AT&T Customer Service - we're here to help!

I've been without internet service since last Wednesday (which is both a blessing and a curse!).

I use an air card to connect to the internet out here in the boonies.  DH and I have no telephone land-line; we only use cell service.  We have an AT&T cell tower less than 200 yards from our house that we were told was a 2G tower when we signed up with AT&T.

While the air card was initially faster than my dial-up service, it has slowed down significantly recently.  Because I hate to talk on the phone and my hearing loss makes understanding anyone with an accent difficult, DH has been trying to find out why service is slower by calling the helpful folks at AT&T.

It took three calls before he got to the right department (air card).  DH asked to speak to a tech that was well-versed in Mac computers as that is what I have at home.  (*Note that the air card was working just fine but slowly before all this started.)  The first thing the tech had DH do was uninstall the air card operating program.  He intended to have DH reinstall it to see if that helped connection speed.  (Also note that DH is a self-professed computer moron who is not at all familiar with my Mac computer and was not present when I initially got the air card up and running.)

Tech:  "Now sir, go to Applications and click on Global Connect."
DH:  "You just had me uninstall it and it's not there."
Tech:  "Okay, just insert your air card and the software should load automatically.  What OS version are you using?"
DH:  "Snow Leopard 10.6.2."
Tech:  "Oh.  I see [from my computer prompt] that the software for using this air card with a Mac is download only." 
Pregnant pause.
Tech:  "Do you have another computer available to download the software?"
DH:  "No.  We only have the one computer at home.  I will have to go to work tomorrow and download it to a flash drive from my work computer."

And it went downhill from there (DH is to be commended for not losing his temper, although he did bang his head on the keyboard a lot).  In a nutshell, five days, two program downloads (one of which was wrong), three more phone calls and five techs later, I am back on the internet.  One tech insisted that the air card was broken.  Another insisted that the problem was in our hard drive.  So much for "expert" care and service.  Sheesh.

And we found out our tower has been "powered down" while they upgrade it to 2G.  Evidently they lied about the "power of the tower" when we signed up.  Supposedly, this upgrade will be done by March 15th.  Supposedly, it will be upgraded to 3G within the year.  Supposedly.  I ain't holding my breath.


On a more happy note, here is a picture of the lovely tote bag LoriRay made for our friend to use to carry her quilt.  It has a couple of pockets on the inside for small items, too. 

LoneStar