Tag Archives: smart phones

No Good Deed . . .

9 Feb

The Squire has a Galaxy  S-4 that Eldest Daughter gave him several years ago to bring him into the Smart Phone age. Recently, she found a newer phone – an S-6 – and offered it to her dad. They spent an hour doing what she called a “Smart Swap”, automatically switching all of his info – pictures, contacts, apps, etc. – from the older model to the newer one.

When we got home he discovered the new phone wouldn’t work so he called Eldest Daughter to ask her advice. She checked on-line and discovered that the service did not show it had been changed from one phone to the other, and suggested he call Verizon to see what was up.  The upshot of this three hour marathon is that the S-6 is too old to be activated. And, because the tech at Verizon had deactivated the S-4 in the middle of this mess, it is even older and cannot be reactivated.  The Squire now has two Smart Phones, neither of which work.

Me? I’m sticking with my trusty, dusty flip phone from Target.

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Comcast, Part II

30 Apr

We had a fairly large locust tree, about five feet from the road, which died a few years ago. This was not a do-it-yourself project, so we hired a local company to come out and cut it down for us. Not a big deal, about two hours, and not as expensive as it might have been, as we have a friend who heats with wood, and will come over to collect the wood and help clean up the debris.

However.

We also have a River Birch which has died, and it is leaning into the electric wires, as well the wires from Comcast. You may remember that our last go-round with Comcast took almost a month to untangle, and we still aren’t happy with the service. (A classic case of getting what you pay for.) We’ve had Comcast for over thirty years, and when it was installed they did not have the technology for the Quick Disconnect box which is now standard, and we need to have somebody come out to handle this in person.

So – The Squire called Comcast and explained what we needed. I heard him say, quite firmly, “No we do not want to terminate the service.” Transfer to another department, and of course, get cut off. Call back and start over. Once again, the woman who answered grabbed the word “disconnect” and tried to talk him out of cancelling the service and then tried to sell him a bunch of upgrades! After some rather sharp conversation, he did finally get Comcast to understand what we need, and they will send somebody out “soon” to install the Quick Disconnect box, so when the tree people come back, we can drop and replace the line ourselves.

One thing which had bugged us ever since The Squire changed our Comcast service was that things seemed so much slower than before it was “improved”. While the second young lady was checking, she found we only had half the speed we were supposed to have, so she said she was going to fix it.

We shall see.

Once that is done, the tree company will coordinate with Baltimore Gas & Electric to take care of that part of things.

One of the workers dropped his “smart phone” while he was here, and The Squire called the tree company to tell them we have it. The silly thing has rung twice, but neither of us can figure out how to answer it! Ain’t it grand?

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