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Tech Support Notes from the Underground

China Unicom

I’m deep in the bowels of AT&T and Apple. I’ve actually got them talking to each other. I feel like an extreme match maker. Increasingly senior tech people, roused from their slumbers…

Cheerful persistence in the face of polite deferral…

All I want for Christmas is for this SIM card to Validate…

After endless hours on the phone with AT&T, I walked up three bureaucratic levels at Apple, got them to hand me off to AT&T again, at the bottom of course, but with urgency, and am now walking my way up the AT&T ladder…

The trick is the friendly request, reiterating the paradox, asking them what could be happening, and then being silent.

Encouraging noises help…

And at every step, be prepared to start cheerfully from zero…

“I do indeed understand that you (Apple) say AT&T hasn’t unlocked the phone. Funny thing is that three different people at AT&T say that it IS unlocked. What do we make of that?…”

Ooo, this woman might be the ticket. Not at all polite, but slow and meticulous….

O, she’s good. She tried to explain what had happened, but then just said “her guy did magic.”

And presto. A gazillion tech hours later, the phone is actually unlocked. Hello China Unicom!

I really wanted to teach Alice in Wonderland, not Lord of the Flies this month. Maybe they are closer than they appear…

Categories: Philosophical Musings.

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