Alone - Power

Alone. Pandemic. Isolation of sorts. Stashed away in our leased condo. Limited excursions to pharmacy, grocer, gas station, McDonald’s drive through, restaurant drive ups. An occasional visit to Walgreens in store, or the local supermarket.

The rest of our consumption is ordered online and picked up outside the stores. Pre prepared dinners are ordered to feed us 5 nights per week. Electronics are our lifeline. Banking, phone calls, texts, emails and Zoom meetings. Even church is Zoomed.

Technology is great. When it works. When it doesn’t, an elder citizen is perplexed. Calm is required. Logic helps, too.

I’m an elder. I am not calm or logical when sudden malfunction is encountered. The debit card is not accepted at the gas pump, nor in the store. Something is not right. I pay cash and drive to the credit union for help. They reset my card and all is well. Until…it isn’t.

The Comcast Xfinity account works pretty darn well. But the bill keeps rising, 8% a year. Inexorably up, up and away. I go online to pare it back. Can’t. It won’t let me. I search for a better package, but nothing happens unless I click on accept. I still don’t know what this will cost me or if equipment must be changed. We own the modem. We bought it from Comcast. It still works. Why replace it, why lease theirs? Why increase my bill when I am trying to lower it?

Nothing works on this online visit. Nothing is settled. I still have an expensive service contract that continues to rise in price.

How to change this? Threaten to cancel the relationship. This is done over the phone if you can get through. Then they play the game of this is all they can do until you threaten cancellation. They transfer you to ‘customer retention’ for a special deal. This is automatic. This is part of the game. They do well with this; I have remained a customer through this process several times. But the price still rises automatically no matter what.

If I wish to make a radical change, I must remove Comcast equipment and take it to one of their stores. There you wait in line for a clerk to serve you. You plunk down the equipment on their counter, give them your name and address, and they look you up on their computer. They check the equipment is correct and look for anything that they can use to keep you from cancelling. You are adamant and have cut the cord.

Now, you drive to Best Buy and tell them what you did. You ask them to hook you up with equipment and services that will replace the Comcast Wi-Fi. You ask for computer streaming methods to power my 55-inch flat screen HD TV. They load you up with what you need, all the while telling you it is simpler to buy cable.

I will stream TV entertainment, news and local stations for free. That is the quest. That is the solution.

But this is not easily done. Facebook ads claim help but those helping are all cable networks. They lead you back into the cable cord world of complexity and control.

This consumer has had enough. The news is not news. It is skewed into propaganda and misspeak. It is fighting for ratings that don’t interest me. All I want is fact and information. Entertainment occasionally. Documentaries a lot. Simplicity and Wi-Fi at my beck and call.

The pressure to change is real. Has been for a few years. Complexity has kept me prisoner.

Not any more.

March 16, 2021