So, I have this 2-line AT&T phone (very fancy). The User Manual is 158 pages, so obviously I can never work up the courage to even open it. However, the wireless handset stopped working – maybe about a year ago – so I thought maybe I could talk to somebody at AT&T on how to get it to work again; yes, I know, a nutty thought.
I googled AT&T and found myself lost in pages and pages. When I finally found a “customer service“ phone number, it requested I key in my AT&T phone number and when it discovered I was not an AT&T phone service customer, it wanted nothing more to do with me.
At these times, my solution is always to offer to buy something as you can nearly always be put through to a real person who will talk to you and then ask them the questions the computer refused to answer. So, I offered to buy a complete AT&T system for my very large corporation – no deal – the computer was not fooled, it still wanted my AT&T phone number.
Then I remembered in the back of my 158 page manual there was a “warranty service number.” Ahhh, saved in my anxiety I forgot the “one” (how many life times have been consumed in redialing the one). At last, the phone rang and Joss in the Philippines opened a line to me (it was 4.30 AM for him). What a sense of relief! What euphoria I experienced talking to real person whose job, whose mission was to get my handset to work once again.
“Yes, Mr. Capsis I will be glad to help you – what is the model number?” I read it to him with a quickening heart and in perhaps five minutes, my handset had come back to life – oh joy.”
With elated success I thought I could get Joss to help me with a second older model, the handset of which had also succumbed to technical maladies of unknown origin.
“What is the model number?” Joss requested again. I read off the numbers and Joss replied, “We no longer support that model.”
“What Joss – I don’t understand – did you take all the manuals out back and make a big bonfire? What do you mean you no longer support it?”
At 4.30 in the morning, Joss had problems seeing the humor, but I told him to visit www.westviewnews.org around July 3rd to see this Briefly Noted item.
As I hung up I thought aged people, like obsolete telephones, “are no longer supported.”
