Mrs. Betty Was Right About Technology
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DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
Good gracious, I found myself talking to a recording. Granted it wasn’t the first time, but “they” are getting better.
The caller ID made me suspicious when I picked up the phone, but the opening statement caught me off guard.
“David,” followed by a brief pause that sounded like a real conversation was in the making. “Getting you on the phone is tougher than catching up with my mother-in-law,” she said. Admittedly I was briefly intrigued and took the bait. The dialogue continued a bit before I realized the computer-generated communication on the other end didn’t exactly line up with our “conversation.”
Clunk, the phone went down and I felt a little dumb. And I never did figure out what “she” was peddling.
Telemarketers have been annoying during my entire career, but they are certainly getting more sophisticated. I was already frustrated, the internet speed at the office was crawling and I was trying to get last week’s stories uploaded to our website. I still use AT&T U-verse for internet at the office and there are days when the service seems as slow as the old dial-up days. This causes problems for our phone lines too, they are voice-over IP lines that utilize the internet connection.
Thankfully there are more and more fiber options available in the Valley. Several businesses in my vicinity have switched to AT&T fiber and at least one business has fiber from C-Spire. I am going to try and hang on until (hopefully) TVIfiber and the City of Water Valley ink a deal for fiber in the city, I would much rather do business with a local company. That would be a happy day – canceling that last AT&T account and writing my last check to the company.
Unless… I have to switch my cell phone to another carrier and choose between AT&T and Verizon. That’s another problem, I am a longtime C Spire customer and their cell phone service seems to be getting worse. Dropped calls, calls not going through, it always happens at the worst times. If my memory serves me right, I got my first phone, a bag phone, from Cellular South back in 1994 when I was a student at Northwest Mississippi Community College. I was still with them in 2011 when the company was rebranded as C Spire.
That means I wrote a monthly check to Cellular South/C Spire for services for almost 30 years – I have been a very loyal customer. If things don’t change, it may be time to do a little exploring to see what my options are, even if I have to check in with AT&T for cell phone service.
All this technology that makes our lives “easier” got me to thinking – maybe Mrs. Betty was right all those years. She was adamant that cell phone service just hasn’t been the same since Cellular South made her do away with her old bag phone. Granted she wasn’t tech savvy and never did adapt to the later phones. Her last iPhone stayed in her purse for years, uncharged, just in case she needed it.
But Mrs. Betty always had a simple solution – quit changing things and saying it is better. The more technology we have at our fingertips, the more complicated life becomes. Anybody have an old bag phone we can charge up?
