Into the flaming abyss of an out-of-service economy

Sartre said hell is other people only because he never had to call technical support. That’s the sort of idle musing that will pop into your head should you ever – as I did last Sunday – have to call a computer-related technical support line and get put on hold for 52 minutes – as I was. Unlike the straightforward pain of the good old fiery pit, tech-support hell is an evil masterstroke of vague yet relentless torment, misery by a thousand tiny cuts.

Start with the soundtrack – an endless loop of pop instrumental rejected by the elevator industry as too insipid. Add the recorded voices of fast-talking and upbeat salesmen, blissfully unaware of the irony of trying to sell you other products while you’re trying to get the one you already bought to work. Mix in occasional interruptions by a sincere voice assuring you that your call is important, that help is just moments away and you’ll be helped momentarily. After about 20 minutes, expect a voice tinged with remorse saying this is not the type of service you ought to be getting but call traffic is heavier than anticipated, so buck up. And just in case you’re thinking of bolting, a stern voice reminds you every few minutes that if you hang up and call again later you’ll be at the back of the line and will only be hurting yourself.

At our house, this trip to the netherworld actually started a few days earlier, the prior Wednesday, when we realized we could not send or receive e-mail. The problem persisted until Friday, so, after determining the problem not with us but with Adelphia, the enormous telecom megacorp that recently bought up the small Maine outfit with an office just down the street that we went to a couple of years ago to sign up for Internet service, I did the modern, technologically literate thing – I logged on the Adelphia Web site and filled out and sent the on-line form for reporting problems. I worried for a moment that they would not be able to e-mail me the remedy, but then I figured these high-tech whizbangs would be smart enough to figure that out and would call me on the phone instead.

With no response by Sunday afternoon, I called the number listed on the company Web site and after a mere five minutes on hold, spoke to someone who gave the number I really needed to call. (The Web site was so jammed with info about Adelphia products and the professional sports teams they bankroll that they just couldn’t squeeze in one more phone number.)

And a mere 52 minutes later I was talking to Don, a somber but efficient young technician who quickly ID’d the problem – Adelphia has changed the e-mail settings for the former Maine outfit but had neglected to notify “some” of the customers. He quickly walked me through the changes and, upon connecting, I was able to download five days’ of accumulated e-mail – including one from the whizbangs informing me they’d received the problem form and would be e-mailing a remedy.

But the saddest part of this sad story is that everyone I’ve told it to can top it, everyone’s been on hold longer, treated more shabbily and, in many cases, gotten no help at all. The tech support model used by dial-up Internet providers – the paying customer calls the help line and waits on hold, describes the problem to a technician, hangs up to test the remedy (most home users have only one line, shared by telephone and computer), and when it still doesn’t work, calls again, waits on hold again and describes the same problem to different technician (since technicians are not allowed to call the customer back or even provide their extension number) – truly was designed by Satan. That the Microsoft Network seems to be the leading cause of complaints of this nature only adds to that suspicion.

Worse, everyone senses that the real sadness comes not from having time wasted and intelligence insulted, but from the realization, slowly gained during those long minutes on hold, that this is the new economy, the new high-tech service economy of the future that everybody’s so revved up about. We’ve sent all our manufacturing jobs overseas, so while Indonesians are engaged in the real work of making shoes, Americans are earning their livings by jerking each other around on the telephone, providing service that really is only the pretense of service.

For something worse still, see the Northeastern University study published this week showing that New England, the region that was most happy to swap manufacturing jobs for service jobs during the ’90s was also the only region not to see its median family income increase during the greatest economic boom in the nation’s history.

It’s especially sad for Maine, as it watches the brightest star in its new high-tech service economy firmament, the technical support company EnvisioNet, fizzle into unpaid bills, layoffs and bankruptcy filings that are a textbook example of how hyperactive public relations, overly enthusiastic politicians and irrational injections of public money can combine to create really bad business decisions. In April, the company was boasting of new and explosive growth; last week, laid-off former employees were kept waiting in the parking lot for their last paychecks until after the banks closed. The speed with which Microsoft took its tech-support calls elsewhere is a measure of just how shallow this new high-tech service economy truly is.

I should note that at the same time I was trying to get my e-mail fixed, I was also dealing with a broken water pump at the summer house. I threw the old thing in the trunk and drove over to Norlen’s in Orrington. Eric checked it over top to bottom and said he’d get back to me. No more than 10 minutes later, I’m just back in the office, Eric calls with a list of just the parts that need replacing, they’re ordered and were delivered as promised yesterday. It’s not new economy, it’s not high-tech, it is, however, service.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.