Technology is Never Easy

Yesterday afternoon Cowgrit asked if I could run by her mom’s house after work to help her with a “phone thing.”

“Phone thing?” I said. She couldn’t elaborate, as she didn’t know what it was. Oh boy. I’m not a phone tech; I’m not even a decent computer tech. What in the world are they expecting me to do?

So, after leaving my office, I ran by the mom-in-law’s house to see about this “phone thing.” She took me upstairs to her computer and showed me the box. What the heck is an “Ooma”? MIL opened the box and took out the components, saying, “Here’s all the cables and everything. Here’s the instruction manual. Thank you very much for setting this up for me.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I’ll, ah, figure it out.”

I picked up the components and looked at them. What the hell is this? I thought. It’s a VoIP device? I only have a vague, general idea of what voice over IP even means, and they expect me to set this up?

Well, I read the box and the start up instructions. Fortunately, the set up seemed simple enough. Plug the Ooma box into the modem and the router and the telephone and the wall jack and the power outlet — five cables running hither and yon, snaking through all the other cables running around behind the computer desk. (It’s like a bowl of spaghetti back there.) Activate the system online, wait for the machine to boot up and download software.

[Note: The Ooma web site had a “Beta” label on nearly everything. Just great. Not only do I not know what I’m doing for someone who doesn’t know what I’m doing, the company is still in its beta stage.]

It took me about 30 minutes to read the instructions and get everything all connected and booted up. After all the lights were on, and everything looked to be hooked up correctly, I tried the phone line. Dialing out worked fine. But when I called the number from my cell, the phone didn’t ring. Well, crap.

I checked the instruction manual for troubleshooting tips — no solution. I went to the Ooma support FAQ — no solution. I went to the Ooma discussion forums — no solution. Then I called the Ooma tech support line, (with my cell phone).

I explained my problem to the tech, and she had me double check all the cable connections. I had everything properly installed. She did something on her end and managed to get the phone to ring. Yay! This all took about 20 minutes. I thanked the tech, the tech thanked me, and I hung up.

Just to confirm, I tried calling the line from my cell phone again. No ring. Dammit!

So I called the tech support back, but got a different person. I explained my problem, and this second tech had me double check all the cable connections again. I know they have to go through all the basic troubleshooting first, just to make sure, so even though I had told this guy that I had just talked with another tech who seemed to have solved the problem, I didn’t complain about doing the basic double checks again.

This time, though, this tech couldn’t get the phone to ring. My MIL had wanted to port her old phone number to this new device, so in the initial set up, (an hour ago), I had completed the fields online to start that transaction. But for some reason, that wasn’t going through yet. The tech seemed to decide that was the problem with dialing into the number. So he said he would give us a new temporary number to use until the original number got ported; it would take 3 to 4 weeks for the port to go through.

I asked how it was that I could dial out on that phone if the number was the problem? I mean, that seemed weird to me that dialing out would work but receiving a call wouldn’t.

“You will be able to dial any number you normally could with this new temp number,” the tech explained.

“Yeah,” I said, “I understand. I mean how is it that the old number could dial out but not receive in?”

“This new number will receive in, too,” the tech said. “It will work just like your regular number, but it’s just temporary until your old number ports over.”

“Right,” I said, “I got that. I’m asking about the old number. If the porting over is the problem, why could I dial out on the old number?”

The tech seemed to get a little frustrated with me at this point, as if he was dealing with someone who just wasn’t listening to him. He was still polite, but I could tell in his voice, when he explained, again, that the new number will dial out and receive in just like the old number, and we’ll get the old number back in a few weeks.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m not talking about the new number, I mean the old. . . nevermind.” Sigh. “Okay, just give me the new number.”

He tried the new, temporary, number and the phone line worked properly.

He gave me the new number, and explained that I now needed to go to their web site and finish the registration to have the old number ported over. He stayed with me while I found the page on their site for the registration. I thanked him, he thanked me, and we hung up. That call was over 30 minutes long.

I filled out all the registration information — which was quite a bit more work that I expected — and then clicked “Submit.”

I got an error page, saying, “We’re sorry, there was a problem processing the page.”

Oh you have got to be friggin’ kidding me!

The only option was to click Back and try again. But when I went back to the previous page, there was nothing of all the information I had just entered. Had the submit gone through? Or had the whole thing gotten lost?

I called the tech support line a third time. I explained the new situation to the tech, and she asked me if I had called about this previously. Seems she saw that I had just called twice before in the past hour. I explained that the previous calls were for a different issue, and that was resolved.

So with another 10 minutes on the phone, I confirmed that the porting submission had gone through properly. Thank god! I thanked the tech, the tech thanked me and we hung up.

All in all, I was working on that thing for over two hours. “Quick Start” and “Simple Installation” my ass.

My dream is to one day set up some piece of “plug-and-play” technology in less than 10 minutes. I want shit to just freakin’ work when I plug it in.

Bullgrit