Easy? Never.

I'm always the optimist. Glass half-full kind of thing. Even when past experience has told me that, no matter what the instruction booklet says, getting a computer to cooperate with a new modem will take hours instead of steps 1-4, I still hold out and hope--no, believe--that this time, it'll be just that easy.



I'm always wrong.



I've had the Crack for four weeks now. Last night I learned how to check my voice mail (Hi, Liz! You did call me to tell me that you're engaged, just like you said you did. I'm sorry I doubted you.). Since we're leaving for Florida in a couple of hours, yesterday was the deadline to make sure the stupid thing would actually "tether" to my laptop so we can get online while we're in Florida. As usual, I'd tried a few times and when it didn't work, I just put it off.



After work yesterday, I spent over 3 hours at the AT&T store. I am loving AT&T. Every time I walk in, someone immediately asks if they can help. Ntelos evidentally didn't believe in customer service; if you remember, I would wait up to 90 minutes without being spoken to or asked to wait a bit. Not at AT&T.

I foolishly procastinated trying to tether the laptop and phone until the day before we leave for Florida (1 hour and 25 minutes now!), because the booklet shows four very simple steps (the fourth being "click on the CONNECT button") and I was so sure it would be that simple. I know better. I never believe that little voice that says, "you idiot, you know it'll take three hours to get it to work, and only then after you have the help of two phone techs and an hour of on-the-phone-with-customer-service (the tech guy, not me) to discover that my phone would not connect. Would. Not. Yeah, it's a refurb, that's the only way I could afford one. For some reason, they frequently won't cooperate with tethering. So he reset the phone. That didn't work.

I was tired, but I couldn't get upset at all the time it was taking because these guys were trying everything they knew to make it work. Finally, after the store closed, they said that the phone is defective, and they'll send a new (refurb) one to me. Since we'll be in Florida, and it was too late to get it to me today, they're sending it to my daughter's house. It should be there tomorrow. All I have to do is pack up the old phone, slap on the postage return sticker that they emailed me, and drop it in a mail box after I get the new (refurb) one.

I was floored. I've never had service like that with Ntelos. I had to argue with them for months to get my name changed on my bill after I remarried. It took three billing cycles--and three trips into the non-service store--to get my niece's phone line separated from mine, and they still didn't want to do it. Fortunately I saved every freaking contact that I had with them about these issues and finally they fixed things.

So. Once the new (refurb) one is here, all I have to do is link it to the laptop, open the communications manager, and click "connect". It will work.

I know it will.