Defeated by technology

We’ve all been through the agony of dealing with Tech Support because of the gadgets we can’t seem to live without. Here’s a new spin on the problem, and it doesn’t involve people with funny accents who make you feel stupid because you aren’t as gadget-literate as they are.

It involves one of the satellite TV companies that has been in negotiations with local stations over broadcasting rights. The two entities – the satellite company  and the local stations — can’t agree on a price. It’s between them, right?

Wrong. The local stations have in effect said if they can’t have their way they will take their bat and glove and go home. Nyah! Does that anger the satellite company? Maybe. But I doubt it. It’s just another annoyance to get over until they reach an agreement, which one day they will. It’s been done before.

However, the people who have nothing at all to do with these negotiations are the ones being impacted: The viewers. When the local stations became unavailable it was on a day of a big rainstorm, and I assumed the satellite was out. Then I found it odd that the storm had passed and the cable channels were back on, but the local channels weren’t. That’s when I called and learned about the negotiations. That’s the last time I had two-way communication with a communication conglomerate.

The person on the line who told me about the dispute said I could go online and voice my opinion. I could go on line all right. But for the life of me I couldn’t find where I could leave my opinion. If I had found one, I would have told both sides of the issue that viewers are the ones writing checks for the service they’re not getting, and we’re the ones being affected.

So because these bozos, my whole morning is thrown out of whack. I wake up with the morning news. I know when a certain news program comes on I get up and feed the cats and take a pill I take 30 minutes before breakfast. When the program shifts to another segment, I know I can eat breakfast, and then as I get ready for work I can tell what time it is by what programs are on the tube. During this time I know what the weather is going to be and that tells me what to wear.

But I can’t tell them that because the website I was directed to apparently doesn’t want to know. The web site invited me to type in my ZIP code to see how the negotiations are going in my area, and when I did it said I was lucky because it wasn’t affecting my area.  But it didn’t tell me how I could respond to beg to differ. It clearly doesn’t want to know what I think.

Yet, it sends me a bill and expects me to pay in full for partial service. So here’s my message whether they want it or not: Get off your greedy backsides, put the local stations back on the air, and solve your own problems without involving me and other viewers. We got enough problems dealing with tech support for our computers.

One upside: That commercial for cable TV where the guy makes funny noises with his mouth and singers repeat the company’s phone number? I haven’t missed that one bit!