Customer Service

May 24, 2021

Sometimes I wonder: what was I thinking? Last week was one of those times. It went like this:

“Agent Vishat, are you there?” (Name altered.)

Silence. Or what I think of as silence when the Best Buy “chat” agent signs off without saying goodbye.

It was 7:28 PM. At 7:13 he had ordered me to “Open the tools/app Under Sensors tab, navigate to GPS sensor (if available) and confirm latitude and longitude are being detected.”

I typed, “Where do I find the tools/app?” 

Silence.

I typed, “Where do I find the Sensors tab? I’m not a computer expert.”

I stared at the screen. Minutes passed. More minutes. I never heard from Agent V again.

He joined a select group, my third chat agent of the day. Earlier I thought I was communicating with Agent Pradack. Just then I noticed the power cable lying on the floor, unplugged. I had jostled the laptop and yanked the cable from the wall outlet. Moments later the battery ran low, the screen went black. I mumbled something. Replugging it, I got back to the chat room and met Agent Vishat, but only long enough for him to disappear.

Before Pradack, I was chatted up by a guy who promised me a call in 38 minutes. An hour passed, no call.

I waited for Agent V for about 15 minutes, then surrendered and shut down the laptop. I guessed he and Pradack were having drinks in a bar across the street from the call center and laughing at my humiliating confession that I’m not a computer expert. 

Those few minutes ended my very strange week in the tech world. I hope it has ended. It started when I tried to navigate to the website of Garmin, the big precision instruments company that about a year ago sold me a GPS watch. Shortly afterward, the watchband broke. I set the watch aside for a few months. Finally I decided I wanted a new band.

I found what looked like the website for Garmin, showing images of watches and other navigation devices. A “chat box” opened. “What is your issue?” someone typed.  I can do this, I thought, and replied, “I’m looking for a watchband for a Forerunner 25.” The typist answered, “A technician will call you in three to five minutes.”

That’s customer service, I thought. The company makes a phone call to sell a watchband?

Sure enough, in five minutes Charles called. “Are you with Garmin?” I asked. “Of course,” he said. “I can upgrade your computer’s GPS and apply the upgrade to all your other devices.” I thought well, I haven’t used the watch in a year, it must need upgrading.

“I need to take control of your computer,” he said. He directed me to a link called Ultraviewer and instructed me to select “remote control.” That seemed reasonable. He’ll take care of this, rather than have me attempt to follow his techie instructions. I clicked, he took control of the laptop.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “You have 6,000 foreign intrusions. They are likely from Russia.” He showed me a screen filled with rows of data labeled “foreign.”

That’s awful news, I told myself. What about my anti-virus protection program? “That has expired,” Charles said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of the intrusions and install protection. It will take 30 to 45 minutes.”

For nearly an hour I stared open-mouthed at the laptop screen as thousands of rows of technical stuff flashed by. Is this what computer viruses look like, I wondered. I saw numbers, letters, symbology, as if I had been dragged into some deep technical ocean depth, the Challenger Deep of software. Finally it stopped. Another screen flashed in front of me that resembled the earlier “foreign” stuff. All the rows were gone.

“That will be $299.99,” Charles said. In shock I gave him my credit card number. I wasn’t planning on $300 for computer work that morning. He sent me a receipt from Mysoft Squad.

The next day I felt uneasy, although the computer seemed fine. I wondered about Mysoft Squad. I looked it up and found a Better Business Bureau link filled with angry complaints about scams by ripoff artists who target people looking for GPS products and software upgrades, in many cases from Garmin, and sell them fake services. I was directed to file a report with the Federal Trade Commission. Friends and family advised me to get the computer checked. I dragged it to Best Buy, they did their standard sweep, found nothing wrong.

I wanted my money back but the credit card company won’t dispute a claim unless you tell the vendor you don’t want his product or service. The last person I wanted to talk to was Charles.  Did he actually do anything in his hour controlling my laptop? I described the rows of data that flashed across the screen to the Best Buy rep. “All that stuff was fake,” he said. “The website was fake, too.”

I wanted some assurance that the GPS, wherever that is, was okay. So I called the chat line and met P, V, and the first guy whose name I never got.

It’s now a cliché: technology has transformed life. Many, maybe most of us use computers to get through the day, every day. Intrusions? Viruses? Who but a trained computer engineer really understands what they are?  As with other things in life, when we want new tech stuff, or to fix broken things, we look for someone who says he’ll help us right now. Someone like Charles.

We did cancel the credit card. Garmin is warning customers not to be snookered into buying GPS upgrades or other products by phone. The FTC warns that “many of the targets of these scams are vulnerable elderly people.” Well—thanks for that, FTC.