Page 6. MAINE COASTAL NEWS November 2016 '70 M - P F By Lee S. Wilbur Try to live a fairly simple life in retire-
ment. Do a bit of traveling on occasion, try not to accumulate more than I can fi x my- self. Just sold one of my all-time favorite vehicles, 1999 GMC Suburban, odometer reading 347k and change. Guy that bought it put few dollar bills over 900$ in it with new front tires and the mechanic told him there shouldn’t be anything to keep that vehicle from the 500K mark and perhaps beyond. Best year ever built. Sold her for two reasons. Bigger than I needed now, and we’d picked up a “2001” Chevy Tahoe in Florida about 8 years ago and recently brought it back to Maine. Camp had begun to look like a used car dealership. Suburban was great. Odometer would
roll over each and every mile with no tricky lights or bells to signal my “seatbelt not fas- tened”. I could leave my key in the ignition and not be bonged to death when I opened driving door to make an exit. Decision was mine and mine alone to have the interior lights stay off whenever occasion arose or I’d parked before day-up in close vicin- ity of a duck or fi eld of geese unlike the Tahoe. Word is, and word is wrong, GMC and Chevrolet do not build equivalent ve- hicles as we’d assumed buying the Tahoe.
First clue was slamming the doors. Second came a few months later when odometer light worked intermittently. Not sure exact mileage any longer. Register her kind of by feel and when odometer light does come on, we take a picture. Somewhere north of 225k now. Runs good. Driver’s door doesn’t latch so well But, underway, added wind pressure helps the slam. Gas mileage is healthy compared to AJ’s Volkswagon, but she still likes the safety and space of the Tahoe.
Another simplicity in my life and one
which I often get kidded about...”Oh you “still” have a fl ip-phone!!!... Yes I do. Costs me somewhere under a $100/year. Battery wears out I can replace with new Trac- phone for princely sum of $15.00 with ex- tra half price minutes. Last time there was a pinprick in the process. Couldn’t carry my number over. Hour with the operator, next day again another hour’s search for someone who knew something to fi nd out Verizon had lost the “carrierying” contract to AT&T and I now have a new number which doesn’t show in bold letters when I call out (helping memorize) and now forget. So, I can’t call to fi nd where “it’s” been misplaced. They’re rugged phones though. Two past, went through the wash
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in my pocket, then dryer. Found it when I was folding pants. Dialed out, worked fi ne. Why change? AJ decides she’s had to put up with
poor phone reception long enough here at the lake. Phone and internet are both “P” poor. Someone tells us to try AT&T, so she goes to Ellsworth to sign on. Course there’s still some contract outstanding with Veri- zon. And she gets a new Samsung phone which forms an instant hatred for yours tru- ly. Not but a few weeks go by when Veri- zon starts calling sometimes a dozen times per day letting us know we need to pay the outstand contract. Call back, try to talk be- cause now they’re still billing us as well for the original monthly contract. Finally after a month I get past the “Please hold you’re our favorite customer routine” for an hour, tell them I have a credit card from AT&T to pay the contract off but want to get the “minor” item of original billing settled. Damn, if this operator doesn’t get me over to another operator who says, “Oh, I’ve got to check on this.” He puts me on hold with same smarmy message for north of a half hour and I just hang up. We’re still getting the same calls. Internet webpage makes no sense and in a few days the phone gets disconnect for winter and it wouldn’t sur- prise me to pick up the same message in the spring.
They’re all the same. Last spring I put
our internet service with Comcast on sea- sonal. You know, where they “only” charge some 20$ a month to keep a number on
hold and an equipment charge. Then we start to get these horrendous bills mount- ing up around the $700’s. Same old routine with the canned message. Finally get a call from this nice lady in North Carolina with an accent you could butter bread with who says very politely and with great concern “Coahm Cayest wooud lahk two gayet theyah aquiepmant bayek.” I, in my Mother’s tongue, (she was
also a North Carolinian) axeplain what the situation is and noone is going to be able to get any equipment back. “Ah’m in Mayun” and the house is locked in “Flahda” Well, she allows that a shame and she’d
give us a 45 day extension and fi le a report. Last week I caught a few minutes down time and called Comcast after the frustrat- ing call with Verizon. Unbelievable...I got a real person fi rst ring. Transferred and same thing, another real person. Then af- ter explaining she puts me on hold but says “Now don’t hang up. This may take a little while.” and she actually kept checking back throughout the shy hour it took. Wow! Come to fi nd out Comcast had been
putting us back on service, then taking us off , back on again, off again for six months. I’d been sucked in once and sent a hundred thinking might have been a holdover from spring. She got it worked out, refunded my money, and set us up for this winter. Now if I hadn’t checked, Comcast would have added that sum to their billion dollar profi t for 2016 and kept on smilin’. My next goal for this winter will be to
have a long chat with Fairpoint if I can get through their “holding pattern” and inquire as to why we’re paying for internet services and getting “dialup” speed while being charged for the lightning variety. The sev- eral techs we’ve met this summer always seem to leave with the same goodbye, “You should be fi ne now.” They’ve tweaked the line or put in another modem “the latest”, changed connections for the umpteenth and they leave. Next day it’s “Dialup” once again.
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