It was slightly after noon on January 2 when the first aggravation of the New Year reared its ugly head. I went off earlier in the morning to get a leaking tire fixed. (It had a nail in it.) This was a carryover from 2015 so it did not qualify as the first aggravation of 2016. That still lurked in the shadows like a burglar casing a neighborhood.
On the way home I stopped at Best Buy where “Jose” helped me select a cable modem for $69 plus tax that would replace the modem furnished by my internet provider, Hargray Communications, which was failing fast. Every modem box on the shelf, and there were many, said: Stop renting a modem. Own your own.
I took it home, dis-enaged the old one which was to be returned to Hargray and end the monthly rental fee of around $7.00. I struggled to get the new one out of the box and finally succeeded. Electronic devices are packaged to minimize sholifting and theft. It would take Houdini to open a box and shoplift one of these things in a Best Buy aisle.
I hooked it up, attached the router, plugged everything in and telephoned Hargray to have them recognize the new piece of equipment on their end. And here is where the aggravation was born. It is Hargray’s position and practice, according to the faceless tech rep on the end of the line, that a customer cannot own his own modem on their system. WHAT?
The Hargray tech rep and I argued over this practice for a couple of minutes. My warning that I would protest to the FCC fell on deaf ears. I thought about throwing Alan Dershowitz and a lawsuit into the mix, but decided against that on two counts: The tech rep probably didn’t know or care about Dershowitz, and, two, no one files a lawsuit hoping to save $7 a month in rental fees. Anyone whose retirement depends on saving $7 a month needs to continue working.
I had to disconnect the new modem and put it back in the box for return to Best Buy. If getting it out of the box was a pain in the ass, what do you think putting it back in was?
There was one saving grace to this first agravation of 2016. The tech rep advanced Hargray’s planned service call from “next Wednesday” to “this afternoon.” A four-day advance.
The service man came, took out the old and put in a new modem. After going outside and making a phone call to some Hargray site ( I don’t understand why he went out. I wasn’t going to appropriate the secret code or whatever.) everything clicked and service was restored.
At Best Buy, the RETURNS clerk told me she knew about Hargray’s position and it prevailed all around Bluffton and Hilton Head Island. She did not know why the sales clerks didn’t know all this and dissuade Hargray customers from buying modems in the first place.
So ends the saga of the first aggravation of the New Year, 2016.
