The tale of the AT&T Pinheads

Picked up the new TILT on Monday afternoon.  She works like a dream.  Spent Wednesday customizing and piping her out.  (PiccolaFinestre is her name – that is Italian for little windows)  Thursday I discover that I can only get some places on the www.  OH NOES!  Off to AT&T’s live chat feature.  After 40 minutes she has told me that I don’t have a data plan and that I am paying per use.  UH NO!  So she fixes that quickly. And then sends me these instructions to follow https://cingular.atgnow.com/cng/tutorials/KB84444.html .  Alright all done and whoa look at that I can get anywhere on the WWW.  ME is happy.

 Until I discover that Google maps and live search can no longer get GPS information and what I can’t send or receive email any more.  What the crap.  By the time we get back from Kokomo it is to late I have to just let her lay on the couch only 1/2 working. 

Now this morning, back on line with Live Chat.  BTW Gregory_? Is a dumb ass.  No really.  With questions like “Do you use outlook on your computer?” and “Do you know what version of Outlook you are using?”  Then telling me to change the email settings to leave a copy on the server.  I mean really how well did you think that was going to turn out.  Never mind that he kept ignoring the fact that everything worked till about 4:30 yesterday when Deb_W at Live Chat had me change all the connection settings.  He finally has to bow out and give me an 800 number to call cause he can’t fix it at his level.  Now off to some lady who is now better at this than anyone else.  I follow all of the same steps that have been done with Gregory_? and Deb_W yet again.  OH then she says “we don’t support active sync you will have to call the manufacturer”, “Oh live search and Google are third party apps we don’t support them either”.  Wait a minute this all worked yesterday you (your support tech) had me change a bunch of settings and now everything is broken and you don’t support it.  By this time I am starting to get utterly annoyed.  I mean I had to explain to Gregory_? how an exchange server works for Pete’s sake.  So I get transferred to HTC, Tatiana.  She was nice, had me check a bunch of settings (AGAIN!) and had me turn off the Proxy Tool setting.  OK she gives up and tells me that I need to talk to AT&T and verify that I have direct push access on my data plan or this will never work (OMG DID YOU ALL NOT HEAR THAT IT WORKED TILL YESTERDAY!) and the next option is to delete the active sync settings and redo them (hey lady you might mention you need to delete everything you already downloaded or you will create duplicates — KLT learned this the hard way).  So back to AT&T where I get “some guy” (here after SG), at this point I am ANNOYED and ready to switch to verizon. (shh!  I even asked Gregory_? for Verizon’s number) He has no sense of humor.  while he’s looking up what to say in his cheat sheets I comment to Kerry that I have gone from a wonderfully working device, to a 1/2 functioning device to a REALLY FANCY clock.  Yes you see by the time we get connected to SG I can’t get to the Internet.  Pretty sure that is because HTC’s Tatiana had me turn off that proxy tool, but why would anyone listen to me.  So SG has me go through all the setting AGAIN!  I told him I have done this 6 times alone today, I am pretty good at tapping and poking.  I remind him of Tatiana’s “fix” yet again cause no one is listening.  FINALLY we go back to all these settings and change something…something that was clearly deleted as per the instructions above sent on Thursday.  Also we unchecked a proxy setting box.  OMG OMG OMG We are finally back to a fully functional state including the not supported GPS. 

For the love of god, quit talking to me like I am stooopid.  Second there are “quick keys”, Soft Keys and short cuts to get to the desired settings and applications why must everything start with “tap the Start”.  FUCK there is a FLAG soft key, there is an ie soft key, and BTW if you click the connection at in the top bar it takes you to the settings.  Seriously. 

 Did I mention that this took 2 hours this morning?  Did I mention that I have soft reset the device 3 times? How about that I talked to 4 tech support monkeys? What about power cycling the device 3 times? 

Kerry wouldn’t let me tell Gregory_? “hmm you’d think this was a windows device as long as it takes to boot up”.  KLT said that it would break his brain and he wouldn’t know what to look up in his tech support book. 

Finally I am back to happy and PiccolaFinestre is running.  Can’t wait to show her off.  New toys to geeks are like babies to the rest of the world.