The Curse of Knowledge

"... You are not connected to the internet."

My Sunday started normal. I got up reasonably early to feed the animals. My asshole cat Percy had already thrown a temper tantrum in our bedroom scratching everything to catch our attention, because…. he clearly was starving. Like every morning. He also is a few pounds overweight, so I never understand his panic.

I went downstairs. Fed the animals. First the cats under careful supervision of the dog who always feels entitled to lick the cat bowls clean before I add the new food. Then the dog herself. I emptied the dishwasher. And then I made myself a coffee and one for my husband who strangely always takes longer to get ready in the morning.

A routine morning.

I sat down with my hot coffee to check emails on my phone… and nothing spectacular happened until my husband decided to also read up on news and he declared. “The internet is down.” Which is not really that unusual, because for the past few weeks we had a very spotty internet connection often being just painfully slow or out for a couple of minutes. I had by that point given up on contacting Xfinity, because they never really are as helpful as they should be and… it is so hard to get a real person to talk to. Typically, a restart of the modem would fix the problem, although often enough just temporarily.

But the internet was really down. And no matter how often I restarted the modem, it would not turn on. And since my actual cell phone has really spotty connection in my house, I rely heavily on wifi. My father was about to call and for that call I need also wifi, because the international cost for an overseas call are horrendous. And I simply have not made myself to buy an international plan when I can call for free over wifi. But to give you perspective. The phone bill (when wifi is out) can be around $60 for what feel like a very short talk (maybe 15min).

I by now know a few tricks on how to get a real person (or a better AI, who knows these days who you are actually talking to) on the line. So after a few clicks through the obvious robots I had the first Indian guy on the line. His name was Rakesh.

“Can you restart the modem?”

“I already did that. The problem is that I am not getting a signal to the house.”

“We need to restart the modem, anyways. It is offline.”

“My modem is not offline. It is not receiving a signal. The light is blinking.”

“I see it as offline here. Please restart and let me know when you are done.”

Of course the additional restart did not help. After 30min of chatting to Rakesh, he gave up. So I got a different technician on the line. This time a woman who was tremendously helpful. We went through nearly an hour of trying different signals (I think she said high frequency) to my modem with a final restart. It took forever waiting for these to complete with her telling me every few minutes that we made it through another 5% of progress and for me to please stay on the line.

And me constantly reminding her that my modem was still not visibly receiving a signal. And her telling me that it just needs a restart and was already quite old and I may have to upgrade (speak buy a new modem).

I started my chat at 9:30am. By the time this woman whose name I really wish I remembered gave up it was 12:30pm. I had missed an online yoga class by then. And had to let my father know I would not be able to talk. The technician offered me to pick up a new modem from the next xfinity store for free. And that my monthly bill would be reduced. I accepted. I thought it is worth a try and by that time I was really tired of every single Xfinity technician to blame my modem.

By 1pm I had arrived at the nearby store. The clerk handed me a box. The process took maybe 30 seconds after which he asked me to fill out a survey that would be sent to me the next day and that he really would appreciate a 10 star rating. “It is really important.”

By 1:30pm it became clear that the new modem was not magically receiving any signal either. Because where there is no signal there is none to be picked up.

Back to the chat.

By this time my cell service in my house was so bad that I dropped the chat a few times in a row having to start over from scratch with a new agent every single time. Why is it that the cell service is so bad these days? I remember that years ago I had good reception. Now we have three phones with three different providers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) and all suck.

“Did you restart the modem?”

“The modem is not even activated, yet. There is no signal.”

Nobody believed me and they offered a technician to come out.

On Wednesday.

I said this is way too late, we work from home and we cannot match with the poor cell service in the area. They told me that I could put myself on a waitlist to pull ahead the technician to come out. I just needed to text “waitlist” to a special number.

I tried.

But the first available waitlist time was Wednesday.

I had so many curse words in my head. Mostly newly invented. I do not know why I did not articulate any, but stayed with my standard phrase of the day. “It is not my modem, there is no signal. It is you guys. Something is wrong on your side.”

The last agent just dropped the chat. I did not care anymore. I decided to just accept my fate and to live without internet for a few days.

By 4pm I gave officially up.

By 9pm for jokes and giggles I checked the xfinity outage map. All over sudden — I swear I had checked frequently between 9am and 4pm with no such message — it said outage in my neighborhood. I screamed silently. And then laughed. By that time, my husband, son and I had decided to watch a blu-ray video and we were in the middle of “The Princess Bride”. This was next to “The Rescuers” the only movie I had on a blu-ray. We had a fun evening. All of us had forgotten how fun the movie was.

By 11pm wifi was restored.

I am now proud owner of a free modem and my monthly bill is reduced by a couple of bucks.

I will never get my Sunday back.

Oh, and I bought a bottle of wine called “The Curse of Knowledge”. Drinking it now.

Cheers.