on this problem.  The only advice seems to be to hold the home and lock buttons together for quite a long time.  For us and others, this did and did not work.

The 23,000 figure does not indicate an efficient corporation, especially when the number of users who have this problem could be ten or more times greater!!

Fortunately my wife’s IPhone was still under warranty.  The Apple Care people walked us through a few steps, and it would work for a while.  After a few calls, they sent us a new phone.  Of course, we didn’t have a backup and had to manually enter phone addresses.  I did manage to print a list from the old phone before we sent it back.

Oh!  And we could never erase the old phone.  It kept asking for a re-something passcode.  It would never accept the phone passcode and we could find no workable answer in the Apple Support Community.  We had to return the problem phone with only the assurance that Apple would erase the data.

How did we get into this mess?  I remember when it was a big deal to have direct-dial long-distance.

More wireless cost available

I checked Verizon today and found a list of data plans and prices.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/verizon-plan/

It doesn’t provide the detailed information that AT&T provides at http://www.att.com/att/planner/, but it does provide an overview.

With unlimited text and talk, Verizon offers a choice of “ice cream cone” sizes from 1GB at $30/month to 18GB at $100.  The fine print reads "Plan cost per month plus $20/month/smartphone purchased on device payment. Taxes/fees apply.”

For more details, you have to call.

Too bad Verizon isn’t available in Brimson, Minnesota.

I wish I could claim credit for more wireless info being available, but I assume thousands of people have been complaining.  Good corporations listen to their customers and prospective customers.  I wouldn’t be surprised to soon find a website that provides all the info you need to make an informed decision.

Wireless cost info is available

Well, well!  I take it back about telcom information being hard to find without calling.

I just found http://www.att.com/att/planner/.  It gives you most of the info you need to determine your monthly cost.  As usual, the taxes and other surcharges aren’t included.  Estimate that at about 10%; this will vary month-to-month and by location.

Teetering on the edge of the abyss

I apologize to my dozen readers for not submitting a column for last week.  I was still in Internet purgatory and could not give you any further information about my accommodation to our surprises with cordless access. I did have a couple ideas on politics, but I just couldn’t come up with more than 200 words for either of them.

Because you are reading this you know that our provider, Consumer Cellular, has let us have Wi-Fi access again.  But even that was iffy.  Our access was not turned on until I called around 9:00 on the morning of the first of September.  Then for some reason it was blocked again.  Another call.

I still have no idea why we were having run-away data in the middle of August.  Over a gigabyte in one six-hour period when I wasn’t even knowingly accessing the Web!

I did learn from a search of Apple Community Support that one can close all open apps.  My run-away problem could have been a run-away app that kept pinging the web.  Anyhow, to close open apps push the home button twice.  Miniatures of all of your open apps will appear from left to right.  Swipe up on each miniature and the app will be closed.  When you click on the app in the home screen, it will open again in the same state as when you closed it.

Don’t worry about closing your phone and message apps.  When a call or text message come in, your iPhone will open the necessary app.

I am carefully monitoring my usage both by checking usage with the settings app on my iPhone and with the Consumer Cellular website.  Already I have used 826 MB of my 4,096 MB limit, and we are not even five days into the month.

I am not going to be downloading podcasts or updating apps on my dime.  I used 135 MB updating three apps and 250 MB getting the latest episodes of four podcasts.  Since I download podcasts once a week that would be 1,000 MB a month.

I will definitely be updating these from coffee shops.

I use seven to twenty MB per session accessing accounts and paying bills.  I use about twenty MB reading newspapers.  These may be doable from home, but I will wait a few days before I resume accessing these from home.

So far today I have accessed the web from an Essentia Health cafeteria before exercising and from Whole Foods Co-op while my wife shopped.  I plan to send this from Mt. Royal Market when I’m done.

Let’s see, two coffees a day at two to three dollars each.  That would be $120 to $180 a month.  That is more than my savings from cutting the cord!  Well, I should be getting out of the house more often.  And we are not getting all those robocalls on our landline.

Robocalls remind me of diatribe letters that I get every so often.  The writer puts on the outside of the envelope in big, oversize, multi-colored capital letters some diatribe about Obama.  I don’t even bother reading all the outside message, the letter goes unopened into the recycling box.

Actually, I am apolitical about all of these dire consequence letters, surveys, whatever else some group sends out:  Back Obama!  Stop the Republicans!  Save the whales!  All of them go unopened into the recycle box. We get at least six a week.

Back to our regularly scheduled article.

Some glitches cause one to wonder what is going on.  I would access my bank account, enter my ID and password, and then get a big message about “System Error”.  But it didn’t happen all the time.  I think the first time might have coincided with Consumer Cellular turning my account off again on the first day of restoring service.  But it also happened yesterday, and today it worked fine.

One app I thought would eat up a lot of data is FaceTime.  Our son called my wife’s FaceTime account and they chatted for fifteen minutes or so.  The usage on her phone only went up by about 50 MB.  I think this might be because FaceTime has some excellent data compression.

Apropos data compression, I hope newspaper sites that play video ads automatically have good data compression.  I hope the same for those interesting videos in the New York Times Science section: like two octopuses fighting.

From some of the postings in the Apple Support Community, I did learn that one can increase the data limit with AT&T.  I believe it was well beyond the 4 GB we can get from Consumer Cellular.  I think also AT&T provides 4G service rather than 3G service.  I should look these up as well as LTE.  I believe the higher level of service gives better quality and faster speed.

Ah, speed!  Sometimes I watch a page come up in a blink of an eye, and sometimes I wonder if the progress bar is even moving.  Is it that a site has a large number of users, the site has some other problem, the network has a problem, or my computer has a problem?  Or all of the preceding?

Apropos AT&T, we received a card this week offering “$300 in credits when you switch to AT&T”.      You have to visit a store, shop at a website, or call an 800 number.  There is also a square to scan with a smartphone.

I read the square and found prices per month to buy individual iPhones, but it was unclear how much monthly service would cost and how much data would be available.  So much for the free market (buyers have all the information they need).

Also appears in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-09-09

Understandable cell phone service

When I wrote “Junk mail and the fine print”, I neglected to mention my cell phone provider, Consumer Cellular.  It is very upfront about the costs and the usage.  I get to tailor it to what I think I will need in the next month.  Plus, Consumer Cellular gives me a report when I approach a limit.

You can buy a variety of phones from Consumer Cellular, either by phone or in certain chains.  If you want a smartphone, the prices start at $80.  If you want higher end phones, they start at $xxx plus $25/month for so many months.  This is the one place that Consumer Cellular is a bit opaque, but it does give you the added information with a click of your mouse.

The basic service is $10/month plus 25¢/minute.  The next step is $15/month with 200 minutes.

Data starts at 20MB for $2.50 and tops out at 2.5GB for $30.

My plan is for January is $81.39 for 600 minutes of talk, 1GB of data, a wireless home base at our cabin, and $25/month for my iPhone 5s.  The hard part is calculating all the surcharges and taxes; for some reason these vary every month, no matter the provider.  If I had a paid iPhone and didn’t have the home base, my bill would be about $46/month.  Even less if I didn’t use my iPhone for a hotspot when we’re at our cabin.

Oh, yes, Consumer Cellular uses the AT&T network.  At our cabin I can get from 10Mbps to 23Mbps.

Bottom line: Consumer Cellular is a case in what the free market in phone service should be.  The buyers have all the information they need to make a decision.

Free market? What free market?

Certainly not in telecommunications!

All but one telecommunication company* that I know of violates two of the four requirements of a free market.

1) Many buyers and sellers (there are only a few sellers)
2) Buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market (we can give up our phones, but…)
3) Buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision (the sellers sure don’t want to give you complete pricing information)
4) All costs are in the sale, that is, no externalities (well, there are externalities like telephone wires, but few really care about their existence)

This little screed was triggered by my desire to have better internet speed than about 5Mbps (nominal 7).  In Duluth, I can get 23Mbps on my cell phone, but if I use it as a hotspot for my laptop the speed drops down to less than 2Mbps.  That means I can’t easily replace my DSL modem by using my cell phone.  My cell phone is with Consumer Cellular* which in turn uses AT&T.  My DSL modem and home phone are with CenturyLink.

AT&T does provide quite a menu to match what you think you need with what is available.  Plans can get pricy if you use several devices, say two tablets and two computers.

The best deal I could figure out was a mobile hotspot with 4GB/month of data at $50.  I can only guess on how much I use.  The mobile hotspot (Unite Pro) costs $200 but is $50 with a 2 year contract (“excluding other account charges”).  If could be sure that we would stay in that limit, it might be a good replacement for our DSL.  Dropping the land line entirely, we could add a home base for our telephone and use our Consumer Cellular account.  That would only be a $10/month charge.  But, how much more voice time would we use?

As for staying in the 4GB/month, I can’t be sure.  My wife spends a lot of time on Skype.

Also, I can’t be sure the AT&T hotspot would always get above 20Mbps.

Also, just how much are those “other account charges”?

On the other hand, CenturyLink is offering 100Mpbs in certain locations.  Try to find those locations!  I got a gibberish page.

To get more detailed information, I had to have an online account.  I won’t go through the hassle I had for that, but I need not have done that.  My wife already had an online account.

When I eventually got my account working, I found the best we can do is 12Mbps.  I can’t find out the price until I request the upgrade!!  So much for the free market.  New subscribers can get it for $19.95/month.  If we’re paying about $60/month for phone and internet (including “other account charges”).  If the cost is split, we’re paying more than new subscribers for our nominal 7Mbps!

Do I go for an AT&T hotspot or do I replace our nine-year-old CenturyLink modem?

*Consumer Cellular is about the only telecommunications company that I know that tells you all of your costs (except “other account charges”).  Not only that, they warn you if your usage might go over your selected usage limit.  And you can change your limits up or down at any time.  The only problem I have, other than the cell phone as hot spot is not as fast I thought it would be, is that the max data limit is 2.5GB/month.

Decisions, decisions!  Computers may be more powerful than pens and paper, but buying pens and paper was a lot easier.

Free market in telecommunications?

A free market does not exist in telecommnications.

Consider that a free market
– Has many buyers and sellers
– Both buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market
– Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision
– All costs are covered in the transaction, that is, there are no externalities

Let’s start with the last because it has some relevance to current politics.  What are the externalities of telecommunications?  There are the overhead lines, the underground cables, and the radio waves zipping through our bodies.  Most of us don’t seem to be concerned with the last; we’ve had radio, TV, and radar signals going through us for decades.  The overhead lines are not very aesthetic but we put up with them.  Similarly, the underground cables don’t seem to be a problem until one has to be dug up.

The externality that is raising the most discussion is the use of copper wires.  However, this need is being reduced by the use of fiber optics and wireless communications.

The telecommunications market certainly has more sellers than it used to, some in competition with one another for the buyers’ business.  Still, given that the buyers’ choices in any given area are limited to less than a dozen, the market is more of an oligopoly than a free market.

A few of us could go off all the nets and save a bundle of money.  But most of us depend on telecommunications for communicating with friends, family, and emergency assistance.  Few businesses would succeed without telephones and Internet access.  They need it for marketing, sales, and customer support.

All the information you need to make a buy decision?  Hah!  You really have to dig around to get a detailed quote on what a particular package of services will really cost you.  Ads are all over about Internet service for $19.95 for five years guaranteed.  But do you know how much you’ll pay for installation, service fees, and taxes?  Do you know how fast the service will be?  Do you know how much faster service will cost?  Even if you sign up for service, the customer service department can’t tell you how much service fees and taxes will be.  Gosh, if the billing computers have this information, why don’t the customer service computers have this information?

About the only company that is upfront about the costs of services is Consumer Cellular.  Its web page has the cost of the basic service, the cost of each upgrade, and you can do it all online.  Like all others, they don’t have a calculator for service fee and taxes.

As with much of my writing, this examination was started by my own recent experience.  I’ve wanted to have faster Internet speeds for some time, I wanted caller ID on our home phone because probably three-quarters of our incoming calls are junk calls, and I wanted better Internet access at our cabin.  I thought our best arrangement would be to drop CenturyLink for phone and Internet at home, get a Home Base phone from Consumer Cellular, and get a portable modem from AT&T.

Well, the AT&T modem didn’t deliver much speed at our house and so I returned it.  I use my Consumer Cellular iPhone to periodically check the AT&T speed.  That speed has improved but is not consistent; sometimes it is way better than the CenturyLink DSL speed, sometimes it is worse.

What if I upgrade my DSL speed?  How much does it cost?  Well, the “free market” CenturyLink won’t tell me on their website.  I am supposed to call for that info.   Once upon a time in the days when we had Qwest, the website offered three different speeds with prices.  When we got tired of 256kbps, we made a few clicks and we had faster speed in a day or two.

Finding the prices elsewhere is a bit of a chore.  Over half the hits are for CenturyLink web pages or for CenturyLink reseller pages.  I think on the second search page I found a site that gave detailed pricing (without taxes and fees, of course).  It would cost us “$5.00” more to go from a nominal 7Mbps to 12, “$15.00” to 20, and “$25.00” to 40.  My wife balked at even the upgrade to 12Mpbs because she thought things were fine.

As for the cost of getting caller ID, it is the same story.  One cannot get just caller ID, but has to get a package of many unneeded features.  Could I find the cost?  Of course not!  It’s a “free market” and companies are free to do as they please.

As I was reviewing the many pages that I had opened in my quest, I found one with a long list of entries complaining about CenturyLink service.  Of course, those who are satisfied don’t post on such sites, but the number of instances of overbilling, not sending any statement, having a collection agency demand payment, of undelivered service, of repeated calls for non-functioning or poorly function service, and on and on.  Do I even want to make even a small change in my service?

My final set of changes for telecommunications was to have my Consumer Cellular iPhone become a hotspot (no charge, done in about 15 minutes) and upgrade to the max of 2GB of traffic.  That should allow us to use our iPads at the cabin to read the newspapers.  Or even write this column at our cabin and send it before the deadline.  When it gets warm enough for my wife to want to go there again.

Why do corporations keep proving their inefficiency?

After the stellar, personal service I received from Mike at the Duluth AT&T store, AT&T customer support gave incomplete and insufficient service.

I received a bill in the mail today for $88.93.  As I had cancelled the service within the 14-day return window, I wanted to check if I could get a revised quote or if I would get a refund in the next billing cycle.

I called the 800 number on the bill and after the usual automated rigamarole, I reached a tired sounding human being.  After asking for the last four digits of my Social Security number (already entered as part of the rigamarole) she heard me out.

She then transferred me to another department.  More rigamarole including the cell-phone number I already entered and the last four digits of my Social Security number!!!  Then I heard, "This number is no longer in service."  So much for AT&T service!

On top of that, in the first rigamarole, an automated voice gave a dollar or so less balance due and a one day earlier due date!

I tried going to att.com but didn't have any better luck.  It wouldn't let me login or register.  After all the combinations I could think of for userID and password I tried with the phone number to retrieve them.  It wouldn't give them to me.  It gave me a few other paths to try, but it wouldn't let me complete any of them.

I think I'll just post this and then print out a copy for Mike as well as a copy of the other blog entry.

Maybe I should also send copies to my members of Congress as a comparison to complaints about the Affordable Care Act.

In the cellphone WiFi desert

I was hoping "to cut the cord" and go completely cellular with telephone and internet.

With some false assumptions, I thought we could get equivalent service by getting another Consumer Cellular Home Phone Base to replace our Duluth telephone line and a wireless hot spot to replace the DSL service.  My back of the envelope calculation showed the monthly cost would be about equivalent.

Another Home Phone Base would cost us about $10/month and all calls would be charged to my wife's cell phone account.  Since we rarely use all our minutes, we wouldn't have any other extra costs.

A quick search of the web for wifi hot spots came up with the AT&T Unite which would cost about $50 per month.  Since we pay about $60 per month for our phone and DSL service, this looked like a break-even deal.  Since the hot spot was portable, we would have the bonus of using it at our cabin.  The deal-maker was that one commenter said he often got 19Mbps with his Unite.  Hot diggedy dog!  Greased lightning.  A lot better than zero Mbps at our cabin and around 6Mbps at our house.

So, on Tuesday off I went to the local AT&T store to buy one.  A friendly representative met me at the door and answered all my questions.  He showed my the Unite which is about the size of a cell phone.  When I told him that I had read that it was capable of 19Mbps he replied that some people even got 25Mbps.

I went through all the rigamarole of filling out a contract, but then got ticker shock.  With all the taxes and fees the monthly cost for 5 gigabytes would be $63!!  Oh, well, maybe it will be worth it to have access at the cabin and having three times the speed I now have.

The contract did include a 14-day return policy.

I brought the hot spot home, unpacked it, read the instructions, assembled it (insert battery and put on back cover), and turned it on.  I set my laptop to access it and was surprised that it seemed slow.  I ran an Ookla speed test on my MacBook and found it was doing less than 4Mbps compared to over 4Mbps with the DSL modem.  I ran similar tests with my iPhone and my wife's iMac.  I moved the Unite close to windows and received even slower speeds.  The only upside was that upload speeds with the Unite were faster than with DSL.

I also found that the megabytes were also adding up, even when I did nothing.  After a half-afternoon of use, I had used over 220 megabytes.  With both of us online we would easily exceed 5 gigabytes in a month; that could add $10-20/month to our bill.

I reluctantly repacked the unit and took it back to the AT&T store yesterday.  Surprise, the same friendly representative met me at the door again.

He was sympathetic to my problem, but he wanted to double-check.  When he used the hotspot with his iPhone, he was getting around 20Mbps!  He checked the coverage map and found a tower within three blocks of our house.  Oops!  It won't become active until December.  So, he took our unit back and waived the restocking fee.

We said we would periodically check with my wife's Consumer Cellular phone (AT&T network).

When we got home, I downloaded Ookla to my wife's cellphone.  Test runs gave less than 3Mpbs!  Even when I pointed the phone at the nearby tower!  Oops!  I was still using our DSL modem!  I turned WiFi off on my wife's cell phone and tried again.  The ping was slower than through DSL, but the download never even began!  It stayed on 0.00 until I got a message about connection error.  We are in the desert compared to up on the hill in the mall area.

We'll keep checking the local tower.  If and when service improves to about 20Mps, we'll reconsider cutting the cord.

Note: This article was corrected 2013-10-24 to state that the first speed test with my wife's cellphone was using our DSL modem and that the test failed on the AT&T network.

Helpless help desks revisited

Well, for the fourth time this year I've asked for help from a major corporation and for the fourth time I've given them a solution.

The first time was when our DSL from CenturyLink was squirrelly.  It would go on and off.  The first person I spoke with diddled with some settings from her computer and our speed was up again.  The problem returned.  On the next few calls, the help desk insisted that I should get a new modem.  I did not because I was sure the problem was storm related and in CenturyLink's lines.  We still have the old modem and we are getting around 6Mbps on our nominal 7Mbps service.  See "Efficiency (or inefficiency) - generalizations do not apply".  CenturyLink apparently repaired the lines that I insisted were the problem.  Or we haven't had many really windy storms since then.

The second time was when the keyboard locked up on my MacBook Pro.  It was still on warranty from Best Buy and so I took it to the Geek Squad.  They kept if for a day or two and could find nothing wrong.  It wasn't until I had it at home for a day or two that I discovered that it was Microsoft Outlook, which Geek Squad had closed, causing the problem.  My database probably had gotten too big and Outlook had an error that was writing outside its area.  I compacted the database and the problem went away.  See "Computer withdrawal symptoms".

The third time was when the Westinghouse solar shed light would not turn on again after I turned it off.  See "Simple questions don't get simple answers from corporate bureaucracies".  The light is working fine after I put in newer batteries.

The fourth time was when I found out that our improper time on our cabin answering machine was because I needed a firmware update.  None of the friendly folks at Consumer Cellular seemed to understand that the AT&T network was resetting the time.  I found this out when I read the answering machine instructions and learned that telephone networks send the time with caller-ID information.  When we used a land-line we didn't have caller-ID.  Caller-ID is standard with cell phone service.  I found that I needed a firmware update from a search of AT&Ts support forums.  One user responded to another last month with the solution.  I sent email back to Consumer Cellular about this.  I wrote that I was tempted to send them an invoice for two hours of Level 2 support work.

I don't expect to have a response from Consumer Cellular until Monday.  Meanwhile, I searched the AT&T website for instructions on getting the firmware update.  Nada!  First, it gave me over 3,000 hits where the first two pages didn't have anything relevant.  I searched on the web for the model number and found that the original manufacturer has instructions for upgrading the firmware to the latest level, for those with a Windows computer!  I did another peek at the AT&T site and found a page for the "Wireless Home Phone".  It had no information at all on updating the firmware!

There are some economists (and many non-economists) who say that the only objective of a corporation should be to provide shareholder value.  But to provide shareholder value doesn't a corporation need to provide customer value?  At some point a captive customer base may burst their shackles and go elsewhere.

Helpless help desks

I mean helpless in two senses: they often don't help the customers and they often have no influence on the software or other products.

This summer I bought a Westinghouse solar shed light for the outhouse at our cabin.  It's great when stepping into the outhouse from bright sunlight.

I think at some point I forgot to turn the light off and the batteries were drained.  I bought new batteries and the light was working OK.  But wait a minute.  The solar panel charges the rechargeable batteries and I should be able to use the original batteries again.

That seemed to work, but if the light was turned off and then turned on again just a little bit later, the light wouldn't come on, even though it had been bright when turned on.

I emailed the address on the instructions about this problem.  Instead of agreement with my analysis or another suggestion, the responder wanted date of purchase, model number (which I thought I had provided), my name and address, an emailed copy of the receipt, my name and address, and I forget what else.

I replied forget it, I'll try the new batteries again.

I was right!  The light works much better with the new batteries.

Why didn't Westinghouse International Development Corporation train its people to have a set of helpful answers?

We replaced the landline at our cabin with an AT&T Home Base provided by Consumer Cellular, cutting our phone bill to one-third what it was with Frontier.  It works fine, but the time on our answering machine always seemed to be an hour later than the actual time.  It was EDT rather than CDT.  When we turned on the power and I reset the time, the "spoken" time was given to me as the CDT I set.

I tried resetting the answering machine to have the incorrect minutes.  Later on the minutes would be correct but the hour would be one hour off!!

I emailed the friendly folks at Consumer Cellular.  They suggested that it was the answering machine and I should reach out to the manufacturer.  One person also called me; she was sure that the network didn't set the time.  I thanked her and said I would make some tests the next time I was at the cabin.

Today I was at the cabin.  When I turned on the power, I did not reset the answering machine clock as I normally do.  When the handset had recharged enough to read the screen, the time was a few minutes after midnight; that is, it was the number of minutes since I had turned the power on.

I called the cabin phone with a cell phone.  I don't remember if I answered the cabin phone or not.  However, when I looked at the time on the handset it was the correct time plus one hour!!!  In other words, the network is setting the time, albeit incorrectly.

Since the cell phone is a smart phone, I assume it's time is being set by the Internet.  It's time is CDT.

As most people do not turn their answering machines and Home Bases off very often, I'm not too surprised that Consumer Cellular has not heard much about this problem.  I wonder if any of the owners have checked what the time stamp is on left messages.

I am considering sending these companies an invoice for my consulting fees.  I probably won't find a round tuit to do so, but thinking about it does give me a chuckle.  Oh, yeah!  I also fixed a problem with my Mac that The Geek Squad couldn't find.  See "Computer withdrawal symptoms".