You are on your own

As I wrestle with Microsoft’s insistence on installing the Microsoft xml core services 4.0 service pack 2, over and over and over again, today the inevitable happened – the dreaded blue screen. Following that my Vodafone Connect (internet mobile connection) Box went dead. So, what do you do? Rightttt.

I rang 1214, Vodafone (Portugal) technical support, and was greeted by a support rep that was obviously already suffering from a week’s dose of solving people’s problems – moody. I’m glad doctors don’t take the same approach “You’ve got cancer but we don’t have a cure for that yet – can I help you with anything else?”

I was asked if I was running Vista or Windows XP – well neither, I thought naively content with the fact I was running Microsoft’s “best operating system yet” (thanks for that Steve Ballmer), Windows 7. “Oh we don’t guarantee that. We will in the future though I have no date yet”, she said interrupting me should I have the audacity to ask any other question.

Windows 7, Microsoft’s most hyped and acclaimed (yes people are actually saying nice things about Microsoft), is not yet “guaranteed” by Vodafone. That’s got to make sense to someone at Vodafone. Anyway, I never asked to be guaranteed! I just wanted some help…

So I rang a friend (who works at Vodafone), woke him up and he still managed to help me more than Vodafone by suggesting I do a point restore before the Microdaft update. The restore didn’t work (error message) but it did the trick (go figure). Thanks Vodafone, friend at Vodafone. You’d think that if companies want to create meaningful relationships with their clients they could do more for us.

Thinking about it – maybe Vodafone is switched on. I did ring a friend at Vodafone and he did help me. Yikes – Vodafone does work and is my BFF.

I’m glad they sent me 2 unsolicitated SMS messages in the last week informing me (customer) that they were voted (not by me) number 1 for customer satisfaction. Vodafone sucks rocks!

(for anyone at Vodafone excluding my friend, this is called sarcasm).