Many of you have been wondering where the hell Jemini has been for the past several months. Others have asked who the hell this Jemini is that you speak of. Believe it or not, she is not a figment of your imagination or the Ghost of Christmas Past. In fact, she is slowly returning to RenegadeRadio.net, and dare we say it, going to be broadcasting again soon.
At first, her demanding day job kept getting in the way. She got rid of that day job, got a new one, and finally started to get a bit settled into a routine, preparing to broadcast once again. And then the Clear internet she has relied on for several years finally crapped out on her.
Desperate to find an alternative, she turned to AT&T. The prospective internet service provider advertised these portable little mobile hot spots with data plans of 5GB, 8GB, 15GB, and 30GB for steep monthly fees. Curious and really wanting to move away from using the mobile hot spot on her phone, she purchased one of these mobile hot spots with a 5GB data plan (because that was all she could afford at the time).
The device arrived within a day and a half. Eagerly opening the box, she carefully takes the device out of its packaging, connects it to her desktop, and turns her computer and the device on. After a quick set up, she was online once again! Deciding to really test the device out, she mistakenly proceeds to stream some of her favorite shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
After only a couple of hours of streaming her favorite shows, the data usage meter on the device showed nearly 3GB of 5GB of data had been used with 28 days left. SAY WHAT?!?!?! How could she have possibly have used that much data within a couple of hours? What a rip off!
The next morning, she contacts AT&T in an online chat. Two hours later, the chat agent was still trying to get to the bottom of how she needed to properly return the mobile hot spot device. Still not getting a straight answer from one of the many teams AT&T has for dealing with specific issues (because heaven forbid one person could possess the knowledge to handle them all), the chat agent continues to apologize for how long all of this is taking and tries to answer the dozens of questions she throws at him to the best to his ability.
Finally, an agent from the eCom team is available to answer questions on how to return the device. Relaying the answers to those questions in the chat, the chat agent finally sets up a phone call between Jemini and the eCom person. After three dropped calls, there is a human voice from the eCom team finally tells her what she already know on how to return the device.
But what about canceling the service? Can that be done as well? “Oh, you will need to call another number and speak to a representative of a different team to cancel your service.” WHAT?!?!? Getting really irritated at this point, Jemini calls the given number and gets put on hold for 20 minutes. Then suddenly the annoying hold music was replaced by a garbled mess.
Hanging up the phone, she dials the number once again only to get put on hold yet again until the next available customer service representative answered the phone. Twenty-five minutes later, a human voice with a thick southern accent answered the phone. After taking about 15 minutes to look into the issue, the representative finally tells her that they need to get another representative on the line to cancel the mobile hot spot service. In the attempt to transfer Jemini over to the new representative, the call drops.
Dialing the number yet again, she gets the annoying automated directory. Screaming at the robotic directory that she needs to cancel service, a human immediately answers the phone. Explaining to the human customer service representative that she has been trying to cancel service on her mobile hot spot and return the device for the past four hours, the representative finally resolves the issue within ten minutes or less.
Four hours and twenty-five minutes later, Jemini is finally at the post office returning the hexed mobile hot spot device back to the hell scape from whence it came. Go back to the ABYSS!!! And then it was gone. GONE I SAY!!
The next day, Jemini decides to give finding another ISP a go once more. Compiling a decent list of area ISPs, she proceeds to go down the list and starts to call them, making sure she avoided AT&T like the plague. Provider after provider kept telling her the same sob story of “Oh, we don’t service your area, try another provider.”
Making her wonder if she is living in a black hole, Jemini reluctantly calls the next provider on the ISP list – Time Warner Cable. Wincing as she pressed the dial button on her phone, a happy representative comes on the line, asking the purpose of the call. Directing her to the sales department, she finally gets to speak with someone with real answers about available services in her black hole of an area. Determining that Time Warner Cable was the only option to choose from (apparently because there aren’t enough available ports for other service providers or some strange mess along those lines), she reluctantly signs up for service and sets up an installation date and time for the afternoon of Thursday, October 29, 2015.
If all goes well with the Time Warner Cable installation and the technical gremlins (human and electronic) are subdued, Jemini SHOULD have reliable internet by Thursday evening.
That is all Jemini will say for the moment as she really doesn’t want to hex herself and have technical gremlins attacking at all angles only to further delay the return of The Stairwell Showcase. She does very kindly ask that you cross all fingers, toes, legs, arms, eyes and anything else you can possibly cross in a safe manner that she will be with reliable internet once more.
In the meantime, she will be running devices off of her phone’s personal hot spot in limited chunks of time and/or reporting from the nearest Starbucks with free internet.
Thank you for taking the time to read this annoying little rant. Jemini promises she will make it up to you by posting some meaningful music news tomorrow (October 29th in the year of our Lord 2015). Have a great day and rock on!
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