Sunday, November 23, 2008

On a lighter note...

Yesterday, the text messaging on our cell phones wouldn't work. The phones weren't able to send texts to anyone. Beth called me to ask me about it so I knew it wasn't just my phone. Beth called the cell phone company and the recording told her it would be a 10 to 15 minute wait to speak with a representative. After waiting 20 minutes, she got disconnected. I sent an email to the company about the problem. She waited a bit and called again. This time, the recording said there was a known problem with texting and they expected it to be repaired in two hours.

I used to not report problems, knowing they were working on getting it fixed but then I discovered some companies will refund part of your money for loss of use, if the problem isn't easily fixed. However when Beth called back and told me of the second recording, I forgot all about having sent the email. Until I got the reply this morning. And it made me laugh.

It wasn't funny at first. It just told me the problem was a known problem and had been repaired. It was the next part that tickled me. It told me I could now use my text messaging but that I may need to power cycle my phone first. They thoughtfully included the directions for power cycling my phone:

"The steps to powercycle are as follows:
1. Turn the handset device off.
2. Remove the battery from the handset device for one minute.
3. Install the battery on the handset device.
4. Turn handset device on."

Yes, that's right. To power cycle your phone, you turn it off, take the battery out, put it back in and turn it back on. Did I actually need directions for that? Do they actually need to give it a name...power cycling? Life's hard enough without people making it even more complicated on purpose.

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