Unplugged

I haven't blogged for a while...for many reasons...but we'll get to that in a minute. 
No, I haven't died, run away, or dropped off the face of the planet.  I didn't even take a conscious or purposeful "break" from blogging.  

You ready for my story? Here goes...

I moved to a new house in a new area (I'm loving it too!) though it is not far from where I was living before.  In the middle of the chaos that comes from moving we realized that we needed to get the internet installed in our new house and therefore called the internet company to schedule an appointment.  We were told we couldn't get an appointment any sooner than a week and a half out, so we took it and decided to try to wait patiently.  A week and a half without access to anything internet related is difficult, but not impossible.  You wouldn't believe how much you CAN'T do without the internet easily accessible though.  It makes life much easier to google an address rather than have to look it up in a phone book or directory somewhere, for example.  Life is much faster when you have the internet around, but life is not unliveable without internet access.  I adjusted well enough for that week and a half, knowing that life would be back to normal with access to the world wide web soon enough.  I even tried to enjoy the forced unplugging. 

On the given day, we waited, waited, and waited.  No techinician came, no word from the internet company came either.  We reluctantly pulled out the phone book and started trying to track down someone who could help us.  We spent over 4 hours talking with people who seemed they had no idea what they were talking about, and had no idea how to help us.  Eventually, after a lot of forcefulness and demanding, I finally found someone who was mildly helpful, enough to at least get an new order requested, but we would have to wait again, for at least another week.  After discussing the situation I was able to find out that it had been the internet company's fault all along and so I asked that the order be escalated due to the fact that we had already been waiting a long time and the company had messed up.  I was told that there would be no guarantee that could happen, but that it would be noted.  I was annoyed, feeling like most big companies want you to feel, like I had no control or power. 

Here comes my newly discovered love for twitter and social networking in general.  (Remember this post?  I have turned over a new leaf, sort of.)

I got on twitter (technically I texted twitter from my phone that does NOT have internet) and made a simple comment about how I was not happy with the internet company, tagging them in the tweet.  Some friends, including a roommate who is not at the house currently but had been following our internet saga, responded asking about the situation and it quickly turned into a bit of a back-and-forth for a few minutes.  Soon, the internet's Customer Advocacy Group was following me on twitter, asking how they could help, and what they could do to fix the problem.  The next day, I had someone calling me, asking for my order information so they could escalate the order.  I had internet the next day. 

There is definitely some benefit to social media.

Especially when it gets the attention of people who are paid to keep their companies' names safe from angry customers all over the internet. 

Now, I'm not saying I get everything I want this way, or that I should, but in cases like mine, I sure am glad there is still some level of customer support when a wrong is actually committed. 

And now, I can blog again.  I guess I had just gotten used to not blogging all the things that happen in my life, and thus took an unconscious break from the blogging world.  But I'm back, happier than ever to share in the benefits of this crazy internet world, and very glad to be connected again.