COMPUTERS – They change your life!
This has been “HELL” week for me. My usually calm life of golfing, afternoon naps and evening bingo was interrupted by a computer hacker. 125 of my closest friends and I received an “E” mail from me at my Yahoo address that I was in trouble. It was from me and to me at another “E” address.
I was asking all of my friends and myself to send me money as I had been robbed in the Philippines. My passport had been confiscated and I was prevented from leaving as I could not pay my hotel bill of over $3000. If you responded, it told you to send me money at a Manila address.
Many of my 125 friends know that I worked in 32 countries and by 3pm on Wednesday the 9th I had received over 30 phone calls and about the same number of “E” mails from as far away as Australia checking to see if this was true. What surprised me was all of my friends were aware I retired over 17 years ago. As strange as it might seem, I have never been to the Philippines in my life.
I had earlier tried to send a message to my Yahoo friends but the hacker had destroyed my entire Yahoo account. I did send “E” mails to everyone I could think of from another address. I sent the following message and also recorded a message on my answering machine. “I have not been robbed, I am not in the Philippines but if they wished to send money, I needed new golf balls. Just send the money to my Hemphill, Texas mailing address. We left to avoid the calls.
I visited with people I had not seen or talked to in years and even had an invitation to play golf in Houston. I was overwhelmed to realize I had that many people who cared enough to call or send messages.
My Yahoo account also contained links to some 20 websites I subscribe to for keeping up with world events. When Fox News let Glenn Beck get away, I stopped watching the news media all together. With perpetual 24/7 politics, I stopped the newspapers a year ago and without Beck to challenge my knowledge of American History, news was so slanted it made me sick.
I used my Yahoo account to survive living in rural America. Our closest Mall is 60 miles away and we are 8 miles from the big city of Hemphill, Texas. Our closest Wal-Mart is 24 miles away in Many, Louisiana. If Amazon and E-Bay ever closed, we would be devastated. Well, my Amazon I.D. number was my Yahoo address as well as the 20 other links. For those of you not computer literate, you also have to have a password. When you link up with the sites they ask for your I.D. number and password. They don’t know you no longer have the Yahoo address and when you enter your password, you get a message that your I.D. and password will not work and ask you to re-enter your password and they provide no way to tell them your I.D. is the problem. If you forget your password every site can provide you with the information by sending an “E” mail to your, guess what, your Yahoo address that is now defunct.
Lesson two for the illiterate, it takes a wizard to find a way to talk to anyone at Yahoo, Google, Amazon, E=Bay or the hundreds of other places to buy things. They are not equipped to speak to you as they provide 10,000 probable answers for you to choose from to solve what they have determined to be the solution to all possible things that can go wrong when you buy from them. I had an issue with E-bay a few months back and after three hours of total frustration I finally found a mailing address and a couple of weeks later they did send me an “E” mail but never provided me a way to talk to a human. I just stopped using E-Bay except for emergency items.
My first attempt was to revive my Amazon purchasing ability that I usually use 3 or 4 times a week. After an hour I finally found a way to send them an “E” mail that was promptly answered and “bonanza”, I actually got a phone number and nearly fainted. I made the call and after answering 10 minutes of options to press buttons, I had a human voice ask if she could help me. I regret I failed to write her name down as she was an “Angel”. She was patient, courteous and spent 30 minutes helping get my account straightened out and I was free to order again.
Buying with Amazon has introduced me to some great new friends, mostly at UPS. The delivery people know Norma and I by our first names as we see them more often than our four children and 8 grandchildren combined. It would not have surprised us to see them come by to make sure we are OK if a week passed without an Amazon delivery.
I know what you city folks will say, why don’t they move back to the city? The reason is we enjoy the paradise of living in a County with slightly over 10,000 in the 600 square miles of area. We don’t have one red/green stop light in the County and only four 4 way stop signs. I wake up to see from a window without curtains across a lake that is 80 miles long between Texas and Louisiana. I can hear birds sing, see stars at night and we rarely hear an airplane or helicopter, day or night.
Not unexpected, I have not yet heard from Yahoo and probably never will. I spent a day trying to find a number to call and finally found a way to send an “E” mail. The new generation of online businesses makes so much money they have no interest in customer satisfaction. They have so many customers, who cares if you are troubled.
GOD BLESS amazon.com
C Brewer
A Conservative View 