The Trials and Tribulations of a Digital Immigrant

I am a stranger in a strange world. Like many of you, in a land of digital natives, as a digital immigrant I am struggling to find my way. Over the last three months, this journey was painful. I found myself sitting on an orange couch for 15 hours. It was over multiple visits as multiple people tried to figure how to solve my problem. For 14 weeks it could not be resolved. Today, the journey is over. Sadly, it culminated in a 22-minute call with a $44.22 refund....

This blog post could be a rant, but I will try to tell it in a calm voice. If I lose patience please bear with me: I am not happy. I hate wasting time. Like you, I am a busy person. Why, did I sit on the orange couch? Here is my story....

I had an iPhone 5. It was two years old. As a constant companion to a gal who is always on the go, it is a data hog. The phone is always by my side. In November, when I went to London, I called to get the international plan. I got it, and when I landed in Heathrow and flipped the switch to data roaming, I instantly got a message that I was over the data roaming limit. It was a nanosecond. I sighed. "This is not much of a plan," I thought.

Throughout the day in London, I got text after text on my phone. ATT was sharing that I was experiencing excessive data roaming charges. Since I needed data for my work, I would click "OK," and "I accept the charge" and go on with business. However, on the night of November 22nd at 11:37 p.m., as I tried to access my maps in a dangerous part of London walking home, AT&T turned off my data usage. I was hopelessly lost. After many hours of walking to find my hotel, I turned in at 1:14 AM for a 7:00 a.m. flight to come home.

En route home, I called to have the data turned back on five times. Each time I was told that it was on, and nothing happened. On the last call, I was told to go to my local store and have the representative check the phone. So, I got in line and sat on the orange couch, not once, not twice, not three times, but five times that month. Each time, I got a different answer. It was the SIM card, it was the phone, or it was the setting. I tried them all, but nothing worked...

I paid my $1300 bill for data service in London despite the inconvenient outage. I also paid for $400 for data service for December and January despite the fact that no one could figure out my problem. Over the course of two months, I kept returning to the store sitting on the orange couch for hours at a time, as I watched the melting pot of digital immigrants and digital natives trying to get service. I would smile. It was quite a soap opera.

"I've got you bro," said fist thumping Sean. "We will make it work this time," said Danielle. "I don't understand why it doesn't work," said Joe. Nothing worked, but each time I got a customer service text from AT&T asking if I was satisfied. I would always reply "no" with a rating of "1." The text would always say that they were sorry, but no one solved my problem.

Without data, on my travels, I sought "hotspots" like a lizard seeks sun lamps. For months, I scraped-by answering contracts on my phone at a Starbucks or using GOGO Inflight on an airplane. It was increasingly difficult to do work without internet and data on my phone, so I once again returned to the AT&T store to get back in line and sit on the couch and wait my turn. It was the last place I wanted to be on a snowy Saturday....

When my turn came, I was advised by David to get a new phone. Begrudgingly, I upgraded to the iPhone 6. With all the promises and accolades by the sales people, I would grimly state, " Can this fix my data problem?" "Yes of course," said David. After two hours of loading my pictures and music to my new iCloud and setting up my new phone, I happily looked down to find that I had DATA! I was ecstatic. Thinking that it was fixed, I sighed and returned home.

Quite contrite, I congratulated myself on fixing the problem. However, within minutes, like a phone obsessed with the devil, my data service died. Obsessively, I tried to reload different settings on the phone and fix it myself. My best friend called me stubborn and obsessive. I fought with myself. I hated that couch. I did not want to return to the AT&T store and sit on the orange couch. However, this was my fate.

After 75 days of trying to find a problem, with five calls with multiple holds, and fifteen hours of sitting on the orange couch, I got Michael. When I introduced myself, I was hostile, and angry. I asked myself, "Why does this have to be this hard?" Michael peered at me over his glasses and gave me wide berth as he looked up my account, and asked, "Why did they turn off your data service on November 22nd?"

I sighed. I shared the story. I grimaced as I explained that five people on five calls told me that the service was turned back on and that they were sure it was the phone. He then flipped his iPad over and showed me the digital status of "off" on my data plan. I stared in disbelief, and asked, "Why did no one else see this? How do we get this fixed?"

"Easy," he said. "I will just make a call." Fifteen minutes later, I had data. Michael fixed the problem that plagued me for over two months. As I left the store, he called out, "Be sure to call AT&T customer service to get a refund. They will want to make this right...."

So, today, I called AT&T customer service and waited for 22 minutes. I got a $42.22 refund. As, I hung up, I heard, "Thank-you for calling customer service." I sighed and shook my head. Customer service used to have a much different definition before the world of digital.

So tonight, please say a prayer for this digital immigrant.... I think that God is trying to teach me patience. As for me, I pray that will never have to sit again on that ugly orange couch in the 16th Street AT&T store in downtown Philadelphia....

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Lora Cecere is the Founder of Supply Chain Insights. She is trying to redefine the industry analyst model to make it friendlier and more useful for supply chain leaders. Lora has written the books Metrics that Matter and Bricks Matter, and is currently working on her third book Leadership Matters. She also actively blogs on her website Supply Chain Insights, the Supply Chain Shaman. and for Forbes. When not writing or running her company, Lora is training for a triathlon, taking classes for her DBA degree in research, quilting for her new grandaughter, and actively taking ballet.

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