I Could Hug My IT Guy

Six weeks, many phone calls, and lots of helpers in both Turkish and English later, and I now have internet. This is been a frustrating 6 week long nightmare.

1). There is the internet provider call center that has an English option that says, "For English, please dial 99". Unfortunately, after dialing that number the response is in Turkish and I later learned means "You have dialed a wrong number." This happens every time I call.

2)Because I don't have a land line associated with my account, I have an account number that, when entered at the command "Please type your account number" comes with with a "You have entered a wrong account number". I taught my Turkish friends the "dial 0" trick to by-pass the automated messages.

3)On Tuesday after I got the technition to come to my house to turn on the internet, I got a call the next day from the internet provider that said, "We know your internet is turned on, but when you are at your computer you need to call us at this number to enter some more numbers so your internet will actually work." My response is, I'm at work and when I call your call center in the evening, I get problem number 1 above. He says, "We have that problem fixed. You can call back this evening." I get his name, just to be sure. That evening, when I call back at the number I said, I get problem #1 from above...(not fixed.)

4) I have an amazing Turkish expediter who calls the internet provider and gets frustrated and yells for a long time After 4 days of phone calls she doesn't know what to do. To make things worse for her, she has a problem with a 2 week old gas leak in her newlywed apartment so is stressed out and frustrated with the lack of competent service as well. (At least I won't die from my problem.)

5) I start crying today at work when someone asks if I have internet and the IT guy sees me and feels bad and offers to drive me home after school and fix the problem which he did.

I LOVE computer engineering/math geeks who run school IT departments and help distressed middle age women. He even let me give him a hug.