Offers just for you?

Because I have signed on with  the AARP Advantage program, I am bombarded with email with titles like the above (without the question mark).

But if these offers are just for me, why do they contain offers from companies that I already use?  In this case Consumer Cellular, a cell phone service we use.

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.

Corporations are inefficient too

Many so-called conservatives claim that governments are inefficient and corporations are efficient.  There is overwhelming evidence that both forms can be efficient and both forms can be inefficient.

As a prime example of how corporations can be life-threatening see “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers”, New York Times, 2016-06-25, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-you-dial-911-and-wall-street-answers.html.

Some corporations are run for the long term; some are run for the short term.  And both can make big mistakes.

Many of us love and rely on our Apple products.  But Apple can screw up big time and take a long time to correct the problem.  My wife’s iPhone 5C stopped charging and we still have six payments left.  When I checked Apple Support for “iPhone not charging", there were 28,136 results!

Two solutions were offered.  One was to hold the home button and the sleep button at the same time.  This did not work for any of the posters.  The other was to take the phone to an Apple Store.  For us, that is a two-and-a-half hour drive away.

We could mail it back to Consumer Cellular.  We do have AppleCare+ on the phone, but I don’t know how long that is good for.  We don’t know if we will have a new phone in a couple of days or a couple of weeks.

Considering how much smart phones become of people’s live, it is not very efficient or customer-friendly that Apple has not found a permanent solution yet.

But a non-functioning phone is generally a nuisance, not life threatening.  Think of the fatal failures of automobiles.  Takata is constantly in the news because of faulty air bags.  On a less life-threatening level, Volkswagen has been called to task because its emissions are far higher than they claimed.

Also think of all the food recalls there have been over the last few months.  Some are caught by the company and consumers are warned.  Others have to be warned by governments.

Ironically, those who use Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as a justification for “free enterprise” ignore his “This order of men is not to be trusted…”  This order of men is those who live by profit.

The “bottom line” is really what are the ethics and dedication of the people in government or corporations.  Angels and devils are in both.

The Blamer Games

Sometime last year I switched from Republic Bank to Pioneer National Bank.  I could not access Republic Bank from my cell phone using cellular data.  I could access my account if I went to a coffee shop and used wi-fi.

Republic Bank and Consumer Cellular (my cellular) provider each absolved themselves of any problem.  Republic Bank said that Consumer Cellular was changing its IP address.  Consumer Cellular said they were not.

I could access my wife’s accounts at Pioneer National Bank without a problem.  So, I switched my account to Pioneer also.

Now this problem has raised its ugly head again.  I tried making a estimated tax payment to the State of Minnesota.  It would not open any page where I was to provide information, whether I wanted to pay online or just request a form to pay by mail.  It said I had cookies turned off.  This happened with both FireFox and Safari.  With Safari it happened both with my MacBook Air and with my iPhone.

As far as I could see, in both FireFox and Safari I did not have cookies turned off.  In fact, in one of these browsers I had a long list of cookies.

I went to Perk Place and bingo, everything worked.  Same laptop.  I have a receipt in my email.

Wanna bet that somebody will blame the problem on my Mac.  As I gaze around the coffee shop, I see over a dozen Mac laptops and only on or two other laptops.  I think these providers better get with the program.

I have heard this same thing from the Duluth News Tribune, a problem with Macs.  I can’t even access the Olive edition of the DNT.  Olive is the name of the software that provides a facsimile of the printed edition and allows expanding any article for easier reading.  However, I access the Olive edition of the Star Tribune without problem.  In fact, the Strib has even fixed the annoying problem of inconsistent expansion of the comics.

This whole mess would be comical if it weren’t so time-consuming and frustrating.

More on erratic iPhone cellular setting

Follow-up to http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/01/erratic-cellular-data-settings.html.

I spent an hour or more pouring over postings in the Apple User Community looking for some solution to my long wait for cellular toggles to be activated in my iPhone.  I finally found a link a user made to T-Mobile.

Quite simply a soft reset works.  For how long, I know not.

A soft reset is to hold the on-off button and the home button until the screen goes blank and the Apple logo is shown again.

Why didn’t Apple offer this advice?

Erratic cellular data settings

If you feel lonely and ignored when nobody seems to have a solution when your software acts erratically.  Take heart!  It happens to novices and gurus alike.  You are not a "dummy".  It just takes a lot of time to get all the necessary information to pinpoint the problem. 

I sent the following to Consumer Cellular after an abrupt disappearance of a long-standing annoying problem.

To avoid using up cellular data I turn cellular data on and off on my iPhone 5s.  With iOS 9 it became a nuisance because the settings would not change quickly, often it could take two minutes.  This doesn’t happen on my wife’s iPhone 5c with iOS 8.

I thought the problem could be iOS 9.1.  The problem did go away when I installed iOS 9.2.  Then the problem came back.

Yesterday, we changed our data and voice plans, splitting our account into two accounts.

Today, I can turn cellular data on and off quickly.  No change in iOS.  No change in other settings.

Could it be something Consumer Cellular or AT&T is doing?

This also makes me wonder it I changed my bank prematurely.  Would
Consumer Cellular now let Republic Banks software operate smoothly?  Nope, it still gives system error after I enter my password.

Anybody in CC have the time to really look into this?  Have any other users reported a similar problem.

Note added 2016-01-18:
For one solution, see http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/01/more-on-erratic-iphone-cellular-setting.html.

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

Clawing out of the Abyss

As of this writing, we are into week two without cellular access on our iPhones (See “Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss” in last week’s Reader).

I think the biggest thing I miss is reading the Duluth News Tribune, Star Tribune, and the New York Times at breakfast and lunch.  To check email, statements, and other important and unimportant information, we have to go to the library or coffee shops.  I’m drinking a lot more coffee than I normally do.

The easiest is to walk to Chester Creek Café at the corner.  But we don’t want to take up a table when there are many lunch or dinner customers.

Perk Place is a quiet place, but for some reason I could not log on to their server.  Another Mac user had been successful.  I wonder if he was using a newer operating system.  A staff member did get me signed on using the coffee shop account.

Once upon a time I would walk to Bixby’s and other shops at Mt. Royal, but every year the hill up Woodland Avenue seems to get steeper, especially with a backpack with a computer.  And so I wimp out and drive.

The Mount Royal Library may or may not be crowded.  When I went on Thursday it wasn’t, but it did take a bit of effort to log in.  I was successful with my iPhone and iPad, but I never managed to click all the right buttons for my laptop.

A diversion at the library was looking for a follow-on book after viewing “The Young Victoria”.  The movie had a lot of follow-on summary information.  I wanted to know more about her reign and her successors.  I used my iPhone to sign on to the catalog and select some books.  Having the call numbers of the desired titles on my iPhone sure beat copying those numbers onto paper from the library computers.

Caribou at Mount Royal Market is spacious and quiet.  It’s biggest drawback is that there are no power outlets at the tables.

And at the cabin we are completely disconnected from the web.  At least, we can still use our phones.

So, I have to carefully plan all my work before hand.  I am writing this at home and will go to one of the coffee shops to email it to the Reader.  I have to write most of my email beforehand.  I have to plan ahead what web sites to visit.

One of those plan-ahead sites was the Apple Support Community.  While at a coffee shop I downloaded thirteen threads about excessive data usage.  It’s nice to know that I am not alone with this problem.  Some useful advice, some blaming the user, but no really clear cut advice.

I do know first hand that solving computer problems can be a long, arduous project.  Relevant information comes in dribbles from the customer and lots of digging by programmers.  I was the lead investigator of frequent crashes of a Univac 1108 in Sweden.  Many of the memory dumps showed a particular program was active.  I badgered to customer into giving me a copy of the program.  I took the copy to another site and the program crashed because it was putting data outside of its assigned space.  To make the story short, the problem was they were using an outdated library and that their computer had a memory protection failure.  I think it took three months from the first alarm to final resolution.  And those computers were a lot simpler than what we carry in our pockets now!

Once upon a time it was said that Mac owners never used a manual.  I did look up a few things now and then, mostly just what keys did I need to push to get å, ä, é, î, ö, and other western European characters.  The Mac’s were described as WIMPs: Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pictures.  Just about everything you needed to know was obvious from one of these.

Even then, many users came up with seemingly intractable problems.  Apple’s answer was to encourage user groups.  Unfortunately, often there was nobody at a meeting who had an answer.  I remember somebody asking why they couldn’t make their “Whiz Bang” printer work on a Mac.  The leader would ask if anybody had a solution and look around the room.  Not a hand went up.  This happened over and over again.

The human interface, the computing power, and the range of software has improved exponentially in the last 31 years (remember the 1984 Apple ad).  We can do many tasks quickly and easily just by poking the screen or dragging a finger over it.  But when things go wrong!  Hoo boy!

I think I caused my problem with an inadvertent reset.  My choices include going back to the last iCloud backup, but would that be done before the coffee shop closed?  By reading the manual, I found that I can double-click the home button, swipe up on the screen, and then slide through all the open apps.  I can close an app by sliding its image up.  This doesn’t remove the app from my iPhone, it just stops it from doing any harm.

Once September rolls around, we’ll have the data part of our Consumer Cellular contract restored.  I think the closing apps plan is my best alternative.  I’ll start with only keeping the supposedly harmless apps open: Weather, Mail, Calendar, and a few other standards.  Then I’ll have to wait until all the data is in for that six-hour period.  If usage seems normal, I’ll keep a few more apps open.  Either I’ll eventually find the run-away app or that the conditions are such that the app is now behaving.

Meanwhile, I’ll be drinking lots of coffee.  I thought of having beer instead, but it will be just my luck to knock over the glass…

Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/26/5837_clawing_out_of_the_abyss.

Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss

We received so many unsolicited calls on our land line that we stopped picking up the phone until we knew who the caller was.  Too often, no message was left.

I received almost only junk email on my cpinternet account through our CenturyLink account.  Besides offers of garage door openers and of sex, I received messages in Japanese and Turkish.  Very rarely did an old contact use this account.

Besides, our nominal 7Mbps speed was often under 4Mbps.  We were eligible for an upgrade to 12Mbps, but we had to call an 800 number to find the details.  Once upon a time, Qwest, the predecessor to CenturyLink would state on its website how much 256Kbps, 512Kbps, and 1Mbps would cost, exclusive of taxes and fees.

A digression on telecommunication taxes and fees: the telecommunication companies (telcos) can’t give these accurately because the vary widely from locale to locale and narrowly from month to month.

We also had an iPhone 4s through Virgin Mobile (VM) because we got a deal a few years ago from Best Buy.

Along the way, we started using cell phones through Consumer Cellular: you can’t miss their ads, especially if you are an AARP member.  Consumer Cellular (CC) stated on its website the exact cost of each service and its level that you requested.  You could change these at any time, either up or down.  I eventually bought an iPhone 5s from CC.  They piggy back on the AT&T network (at 3G rather than 4G).  Not only could I use the iPhone in Brimson, but I could use the phone as a hotspot for my iPad or MacBook.

With all of these providers, our total monthly payments seemed to be getting out of hand.  I did a small spreadsheet to compare using only CC instead of multiple providers.  If we bought another CC iPhone, our costs would drop about a thousand dollars per year (not including monthly payments for new phone.  Even then, we would still save hundreds of dollars a year.

One problem was our wireless printer.  How would we access it without our DSL modem?  I pulled the phone cord from the modem and found that the printer still worked.  The DSL modem was our router, even if it was not connected to the phone system.

We ordered a new CC iPhone 5c, and when it arrived, we set it up for my wife’s use.  We could also use it as a hotspot, and so she wouldn’t have to depend on my iPhone if I was elsewhere.  Also, because it worked in Brimson, we could use our phones as walkie-talkies.  We would have much better reception, and nobody else would be listening to our calls.

Except, we couldn’t get her phone to work because we couldn’t transfer the VM number without an account number.  None of our VM bills had an account number, only the phone number.  We had to call VM, and of course, the first person we talked to couldn’t do it.  We were switched to someone who suggested we might get a better deal.  Unmentioned was the cost.  After I don’t know how many minutes, we were told our account number.  Then we called CC with it and they activated my wife’s iPhone.  We didn’t have this hassle when we dropped our land line at our cabin and put it on a Home Base wireless system.

Next step was to call CenturyLink to cancel our phone and DSL.  Again, we were routed to someone who tried selling us faster service.  We declined, and sometime in the next day or two the phone no longer worked, but the modem still accessed the network.

Ah yes, we had separate ISP, CPinternet, from the bad old days when we had only 56Kbps dial-up (56 Kilo bits per second for those too young to remember dial-up).  When we started with QWest at 256Kbps we kept CPInternet as our provider.  CPInternet really had great customer service, too.  Then CPInternet was bought by Hickory Tech of Mankato.  Then Hickory Tech bought Enventis and assumed its name.  Still great customer service.  Then Consolidated Communications of somewhere bought Enventis.  I didn’t have much need to call customer service, until we wanted to cancel our ISP connection.  My first attempt got the automatic wait message of something like “Enventis is now Consolidated Communications”.  On the ninth reiteration of this, I hung up, and tried another time.

Then new problems started, some of them my own doing.

The printer works from my wife’s iMac, but not my MacBook, the one I tested printing from.

I attempted to reset my wife’s old iPhone to erase all our data before recycling it.  It needed the password for her Apple ID.  We thought we knew it, but all the variants we tried were rejected.  I spent over a half-hour with Apple Support trying to resolve it.  Terry cheerfully assured me that he had seen many problems like this. Unfortunately, he had to admit defeat and suggested we take it to a Genius Bar in an Apple Store.

In all my attempts to reset her phone, I picked up my iPhone and clicked reset.  Ah! My Apple ID.  My password worked.  Dummy!  You just reset your own iPhone!

I’m running out of space, but I’ll give the short story on the next problem.  We used up our quota of CC data and were automatically cut off.  I finally figured out that my iPhone was still trying to load the one program that was no longer available from iTunes, over and over and …!

Iiee-
ee-
ee-…

This also was printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-08-20 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/20/5807_cutting_the_cord_and_falling_into_the_abyss.

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.

Summer Idyll or Sweat Farm

Here I sit in the screen “house” about noon at our cabin after hauling some chips and cut brush. The sky is blue, the trees are green, the wind is blowing through the trees, and birds are chirping. Do I even want to move?

The weather forecast was for 30% chance of thunderstorms, but I am going by my own weather “advisory”.  If bad weather is predicted, there is often a bigger chance that the weather will be just fine.  This is one of those “just fine” days.

We are here on a too infrequent four-day weekend.  Even though it is the weekend of the Fourth of July, there are surprisingly few neighbors around.  The only thing we heard from neighbors who often shoot off fireworks was some late evening hooting.  Maybe they were watching a soccer match on TV.  Somebody was shooting yesterday in the woods, hopefully not on our land.  The only person who I think might have had access to that area is already gone.

“Don’t make it a sweat farm” was from Bruce Berggren, a DNR forester, who gave us a stewardship plan in the early Nineties.  I don’t remember if we had more than a dome tent, a picnic table, and a tarp then.  We weren’t doing more than cutting brush to expand our “living area” and to make room for planting trees.

Now we have a “yard” that is three times as big as our yard in Duluth and three loops of trails with some side paths.  But, because we found much to occupy ourselves in Duluth, two of the loops and the side paths have grown over.  On the other hand, the “yard” seems to be getting bigger.

Our first major “expansion” was to put cots in our dome tent.  Oh!  We had so much more room. We could put our packs and coolers under the cots.

Our first building was an 8x8 shed that I built probably within our second year here.  We moved our cots into it.  Oh! We had so much room.  We could even dress standing up. We could even put a propane heater in it and stay overnight in the winter.  With each stay, it seemed more and more space was taken up with tools.

A couple years later, I built a cabin with some assistance from others.  We decided that a nominal 12x16 should be sufficient for our needs until we built a house here.   When I first put in a cot, Oh! We had so much room.  Over the years, we have added more and more.  Before the second winter we had a wood stove.  We added a foldout couch and a card table.  We used an Ikea counter for our “kitchen” counter.  I had used it for my darkroom when we lived in Sweden.  I cut a hole in it for a sink which drains into a bucket on the floor.  We added a microwave and a mini-refrigerator.  I forgot to mention that we had electricity and telephone before I put the wallboard up.  We stuck a portable toilet in one corner.

At some point, I built an outhouse.  We can even use it in the winter in “comfort” with a small heater screwed onto a 20-lb propane tank.  Last year I installed a solar shed light.

The same year we moved to Duluth we had a well dug.  It’s only twenty feet deep, but the water was so nice to have.  Then came the drought years and we were back to hauling water.

We built an 8x12 sauna with the help of some friends.  A battery and a solar panel provide lighting.

Other buildings include a ramshackle woodshed built out of scrap lumber and a metal shed where we store our power equipment.  I wish I hadn’t been stingy on the cost.  I’m constantly bumping my head on the low ceiling.

A recent plus is that we have better internet service.  From 25Kbps (that’s right, K not M) with a landline to sometimes 10Mbps with cellular.  As this is off my cellphone contract with Consumer Cellular, my guess is that I’m paying about a third for phone and internet at the cabin than I was for the landline.

One big project I would like to do is get rid of all the “Toimi sand”.  Toimi is the neighboring township and the sand grains are from fist-size to boulders to climb onto.  This area is also called Kivi Country, kivi being Finnish for stone.  I would really like to get rid of many of them because those that stick up only an inch or two are lawnmower busters.  Even bigger ones make it hard to pull a cart over.

Two years ago I really hurt one shoulder using a ten-pound hammer on a 4x3x2 boulder to no avail other than chips flying all over.  I wonder if a small electric jackhammer would work.  Probably I couldn’t take the strain.

Well, I better wrap this up.  It looks like 30% chance of thunderstorms getting closer.  There are more clouds, some even dark, in the sky and the wind is getting stronger.  I hope I can cut the grass on at least one short path.  Oh well, if the rain comes, I still have many books to read and last week’s Reader Weekly.

Mel did get more than one path cut, edited this, and sent it.  The rain still hadn’t come.

This was also published in the 2014-07-10 issue of the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/10/3701_summer_idyll_or_sweat_farm.

Rural broadband – where’s the truth?

I thought about a month ago I saw a pro and con about rural broadband in the Duluth News Tribune.  Those two opinions were the catalyst for this article.  But I can’t find them!

As I remember them, one was gung ho that rural areas are underserved by broadband access, and the other was that government should not be involved in providing a frill.  The latter indicated people should move into town if they need Internet access.

Knowing that my dial-up speed in Brimson had been 25kbps, almost unusable for today’s Internet, I was sympathetic to the first view.  As for government involvement, there has been much government activity to insure better access to many modern conveniences now considered necessities.

Are you old enough to remember RFD as part of addresses?  RFD stands for rural free delivery.  Instead of going to a post office for their mail, rural residents could get their mail at the end of their driveway.

Few of us can remember REA, the Rural Electrification Act or Administration.  It both provided jobs for unemployed electricians and it made life more comfortable for rural residents.  This was financed in part by government loans.

Do you remember all the rural gravel roads?  My dad bought property outside Cleveland, probably about 1941.  When my pregnant wife and I visited him in 1962 the last two roads were still gravel.  By the time both our kids were in school, all the nearby roads were paved with asphalt.

On our first visit to Brimson in 1987, many of the roads were gravel.  Over the years many of them have been upgraded to asphalt.  Only the road to our cabin is gravel.

To us as weekend residents, electricity, telephone, and good roads are a plus.  To people who live there, these are a necessity.

And to us who don’t live there, the people that do are a necessity.  Think of all the benefits that we wouldn’t have if some people didn’t live in the country.

Where would our food come from?  Would we be able to grow all our food in our backyards or on our apartment rooftops?

Where would our wood products come from?  Do you think loggers are going to commute to cut trees?

If we go out in the country to hunt, fish, or just loaf, who is going to provide the food and beverages we forgot to bring.  Shall the store owners commute?

What if our cabins catch fire or we have a medical emergency?  Should the volunteer firefighters and first responders commute to help us?  Response time is much better if these people live within a few miles of the fire hall.

Because these people chose to live in rural areas, should they be deprived of good roads, postal service, electricity, and Internet?  How would you like to communicate with the fishing resort you plan to visit?  Internet or carrier pigeon?

Getting back to my search for articles and letters.

As I was typing this in Duluth, I was waiting for my iPad to open up the full-page version of the Duluth News Tribune.  The little gear spun and spun and…  This is “high-speed” Internet in the city?  I turned the iPad off and on and voila!  I wanted to check back issues for the articles I sought.  Unfortunately, the full pages available only went back to March 31.  What I sought had to be before that.

The Star Tribune full-page version was available back to March 15.  The first letter of interest, March 17, was from telecommunications executives complaining about, you guessed it, taxes.

The March 20 issue had an editorial “Grab opportunity for state broadband fund: Greater Minnesota’s future depends on high-speed Internet access”.  It gave examples of people who live outside the metro area and depend on internet access.  These people came to the capitol to “plead for help in improving Internet access”.  They wanted a chance “to survive economically in the 21st century.”

I did gasp a bit when the article stated that one of them couldn’t compete with 12Mbps.  He does have a signage business that will need to send lots of images.  But 12Mbps per second is something I dream about.

One of the resources I wanted to check was the final report of Minnesota’s High-Speed Broadband Task Force.  You can find it at http://www.ultra-high-speed-mn.org/.

Well, well, sitting at my computer in Duluth with a nominal 7Mbps download speed, I watched the download indicator practically stand still for the 3.8MB download.  I then emailed the file to myself to more easily read it on my iPad.  That too was very slow. According to an Ookla speedtest, I was only getting 0.53Mpbs upload and 2.60 download.

According to the Ookla net index, Japan has average speeds of 42.0 Mbps download and 29.3 upload, mobile is 11.7/4.9.  If you live in Tokyo, you can get a great deal – download speed on fiber of 100 Mbps at $30.47 (The Cost of Connectivity – NewAmerica.org).  For mobile it will cost you more for less: 40 Mbps for $33.97!  Oh, yes, Japanese internet is almost completely private with few government restrictions.

We are paying about $30 for our nominal 7Mbps!

At our cabin where we used to struggle with 25Kpbs, I can get 7 to 10 Mbps with my cell phone.  This weekend I used it as a hotspot and my wife and I each read newspapers with our iPads.  The cost per month?  For the phone and usage charges: $28.50 plus taxes etc.  This is with Consumer Cellular who gives me the cost of each service (except for taxes and fees).

Kyle Ackerman, owner of  Xtratyme Technologies, wrote that rural areas do have access; his article was in the Star Tribune about April 8.  You can find it and reader comments at http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/254447871.html.

Remember my column “Free Market in Telecommunications?”  Guess what? http://www.xtratyme.com/details.html#subscription does not give pricing!

This article is also posted at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/04/17/3236_rural_broadband_wheres_the_truth

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.

Today's round: corporations beat government on inefficiency

This morning I went to my medicare.gov to ask that I receive "Medicare & You" online rather than the big fat paper tome we never read.  I supplied all the information asked and was told I couldn't be found!  There was a help number I could have called, but I don't care to call for help because I never know how long I'll have to wait.

I downloaded the paid version of Evernote sometime ago, but iTunes never told me a download was in progress or completed.  It appears that the paid version is only a switch setting to enable more features.  I have the paid version working.  I sent questions about this to both Evernote and iTunes.  I was charged and then uncharged for it by Apple.  The iTunes representative keeps coming back with the same "I don't understand message", even after I answer that the question is settled.

I tried to set my iPhone up as a hotspot with Consumer Cellular.  My iPhone gives me the choice of calling Consumer Cellular via 611 or going to Consumer Cellular's website.  When I get there I can find nothing about setting up a hotspot.  I sent email and received a reply today.  Essentially it said I should call.

I was notified of a new iTunes version today.  After I downloaded it, many things no longer worked as before.  Apps are marked as having updates even when I have already updated them on my iPhone or iPad.  Podcasts are duplicated on my iPhone.  No longer can I sync a device just by having it on anywhere in the house.  I have to hook it up to my Mac with a USB cable.  I'm going to have to spend an hour or so in the Apple Support Community to find out what's going on.

Good news on the government side.  Several weeks ago I received a notice that my commercial driver's license would no longer be valid unless I had a physical exam before January 31.  Since I haven't driven any commercial vehicle in over 13 years, I decided to give it up.  I went to the County Service Office to have it replaced.  The latest number being served was 16 and I drew 19.  A guy who drew 18 groused about the wait!  I filled out a renewal application, watched as the clerks explained to their current customers various details, took pictures, and gave eye tests.  When my turn came, the friendly intern and her mentor explained the I did not need to reapply.  All I needed to do was sign an affidavit that I would not be driving a commercial vehicle.  No charge.  Smiles all around.

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.

Efficiency is not dependent on organizational form

I emailed the following to the Reader Weekly 2013-10-10.  They published it on 2013-10-17 as "People make mistakes!  All the time.  Everyday."  It is also available at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/10/17/2270_party_of_one-1.

Some people are using the glitches in the Affordable Care Act exchanges as proof that government is inefficient.  Duh, how often have you updated software on your devices with version x.0 and then within a week or two received a notice of the release of version x.0.1?

Government is run by people.  Corporations are run by people.  People make mistakes!  All the time.  Everyday.  In every way.  Government screws up.  Corporations screw up.

For examples of corporate screw-ups and non-response to customer complaints, take a look at the customer “support” message boards.  All the support comes from other customers who spent hours trying to figure out how a product really worked.  If they are lucky, other users mark their responses as helpful and they get “points”, whatever those are worth.

I’ve seen some issues go on for two or more years.

Let me give you a short summary of some customer service issues I’ve had this year.

I think it was late spring when we had several days of windy, rainy weather.  Our DSL service was erratic.  It would be slow then normal then nothing at all.  The DSL light on our modem would go out.  I called CenturyLink and spoke with a tech in Idaho.  She said that our service had been throttled back from the nominal 7Mbps to 3Mbps.  She did some resetting and things were better.

The bad weather continued and our DSL service became erratic again.  I made a call and sent some emails, but this time I was told that it was my modem and that I should buy a new modem.  I checked online for the current CenturyLink modem, and guess what!  One customer had left a message that he bought that new modem and was having the exact same problems as we were!  Two months before my search!

I didn’t buy a modem and a few weeks later our modem was doing just fine.  Our service now runs about 6Mbps.  Could it be that CenturyLink had some line problems that customer support was not told about?

I bought a solar light for the outhouse at our cabin.  It worked fine and then it would not turn on until it had been off for about an hour.  I sent email to the customer support and received back a request for my address, phone number, date of purchase, and a scanned copy of the receipt.  I said “Phooey” and figured out that I had drained the batteries by leaving the light on.  Replacing the batteries improved the performance.  It looks like the first line of customer support is only screeners who have no access to problems and solutions.  Now this dumb customer left the light on again and it wouldn’t turn on again.

We replaced our cabin landline with a wireless home phone base.  The answering machine now gave a time an hour later than the time of call.  Consumer Cellular replied it was my answering machine.  With a bit of web searching, I found out that the wireless home phone base is passing the wrong information and that a firmware upgrade fixes the problem.  The upgrade is available only from the original manufacturer and only can be installed with Windows software.  When I relayed this information back to Consumer Cellular, they replied they could not help me and implied it wasn’t even their responsibility!  This from a company that is rated highly in customer service.

The keyboard and keypad on my laptop would not respond.  I tried the various reset tricks from Apple support boards but none worked for long.  I took my laptop back to Best Buy where I bought it, but everything worked fine for the Geek Squad.  It worked fine for a while at home and then… “Dead” again.  I figured out that it was Microsoft Outlook that I always have on that was the problem.  The techs had closed all my apps before their tests.  I reorganized Outlook's database and the keyboard has been working fine since.  If only I could make the fingers hitting the keys work as well!

But we should also look on the bright side.  Corporations have done a great job of making our cars more reliable and comfortable.  If we take some reasonable precautions they start every time and get us where we want to go safely.  We have all kinds of extras that weren’t on my first car, a 1940 Chevy.  Turn signals, windshield washers, side view mirrors, power steering, power brakes, anti-skid, ABS, air-conditioning, and accurate speedometers.

Ah! Accurate speedometers!  I had a 1969 Fiat that said I was going 70mph when I was actually going 63.  I had a Ford Escort that said I was going 55mph when I was actually going 47 mph!  The Ford dealer blamed it on the tires and wouldn’t do anything about it.  I found it was a wide-spread problem; when I compensated for the error I passed many Ford Escorts driving well under the speed limit.

If the dealer was right about the problem, the tires would have to be about 15 percent smaller than “standard” to have that speed disparity.  For a tire that was about two feet in diameter, that would work out to over an inch of tread wear.  The grooves on a auto tire are not even that deep!  What was it that Adam Smith said?  “Those who live by profit deceive and oppress the public.”

In the favor of those who live by profit, our latest cars do much better on speedometer accuracy – 30 mph on the speedometer at 30 mph and 71 mph at 70 mph! Oh, and we have one domestic car and one foreign car.

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".

Efficiency (or inefficiency) - generalizations do not apply

This morning I called Consumer Cellular about replacing the landline at our cabin with a Wireless Home Phone Base.  Ezekiel answered before the automated message was done.  He took time to listen and he provided full information to all my questions.

Last week I called the local Sears store to check if they had the Phone Base in stock.  First, I got an automatic response about the purpose of my call.  Eventually I was asked what department I wanted.  I finally got a person; but that person was not in the store, he was who knows how far away.  He didn't think it was available, but before he checked, he wanted my first and last name!  What does my name have to do with my request for information?  I said this is taking too long and hung up.  Once upon a time, one got a store operator who pleasantly asked (generally) some variant of "How may I direct your call?"  She transferred you to that department, and if a clerk was not serving other customers, answered the phone and gave a simple yes, no, or "I'll check" answer.

This morning I also called Gopher State One Call http://www.gopherstateonecall.org, a non-profit that dispatches utilities to locate underground pipes and cables before an excavation.  We want to plant a tree close to a buried gas line.  I had to wait for several minutes to talk to Gabe, but he was thorough and friendly about getting all the information that he needed to dispatch someone.  He said it should be done within 48 hours.

This afternoon I looked out the front door and noticed a yellow line and a small yellow flag in our front yard.  Comfort Systems, our water and gas utility, had already marked the location of the buried pipe.  Comfort Systems is part of the City of Duluth's Public Works and Utilities Department.

On the other hand, after many weeks and many calls, our internet connection with CenturyLink is now stable and staying above 75% of the "up to 7Mbps" speed.  One of the round and round discussions I had was about getting a new modem.  We still are using our eight-year-old or so modem.  It seems something was done in our area that none of the customer service people were made privy to.  The customer service was all over the map as far as ability goes.  See "Round robin service robbin' my time".

I'm still waiting for a local store to respond to a question I emailed them a couple weeks ago.

Again, it is not the financial form of an organization, for-profit corporation, non-profit corporation, or government agency, that determines the level of customer service; it is the people and leadership of an organization that determines these.  If customer service is an organization's priority, revenue will follow.  If the bottom-line is an organization's priority, customer service will suffer.  Unfortunately, in the latter case, there are often not enough choices for customers to easily switch to another organization.