Ding-Dong Telephone!

For those of us who haven't been born into the digital age, we may experience the digital revolution as confusing, hard to understand and when problems occur, we can easily feel lost and without help. We have seen it in our direct neighbourhood, how seniors are struggling to understand their smart phones (that is if they have one). 

And even though we personally don't feel as seniors (but, of course,we are)  we are experiencing problems with our computers and phones. 

A good example may be Bea's Motorola phone. One morning she restarted her phone and it wouldn't connect to the internet, while the phone part was still working. After trying and retrying without avail, she jumped in the car and drove 60miles to the telecommunication store where I had bought her the phone about 18 months ago.

When she got back she had spent USD250 on a new phone but was told she could return it within 2 weeks.

Meanwhile the company would attempt to find out why the internet problem existed.

One evening a phone rep called and told us they had found the problem and she should return to the store to let them fix it.

Today was that day. The technician installed the SIM card into her old phone, and it didn't work. Finally he called for backup customer service. There he was connected to the wrong department 4 times. After finally getting the right person on the phone he tried another way, restarted the phone but nothing would re-establish the internet connection.

Then he came up with the last resort: A factory reset, which wipes out all of the clients data.

After spending 1hr. in the store, this last resort solution got the internet working again. He then returned the $250, Bea had paid earlier.

Of course, we could have done a factory reset ourselves, but it is the knowledge about how to solve problems in the digital world we are missing.

Interestingly, the lasting failure of connecting to the internet has now happened 3 times. 2 of these phones were mine, the last one still under warranty.  They gave me a new phone. Now, I wonder what a factory reset would have done.