Tech Support -- Aargh!

I have been struggling with technical problems for about ten days.

It started innocently enough with a letter from my internet provider.  They wanted to change out some equipment, free of charge, to give me faster internet.  That's a good thing, I made an appointment.

The guy came out and installed the equipment.  Internet, phone and TV worked.  However, I need a "Micro Cell" at home to get cell phone service and we have a SlingBox to watch our US TV anywhere in the world.  Neither one of these worked after the installation of the new equipment.  The guy who installed the new equipment left, muttering that he had done his job properly.

The saga had begun.  Trips to the cell phone store were frustrating.  I had to go twice, waiting both times before someone could help me.  I also called and the person hung up (or I got disconnected, hard to tell).  I finally got a new Micro Cell, went home and installed it.  It didn't work.  I called the manager at the cell phone store (she had given me her card and her private number).  She didn't answer and the message on her phone stated that she didn't have a "voice mailbox".  Over the next four days, I called about 10 times.  She never answered the phone and the mailbox was never functional.

Realizing that the problem stemmed from the work that was done, I went back to our internet service provider.  My theme was, "everything worked before you installed the new system and now it doesn't".   This seems pretty straightforward to me.  It took five phone calls over three days before I finally got some help.  Each call required going through an elaborate protocol just to get a person on the phone.  During the fifth call, a  "Level 3" tech support guy told me that a "high level" tech would be at my house at 8 AM the next day.

The doorbell rang and I opened the door to the same tech guy who had walked away without fixing the problem the first time.  My face dropped.  I'm sure he wasn't happy either.  I reviewed the situation with him.  He ran some diagnostics and told me that everything was fine.  I disagreed.  Over the next two hours, he consulted many people within his organization and they finally re-installed everything differently, using the same type of equipment that I had when everything worked.  When it was all up and running, miraculously, the Micro Cell sprang to life.

The Slingbox still didn't work.  Again, the tech guy stated that he'd done his job and packed up and left.  Now only one thing doesn't work, so I guess we're making progress.

Over the next few hours, I went online with Slingbox who told me that I had to pay $29.95 to get tech support because my box was over one year old and out of warranty.  They pointed toward their on-line resources.  Free is good so I looked over the resources and came across a video.  I watched it, followed it and eventually the Slingbox also sprang back to life.

I've spent at least 12 hours on this but everything is back to normal, meaning the way it was before the first appointment that was designed to improve our system.