Computer Scam Retorts

If you have a computer, odds are good you've gotten calls from scammers who want to "fix" the problem you didn't even know you had.

My computer, my cat Jim-Bob

A couple of weeks ago, I  got a call from some guy with a really heavy accent who wanted to help me with  my computer. Between the static in the phone line (which happens just about every time it rains) and his heavy accent, I never could understand what his name was—but I was pretty sure he was a scammer. You know the type—the ones who call to tell you that they "detected a problem" with your "Windows computer." 

But I didn't let him get that far. I wanted to know what company he worked for. It was something like "Rep Assist-something" or it might have been "Rep Asset-something"or maybe "Rat's Ass-something." Anyhow, I asked him what his company's website URL was. He tried to oblige me.

Between his thick accent and my deliberate mistakes as I slowly and laboriousy "attempted" to type the URL (while saying the letters I thought he said out loud and being corrected by him because I was saying the wrong ones), I wasn't able to get "your rep web assist (dot) com" (or something) and finally (in an exasperated voice after letting him know that I got "Rep Assist at Amazon") exclaimed, "There must be something wrong with my computer!" A moment of silence ensued. Then he hung up.

That was the fastest a scammer has ever hung up on me. Usually I can keep them going for a while. 

Sometimes I pretend I have to turn on my computer—which of course takes a while. And I push a bunch of button on the phone which makes little beeping noises for him. One guy had the nerve to tell me to stop doing that, and I had to insist this was how I started my computer. Then I have to put in the password which I spell out loud as I type it in: "S-u-p-e-r-c-a-l-i-f-r-a-g-i-l-i-s-t-i-c—Uh, oh! I think I left something out. Let me start again."

I kind of enjoy the Windows scam, wherein my "Windows computer" has gotten a virus or something, and the scammer will help me remove it. I try to drag the scammer out for a while (see password in previous paragraph), as he tells me to do such-and-such. One was flustered that I couldn't find a particular key, although he painstakingly described where it was on my keyboard. But I kept insisting it wasn't there. I knew it was't there because a Mac keyboard is different from a Windows keyboard, but it never occured to him I was using a Mac. I'm not the only Mac user who does this. Here's a pretty good YouTube video of a Mac user dealing with a Windows scammer: 

Recently I got a heavily accented computer scammer to hang up on me in less than 5 minutes! He didn't attempt to try my last name but asked if I was Miz Reee-beh-kuh and if I was the prime computer user. I agreed. That's when he told me they'd gotten reports of my computer downloading malicious downloads. 
Me:" Oh no! What's the name of these malicious downloads!"
He couldn't give me an answer. 
Me: "But if you know my computer has downloaded malicious downloads, you should certainly know the name of them! What are they called?"
I couldn't understand all he said next, but something to the effect that if I would turn on my computer, he would walk me through how to get rid of the malicious stuff.
Him (obviously reading from a script): "Now if you would step in front of your computer—"
Me: "Step in front of my computer? I don't understand!"
He repeated himself—"Now if you would step in front of your computer—" and I cut him off again.
Me: "I have to step in front of my computer?"
Him: "Yes, and then—"
Me: "But I'm sitting in front of if. I don't understand what you're asking. Do you want me to get up and do something like an Irish step dance?"
Silence (well, except for all the other scammers in the room where he was). Then he hung up.

It was just as well. I can't Irish step dance. But if you want to see step-dancing, here's a video:

~

If It Ain't Broke . . .

. . . but it is.

We've had a couple of breakdowns this week. Our washing machine, which was a few years old when we moved here fifteen years ago, stopped switching gears. It would fill with water and agitate. And agitate. And agitate, etc., until It was manually changed to rinse. Then it would keep agitating until manually changed again. This made doing laundry a real nuisance. My electrical engineer husband did some trouble-shooting and determined the problem was with the switch.

He ordered a part which should be here in a day or two. Meanwhile, the laundry is piling up. I have at least three—maybe four—loads waiting to be done. The basket of whites is over-flowing.

Ditto for the basket of colors (with my favorite green socks on top).

The other problem involves my iMac, which I bought in early 2009. It's pictured here behind Dylan, who spends way too much time on my desk.

Actually the iMac is fine (at least so far), but the keyboard developed a problem: the caps lock key decided to become non-functional. Its LED light no longer shines, and it no longer holds itself down. It won't even work if I hold it down.

Now, I could swap out the keyboard for one from one of the older Macs downstairs, but I love this flat keyboard. I Googled around to see if I could find a way to fix it. I tried disconnecting it from the computer and reconnecting. Didn't work. I tried restarting. Nope. I looked up some of the Apple forums. No help. I watched some YouTube videos and became truly discouraged.

Turns out that removing the keys to see if there's some gunk underneath can be a bit tricky. And removing the larger keys is even trickier. Trickier still is removing a larger key that has an LED light in it—like the caps lock key.  

Then I discovered that a couple other keys on the left edge of the keyboard don't work either, which explains why I  have asterisks instead of a tilde at the bottom of this post. 

So, I'll break down and buy a new keyboard. That seems like the easiest thing to do. Unless Dylan (Did I mention he spends way too much time on my desk?) comes up with a way to fix it.

  

So far, Dylan has been no help at all. 

***

Update: I have a new keyboard, and my husband successfully fixed the washing machine. All's well that ends well.

~(note return of the tilde)

Upgrade Woes

Here we go again. I decided to update the iMac to Snow Leopard.

I was a little hesitant because of what happened with my iBooka few years ago, but I popped in the disk and the upgrade started.

Long-time readers might recall that in November 2009, I ported all the stuff on the iMac (with Leopard operating system) over to a new iBook (with Snow Leopard OS), but I had a big problem with fonts not displaying correctly. I blogged about it here ("Leopard & Snow Leopard & Word, Oh My!") and here ("The MacBook Woes Continue"), and how an advanced Apple tech rep named Tammy finally fixed the problem here ("The Woes Done Gone").

After today's installation was complete, the message said the install was successful. But the same font problem happened again today. I called Apple. I'd thought my warranty on the iMac didn't expire until mid-March, but it had actually expired a couple of weeks ago, so the nice tech guy couldn't help me unless I paid a fee. However, he suggested I try to fix the problem myself by going into the font book and validating fonts. So that's what I did—and I did find several fonts that were corrupted. However, that didn't fix the problem: documents in both Word and Pages looked like crap, and the documents wouldn't print.

Here are two examples of how bad the font problem is. I used Times New Roman for both. The first was written in Pages, the native word processor for Apple. Besides the spacing problems, the punctuation was badly messed up:

Word was better, but not by much. 

The printers don't work for most fonts, but a few fonts that I don't normally use look OK and will print. So, looks like I'll have to call Apple again. And pay a fee to upgrade this upgrade.

Oh, woe.

~

Edited on March 10 to add: On Friday afternoon, Apple support tech David M. fixed the font problem in a bit less than two hours. I had to download a temporary program that enabled him to see my iMac and then he walked me through how to fix it. I didn't have to pay a fee because Snow Leopard has free 90-day tech support.

Got Wi-Fi?

We do—finally! For a couple of hours on Saturday, getting the thingabob working with the thingamajig was frustrating. My husband and I are still on speaking terms, but—even if we weren’t—we now could e-mail each other from the comfort of home (albeit in separate rooms).

Let me provide a bit of background here: I have a master’s in English, so I know the importance of research. I have a BFA in drama education, so I know the importance of planning and rehearsal. Consequently, I know that just jumping into a situation isn’t the way to go.

My husband’s degree is in electrical engineering. He believes that if you just jump into something and poke around—er, experiment—a bit, you stand a good chance of getting it right. (Once he restored power to a town in Venezuela by determining that their turbine malfunctioned because of a lizard.) Our house and yard are strung with various antennae for his ham radios, and he’s always experimenting with those. He likes to take various electronic things apart to see how they work. He likes to just jump in and see what happens.

You can see that there’s a conflict of philosophies in this household, can’t you?

When I bought the new iMac, I also bought a thingamajiggie called Time Capsule, which is both a hard drive back-up AND a wi-fi base station. The Time Machine software that came installed on the iMac would do automatic back-ups of every computer whatsits I’d ever put on the computer, but all the info had to be directed to a particular place. The white plastic Time Capsule was that place.
On the iMac’s first day in its new home, we transferred everything from the eMac via a firewire, connected the DSL (a cinch because the settings transferred), and then up-dated some software.

On the second day, I installed the new printer and some other new software. (After I studied the instructions, I meticulously checked off each step in the instructions just so I wouldn’t miss anything.) When the Apple site wouldn’t let me register online for the printer’s rebate, I called Apple. The nice person there credited my account and answered a bunch of other questions.

By the third day, I still hadn’t done anything with Time Capsule. I knew installation and set-up would be complicated. Besides, I spent a good part of the day at Lake Writers and lunch at a coffeehouse.

By the fourth day—Saturday—I was just starting to contemplate what would be involved in installing Time Capsule, but I wasn’t ready to commit to it yet. Saturday night, hubby appeared in the study and announced, “Let’s hook up the Time Capsule. I think I can figure it out.”

I quit the programs I was using and turned the iMac over to him. He plugged in its cord, disconnected the DSL from the iMac, and connected it to the Time Capsule. The iMac immediately lost its internet function.

However, planner that I am, I fired up the laptop and—TA-DA!— connected to the internet. Time Capsule worked! Something had to be wrong with the iMac’s settings. Hubby poked around for a while. The iMac kept giving him various error messages. A bit more poking revealed that Airport wasn’t turned on. We turned it on. Still more problems, etc.

Finally, I called Embarq tech support. Even though I expected to spend an hour waiting for help, a techie answered in moments. Now, faithful long-time blog readers, you will remember that I left Earthlink because the technicians in India—that I had to wait a long time for—were essentially clueless. Imagine my surprise when the Embarq techie had an Indian accent. However, he was in Louisiana, not India, and he knew what he was doing. I handed the phone to my husband, he had a nice chat with the guy, and soon the iMac was connecting to the Internet.

Then the Time Capsule, true to its 500-gig hard-drive backup side, started backing up 39 gigabites worth of info from the iMac. By Sunday morning, it was finished. Now it will automatically backup whatever new stuff I save on the iMac.

Our next project was to get an original Airport card for the old eMac. That way, we could both use internet at the same time (He doesn’t like the iBook’s small screen.) The problem: Apple hasn’t made original Airport cards for years, so we spent part of Sunday evening checking out online sellers of refurbished cards. Prices vary. Hubby even called a guy in Union Hall who is a Mac repair specialist (and who came highly recommended by the woman who cuts my hair). He didn’t have a card to sell us. I did a bit of Googling, found several places that looked promising, and wrote down their phone numbers.

Before I went out Monday morning, I left my debit card—the one I use for online purchases and which has very little money in its account—so hubby could order a card. He called a guy in California who had great prices. In fact, the guy gave him a really good deal on two cards. (“We’ll have a spare in case something happens to one!” was his reason.)

The Airport card should be here in a few days. Online instructions for installation look fairly simple. At any rate, it’ll give my husband a chance to poke around the eMac’s insides.

~

Notice to future houseguests (and you know who you are): Our guestroom now has wi-fi. Bring your laptop.

Breaking Up Isn’t So Hard To Do

~~~

Our relationship has lasted for seven years. We’ve gotten used to each other. I admired his solidity, his capacity, his style. He was solid and dependable, but I was looking for something cooler.

And hotter.

And more exciting.

Yeah, he was easy to get along with—easy for me to use for my purposes. He was not as up-to-date as I’d like. Plus he was kind of dumpy-looking. And a bit old-fashioned.

But, yeah, we had some memorable times together.

Quite frankly, he was a bit, er, limited. It was clear, though, that I’d out-grown him and was ready to trade up. These things happen. It's really not his fault.

Of course we’ll still be friends. We’ll still get together once in a while for old time's sake, but—as of yesterday—I’ve moved on.

So—

Goodby Mr. eMac!

Hello, Mr. iMac!

You were aware I was referring to computers, weren't you?

Well, weren't you?



~

Techno-Hell Revisited

Warning: excessive ranting (and excessive use of italics) to follow.

Wednesday, I broke off a nine-year relationship. It was time. I’d had a new relationship going for three months. Breaking up, however, is hard to do. Here’s what happened (Note: vowel has been removed to disguise provider's identity):

Trying to cancel E*rthlink service is a kind of hell. For a while, I let my E*rthlink dial-up and my new DSL service from another provider overlap. (Note: The devoted readers of this blog—yes, both of you!—might remember my post about the E*rthlink problems I had dealing with half the population of India when I lost Internet access last fall and thus might know my reason for switching providers.)

I decided I really liked the DSL. Therefore, I would cancel E*rthlink. The problem—how? I searched the E*rthlink website for over an hour in an attempt to find an easy way to cancel. While E*rthlink makes it easy to sign up for a plethora of services. it’s nigh impossible to find a way to cancel. I found E*rthlink’s home address, so I guess I could go to Georgia and cancel in person, but that didn’t seem practical. And they'd probably still direct me to India. Finally I found two phone numbers to contact.

I called one and got the message that everyone was busy and it would take a while and why didn’t I go online, etc., (Same message as last fall when I couldn’t go online and called to see why not and the message suggested I go online, which was impossible. . . ) so I figured I’d better hold.

When a recorded voice asked me to state the purpose of the call, I said, “Cancel service,” which their electronic doo-dads must have translated to “Can you tell me about every service you’ve got and supersize it?” Also, the recorded voice told me they’d been sending me an e-mail survey to get my opinion of how things went. (How will they do this? I didn’t give them my new e-mail!)

Eventually, after a brief stint of obnoxious music in my left ear—the one with the chronic ache—that the doctor earlier Wednesday pretty much chose to ignore after the drops she’d prescribed a week earlier had not only not helped but made my ear itch, and she prefers to only deal with only one health problem at a time and the ear had already had its turn—Oh, right! I’m getting off topic here. But no more so than E*rthlink does when you try to call them.

Anyhow, after the really annoying music—but between other mildly annoying music—was a whole series of recorded announcements by some gal with a really perky voice. (E*rthlink apparently has even more services than I thought.) This went on for more than ten minutes, causing me to conclude that E*rthlink ain’t gonna connect you to a live voice until they’ve forced you to listen to the whole spiel.

Finally Miss Perky was replaced by a non-perky guy with an accent so heavy that I could barely understand his “Gud ehv-ning. Thess es (couldn’t understand his name). Ha me ah hep yu?” even when I switched the phone to my good ear.

It took at least another ten minutes for him to pull up my file, get my information, listen to my reasons for discontinuing before he left me for at least five minutes while he joined a loud party of happy-sounding people laughing and babbling to each other in a foreign language before he returned to ask more questions.

Eventually my service was terminated with a click and a “Hef uh gud deh.” (I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the follow-up e-mail. I’ll let them figure out why their e-mail bounced.)

So, if you’re trying to e-mail me with the old infionline addy, it ain’t gonna work. It’s history. And so are most of my in-box files. Everything infionline e-mail I’d saved or sent from 2002 (when I got the eMac) until Wednesday night is gone. All the mementos of the service have been returned to E*rthlink.

So—if you’re trying to contact me, here’s what you do: Go my blogger profile where you will see a clickable link which will take you to my website where, if you scroll enough, another link leads to my e-mail. Yeah, it’s complicated. I learned about complicated from E*rthlink.

And hef uh gud deh.

~

Techno-Hell

If you’ve emailed me lately and haven’t got a reply, I have a good excuse: I’ve been trapped in Techo-Hell for the last two days, wherein I have tried to communicate with various people from India who answer phones for Earthlink. Once I naively believed they were tech support people, but the ones I talked to don’t have that skill level. They just answer phones and tell me to “Haf-a-gud-deh.”

OK. They actually do a little more than that. They request my mother’s maiden name and the place I’m calling from. Then they want to know the problem, which is (or at least, was) that I can’t connect to the Internet via dial-up on either of my computers—the eMac in the study or the laptop in the den. Because neither computer would connect (and since I could dial phone numbers with no problem), I figured it was something on Earthlink’s end.

Both computers, bless their little electronic hearts, really tried to dial out. I heard the number being dialed. (Oops! Make that numbers. I’ve tried all three that are available.) I heard the pings start—and stop. Normally I hear three, but I heard one and a half. Then weird electronic noise started—but not like the noise that I used to hear when the computer actually connected.

The Earthlink connection went AWOL around noon Thursday. I tried on and off during the afternoon. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Earthlink never went down for more than a few hours before—the last time about two weeks ago. I figured maybe there was a local outage. On Thursday night, I stopped at Dairy Queen on 220 and used their Wi-Fi (which is really fast). I could download my email with no problem. I figured maybe things were fixed by then. Then I went to the Earl Hamner reading at Hollins University.

Back at home, I tried again. Still out. At 11:20, I called the tech support number and was told by an automated voice that “due to unusual activity,” they were busy and maybe I should call back later or go online and chat. Huh? How could I go online when I couldn’t connect and wasn’t about to drive 15 miles to the nearest Wi-Fi? I held on and eventually a live person with a heavy accent answered. He assured me that if I’d just delete the number I was using and type in a new access number, things would be fine. He gave me a new access number and told me to make sure it wasn’t long distance. (It was a Ferrum number, so it was OK.)

Things weren’t fine. I called back. The automated voice, after noting that I’d recently called, wanted me to answer yes or no if it was the same problem. After announcing that “due to unusual activity,” the tech folks were all busy and maybe I should call back later or go online and chat, finally I was connected to another person with a heavy accent who said he would reset the connections from his side but it would take at least a half hour for the changes to take effect. I waited a half hour and tried again. Guess I didn’t wait long enough. I went to bed.

Friday morning, I tried again. You guessed it! This time (after the automated voice asked me the yes-or-no question, mentioned the unusual activity, suggested chatting online, etc.) another guy with an accent told me that he would have to get in touch with a real tech person (not his words, but that’s what he meant) and he’d have the guy call me. I said the person could call at 8:30; I’d arrange to be in the house then. The guy agreed. (The tech people are no help, but they are polite.) I hurried out to feed the critters, came in, made breakfast, and waited. No one called.

At 10:00, I called back and spoke to Mia who said she would escalate the request and gave me a case number, and we arranged for the tech guru to call between noon and two (yeah, we verified the time zone I’m in each time). Guess what?

At 2:30 Friday, I called again and after much waiting, was connected with Mia again. She wasn’t able to reach the guru to have him call me, but he’d call in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, my husband had errands in town and took the laptop with him. He stopped in at the Franklin County Library, which has great Wi-Fi. He downloaded the email that had come in since Thursday night. Among the emails were three from Earthlink. Why would they email me when I couldn't access email? One began:

Dear EarthLink Subscriber,

Thanks for contacting EarthLink to request a new Internet access
number. Before dialing in to EarthLink, please confirm that
the number(s) are local*.

However, I didn't request a new Internet access number. I requested help in getting online. Here's the second email they sent:

Dear EarthLink Subscriber,

On 10/02/2008 you contacted EarthLink Support and were assisted by
Aaron regarding case number 14163****.

Your satisfaction is our #1 priority, and we'd love for you to
tell us if we provided the outstanding support you deserve.

The link below will take you to a brief survey that takes
about two minutes to complete:
http://emergingtech.earthlink.net/runSurvey?id=30871556_14163****

The link will be active for 72 hours from the time we sent you
this email.

If you can't access the link above, please visit our general
feedback page at:
http://support.earthlink.net/feedback

If you have questions, you can always trade real-time messages
with a friendly Live Chat representative:
http://support.earthlink.net/chat

We appreciate your time and assistance!

Sincerely,
EarthLink Support

Now, if I can't get online how am I supposed to take surveys, access links, and chat online? But I kept trying. The last time I tried Friday night (after 10 PM), I still couldn't connect.

Now, I have had a long relationship with Earthlink, but I don’t think it’s working anymore. We can no longer communicate on the same level. I think Earthlink really isn't interested in making my satisfaction its #1 priority. Earthlink never even called. Since Earthlink is no longer interested in meeting my needs, I've started looking for something spiffier, faster, more user-friendly. Something whose toll-free tech support is located in the US. Something who understands what I need and when I need it.

After I talked to the nice Indian lady on Friday afternoon, I made another phone call and had a nice chat with a real live human. We made some arrangements. This time next week, there’ll be some changes in my Internet connections—and, alas, to my email address.

Meanwhile, my connection finally worked on Saturday morning. Maybe during the night, someone got a break from the “unusual activity” and fixed the problem. Maybe the connection self-corrected. The guy from Earthlink never did call.

Now, maybe I can finally "Haf-a-gud-deh." Anyhow, it'll take me a while to catch up on all the emails.

~

Edited on Monday, Oct. 6, to add this email from EarthLink that I received this afternoon:

You contacted us recently concerning your EarthLink Service. In
order to restore your service, we need to perform additional
troubleshooting steps. Please call us toll-free at 1-888-300-
8469 pin **** and reference ticket # 1832***.

Sincerely,
EarthLink, Inc.

Uh, why do they persist in sending emails to folks they think don't have service? Isn't that kind of like a doctor saying to a comatose patient, "If you'll just tell me what's wrong, I might be able to help you?"