Thursday, October 1, 2009

Helpless Desk

Had a lovely chat with a Helpless Desk in India today. Told the guy my email was being sent twice, and I asked why.... Oh, wait, I have the transcript, so I'll just share! I will scatter my commentary where appropriate. I left in all my typos for the heck of it. I was a little miffed, and typing way too fast.

'Jason N' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today? [Jason N? This screams 'India']

lhanna@mindspring.com: I am using web access mail, and every email I send gets sent twice. I tested and it is also received twice.

Jason N: I will be glad to assist you . [Notice the space before every period. Yes, I notice this stuff.]

Jason N: Please click on the below mentioned link:
Jason N: https://webmail.earthlink.net
Jason N: Then enter your complete email address and password .
Jason N: And click on sign in .
Jason N: Please let me know whether you are able to sign in or not .
[What part of "I am sending mail" made him ask if I could sign in? Do you think he was maybe following a script?!]

lhanna@mindspring.com: i am signed in and sending mail.
lhanna@mindspring.com: it is being sent twice.

Jason N: Please click on Preferences . [That's it - no more. After a few minutes I asked:]
lhanna@mindspring.com: and ..... what?
lhanna@mindspring.com: i have not changed anything, andit was working last night.

Jason N: Under General tab, you will find Session Security as the last option .
Jason N: Please turn it ON .
Jason N: Then click on Save .
Jason N: Sign out of WebMail .

lhanna@mindspring.com: why do I need to do this? it makes no sense.
lhanna@mindspring.com: plus, wouldn't I need to be on a secure server? will this change my connection settings?

Jason N: You need to try this .
lhanna@mindspring.com: No, I need to know why first.

Jason N: No .[In response to being on a secure server, I suppose.]

lhanna@mindspring.com: I do nto change security settings without know why first. What has changed in the last 18 hours to make this stop working?

Jason N: It will not change any settings.It will be in a secured server .[uh-huh]

Jason N: Is there anything else apart from this that I can help you with ? [Note the space before the '?'. And does it sound like he's helped me yet?]

lhanna@mindspring.com: Yes, you can tell me why I suddenly need to change a security setting to send email correctly.
lhanna@mindspring.com: What has changed in the last 18 hours that necessitates this change?

Jason N: There are currently problems with our WebMail Server.
Jason N: It is under maintenance . [?!?!?!?!?!?!?!]


lhanna@mindspring.com: You could have told me that first. I will just wait until later then.
Jason N: I am extremely sorry for that .
lhanna@mindspring.com: Me, too. This was a total waste of my time.
lhanna@mindspring.com: I am glad I did not make the security change.
Jason N: Okay .

lhanna@mindspring.com: Is tehre an ETA for themail server, and are there plans to communicate this outage to your customers?
Jason N: We did not receive any estimated time for this issue .

lhanna@mindspring.com: You should still tell customers that there is a known problem. That is much easier to accept than being uninformed.
lhanna@mindspring.com: Is there a status link we can access to check back on the progress of the outage?
Jason N: Okay .
Jason N: You can click on the below link to check :
Jason N: http://my.earthlink.net
lhanna@mindspring.com: thank you

After a few more lines, Jason N and I parted ways. He thought he'd helped me, and I needed a drink.

FYI - that link he gave me tells me NOTHING. It is the personalized home page for Earthlink, like iGoogle. Totally worthless.

Luckily, I got a survey right after the chat ended, and I told them what I thought about my service experience. And as of now - hours later, things are still sending twice. And yes, I can sign in just fine.

Just between you and me? I am converting all my stuff over to gmail.

1 comment:

Jan Scholl said...

I was with a non-profit internet for 15 years. I paid 5 bucks a month and it was great. For a while. then the porn took over and the viruses. and tech had nothing on their end to stop anything. Each email I POPPED, another freeze up with a virus even tho I had firewall, and protection etc. It was all spam 24 hours a day and they had no filters on the servers. I gave up. I know the local library and the police used this non profit too. I tried Yahoo but that wasn't much better, and I had heard of gmail. So I trolled around and found someone to donate one to me. Woo Hoo! Havent looked back since. The non profit was upset with me but they did nothing to help make it better. I was sad because I had used that email for so long. Now I have 15 emails all directed to one, so I know who is spamming based on how it shows up. And its free!