This is a true story.

My college-age, student athlete son recently purchased a new Mac, at my suggestion. Of course he spent three times what his cohorts’ computers cost, but he took my advice (”you won’t have to worry about viruses and spyware”) and made his largest purchase of his young life.

A few days ago he began having problems when launching Word. The spinning beach ball wouldn’t go away and he couldn’t do any homework.

Together, we’ve been trying to pinpoint the problem but haven’t solved it yet. Knowing he’s busy with class and practice and mandatory study hall and workouts, I thought I’d cut to the chase today and call Microsoft tech support.

Note that I had my fingers poised to use the email support route and then I thought, “But wait! Just call and get an answer and we’ll be done with all of this!” So I did the phone thing.

I was asked my name and then was put on hold. Then, when the party on the other line came back on, he asked my name again. Then the ususal exchange of Product ID#, etc., after which I was asked to describe the problem and what I had done to try to work it out (verify and repair permissions, login as a different user, update the OS software, reboot, call the shop where we bought the Mac, google the issue, visit Apple and Microsoft online support areas—talk about worlds colliding!).

After I regurgitated all of that information, my phone buddy Ramish (sp?) explained he was actually a customer service person and he would be putting my call through to technical support. (Isn’t that who I called to begin with?)

After a few more seconds’ wait, Ramish returned to me and explained that they were experiencing technical difficulties with their phone system and could I please call back in about an hour?