Direct Questioning

I think I have gotten myself onto some sort of list at DirecTV. I have a feeling they keep a list of customers they suspect are profoundly stupid, and my name is rising higher and higher on it.

You see, we got DirecTV last summer, and I absolutely love it. The combination of the initials "HD" and "DVR" have forever changed my life. The only bad part about DirecTV is that their receivers were apparently built as a science project by preschool children with zero quality control involved in the process.

In addition to the HD DVR, we also have three additional receivers for other TVs, and these things keep dying on us.

Several months ago, the first one died in our spare bedroom. So I called the company, and after some hemming and hawing, they sent us a new one. A couple months passed, and the one in Little Smoot's room died, meaning she was suffering from SBSPDS (Sponge Bob Square Pants Deficiency Syndrome). So I called the company, and, a little more reluctantly, they sent me another unit.

So this week our third unit bit the dust. I knew it was going to be a fun phone call to the DirecTV people. When I attempted to call the first time, my call was apparently transferred to a call center on Jupiter or something, because the line was filled with so much static I couldn't even hear the person (or android, as the case may have been) on the other end of the line. So I called back, which meant fishing through their incredibly annoying automated phone service until I was able to once again reach an actual person. I have slash marks on my wrists from this process alone.

This person, upon learning that this was the third time that I had a receiver drop dead, decided that one of their people should call me and go over some troubleshooting tactics. Swell. I knew that would be a lot of fun.

Two hours later, a man named Steve who spoke v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y called me in an apparent attempt to catch me lying about the fact that the receiver was dead. You see, in their minds, the only possible reason that three of these units could have failed over these past several months is that I must be the most stupid person alive, and I am causing the problem. It obviously has nothing to do with the fact that these things are apparently built out of a few wires and actual horse crap.

So Steve led me through a thorough and tough line of questioning, like: "Is it plugged in?" "Is there a power switch connected to the outlet where it is plugged in?" "Is it plugged into a power strip, which could be off?" "Did you actually make it past first grade?" "Have you been beating the crap out of the receiver with a baseball bat, or other long, slender object?" "Are you sure it is plugged in?" And so forth.

Of course I had to play along with their little game of "20 Stupid Questions," or else I'd honk Steve off and they'd never send me a replacement unit. I wasn't about to tell him that I am actually quite technically savvy, and that I have been dubbed a geek by many people over the years, and when anything goes wrong with any electronic device in the neighborhood, I'm the one who gets the call and I can usually fix the problem... and trust me, Steve, the damn receiver is D-E-A-D! But I digress.

So now I have to wait a couple days for the new unit to arrive, so I can resume beating it with a stick.