Problems With Gadgets and Software We are surrounded with advanced devices which are said to be beneficial to us and while they are helpful, they can also be a pain in the neck. I have a smart television. As far as I am concerned it is too smart for its own good. Seriously, the television is nice, it has one nasty habit however which nothing seems to fix. It will sometimes turn on by itself. How would you like to be sleeping and suddenly you are woken up by your television? I don’t think anyone likes that. There are many ideas how to solve this problem on the internet, but none seem to apply to my television because none have worked. There is another problem with smart televisions which has been mentioned in the past and which we may not know is happening and it is the television listening to what we say which might make it easy for someone to monitor us. Is any of this helpful to us? I don’t think so. Speaking about listening when they shouldn’t, my Echo device is also guilty of that. This can be easily proven because it will answer me sometimes when I have having a conversation with someone on the phone or in person. I hate that because I remember when the recordings of what people were talking about were being saved and listened to by workers at the company. The company insists they have stopped this from happening anymore, but who knows, it must be hard to monitor all the employees involved with the Echo. What do you think of wireless connections between your printer and computer? I think they stink. I can’t talk about more than two brands of printers, but the problems I had with both forced me to run a wire from the printer to the computer. The problems I had with both happened every once in a while, when I would lose the connection and have to reset it. This may not sound like a very serious problem, but it is certainly aggravating when you need something printed or faxed in a hurry. Since I connected the computer and printer with a wire, the problem has disappeared. One of the most annoying things comes about when you are trying to get help from the manufactures with a problem. The first thing you usually encounter is either they have a phone number listed or they do not and it may be even hard to find their email address. If they only have an email address, and you email them, some never answer or others take a long time to get back to you hoping you will go away. If they finally do answer it can begin a long process of sending emails back and forth and take weeks if you ever do solve the problem. If a company does have a phone number you are now subjected to the dreaded “your call is important to us” reply and then you are asked to hold. Some companies do not tell you how long the wait is and some have wait times of a couple of hours or more, but remember the “your call is important to us” reply. In all fairness, a few now have the option where you can leave your telephone number and they will call you back eventually. Then there are the others who never call back. Nothing is more maddening than waiting all day for a call that never comes. While a tiny few companies will actually take your call and help, be prepared for a long wait and assistance which might take hours of back and forth to solve the problem. Be prepared to be asked questions like what is the serial number or model number before you call or you will have to do a lot of digging while on the phone and might even be told to call back when you have the information. Another thing you better do is if there is any sort of error message on your device and an error number, you better write it down before calling. I have actually done an online chat and listed everything, only to be asked again for that information as if the person never read what I wrote. The reason for this is many have a script in front of them and are just reading from it. There are also several levels of technicians and the ones you first reach usually only know the basics. You will realize this when you are on the phone with one for a long time who being unable to solve the problem, passes you off to someone else. Sometimes you buy a device and follow all the instructions and yet it just won’t work properly. That is exactly what happened to me with a router I was sent by a cable company. I spent over an hour trying to get the internet and I have experience with this sort of thing and yet it just wouldn’t work. Finally, I had to call the company and they told me the router was not showing up on their board. They played around for quite some time asking me to do this and that, which I had already done until they asked me if I have called and asked the company to register the router. I said wait, that was not in the instructions and I thought it would be done automatically. At the time this really angered me. They registered the router and immediately everything worked. One thing I have to admit is Microsoft is pretty good and answering questions and solving problems and so is Adobe. I had two good experiences with both when software wouldn’t perform correctly. The phone call was answered in a reasonable amount of time, I could understand the person I was talking to, and they knew what they were talking about. One can’t ask for anymore than that. Adding a tech person to the mix who only has a bare minimum of English just adds fuel to the fire. I hate to have to ask people to keep repeating what they said and by the same token it aggravates them and I believe affects their proficiency. I understand companies are trying to save money by setting up problem solving departments in foreign countries, but I believe this too affects their bottom line because anyone who has to go through this experience may never buy anything from them again, and who could blame them? Choose your next gadget or computer software carefully
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