Yesterday I observed how communication technology leaves the poor behind and today I found out that humans can help or make it worst. I went back to my 86 year old friends home trying to restore her phone service. After a hour and half the other day we discovered that the problem was with the billing department. Someone had sold her a package she did not need or use. She even had wireless computer connection included although she has no computer. The phone company representative insisted she pay back bills for services she did not receive or want. He said, paying the large bill was option one. When that was impossible it came up with option two and switched me to person who he said would restore her old fashioned basic line service. This person was doing that until he came to the credit check. I told him what problem was but he tried and when he failed put us back on hold for the billing department where we had started. After being on hold for a very long time I finally hung up and called again and again to the smart robo phone person who said he understood complete sentences Clearly he did not understand my request to speak to a customer service supervisor but finally a human answered.

By now my cell phone cell batter was being depleted. The third person today seemed to understand our problem and came up with a way to bypass the system and restore basic phone system. It is scheduled for tomorrow morning but will not work if the technician who installed the bundle stuff disconnected the regular land line. I expect he did and if it is true will be back Monday to help my phone restore service.

So after over 3 hours of communicating which high tech machines and humans I am not much further than when I originally called.

Machines and humans teaming together wreck havoc on old, poor or ill or even “near normal” persons like myself.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.