Loose Ends

I do not like loose ends.

I have a stack of paper above my computer with all the loose ends I must wait on to make sure they are done. Were these frequent flyer miles credited? Was I reimbursed for this mail order return? And I am not one to forget. But it drives me crazy.

At the end of May I ordered a $12 software program to teach Ben to type. (He's typing anyway so he may as well do it right instead of relearning later.) I ordered this fine product (winner of numerous software awards) from Timberdoodle, a relatively local curriculum supply company that caters to homeschoolers. It arrived promptly. And would not download. I contacted the company who referred me to the software maker's tech support. I called them on June 9 and someone acted like he knew what the problem was and told me was emailing the fix and to respond to the email if it didn't work. It didn't and I did respond to the email. And I responded AGAIN on June 15th. And then I called and left a message for Tech Support (after waiting on hold for 20 minutes to talk to someone). And went on vacation for a week the following week. No one called. (I checked my caller ID.) No one emailed. Finally on July 2, I called Timberdoodle and told them my tale of woe. The gentleman offered to refund my money and profusely apologized. And I told him my real desire was to get this to work. So he offered to call said software company. Then he called me back to say they would make it a priority. A priority was a call on July 7th. I missed the call but did get an email asking me when was a good time to call and the next day I got a real tech support guy on the line. He proceeded to use a program to manipulate/see my computer and figure out the problem. In his defense, he spent over an hour, trying repeated fixes. Then he started blaming Microsoft. Then he abruptly ended the phone call stating the person he needed to help him was on the way to airport. He said, "I'll call back this afternoon" and hung up before I could even respond.

And then I waited. The next afternoon (July 9) I emailed him back and asked if the problem was Microsoft if he couldn't at least tell me what the problem was and if he had a relevant number for the tech giant, provide it. Nothing.

Yesterday I sent a lengthy email to the Customer Service department outlining the prompt communication (ha!) I had received from their Tech Support department. Today when my friendly Tech Support guy called and asked if I had time to work on this again with him, I had high hopes he had just been delayed and had planned to get back to me all along. He did apologize for the delay and said "You've been very patient" to which I responded, "Well, no I haven't really." And then he fixed the problem. I then said something like, "I do appreciate your help with this" and he said something to the effect of "Yeah. Sure." (The kind of "sure" that really means "whatever lady.") His tone indicated to me that indeed he had heard from customer service. I liked Matt. I would like to think he planned to get back to me anyway. But, when?

Like I said. I hate loose ends.