About three weeks ago, Ed downloaded a free version of Windows 10 that kept popping up. I had been avoiding it because I have a sixth sense about free stuff. Anyway, the computer froze. I located a help button in the corner of the screen and it worked, got a number for Hewlett-Packard. We don’t have a contract, they couldn’t fix the problem which was complex, referred us to an offshore outfit which, regretfully, we accepted.

We got a guy working out of one of the South American countries. Usually they are working out of India. The tech who helps you is also helping many others at the same time and he or she will put you on hold for as long as one to three hours. So throughout the day, you are trapped holding the phone for a net result of perhaps one hour of his actual time.

At the end of day one, the guy tells Edward we have to buy an external hard drive. He will call the next day, talk him through transferring our data, reloading Windows 10 properly, and then returning the data. I sensed a pro-longed effort that might result in disaster and insisted on calling our local guy. He said there is no guarantee we would not lose data and since our computer is old, we should just buy another one. We decided to follow his advice. But we also decided to keep the old computer and have the Staples tech update it. So now we have two computers and I have put the second computer into a space we have in our bedroom along with a smallish computer desk I bought for it. I like having my own work space.

The tech from the alien planet called the next day late in the afternoon and we told him to take a hike. Meanwhile, in the days following, sales reps and techs from this outfit keep calling us. We shut them down.

I learned something interesting also, when I had a further chat with the Staples tech on another matter. We have suddenly been getting tons of spam e mails on both our e mail addresses. They can’t be blocked because the return addresses are not valid. They are repetitive, in that one outfit alone can send you 20 to 30 e mails over the course of a morning and continuing throughout the day. Multiply that by 10 other vendors and you have a computer nightmare. The tech said the e mails had to be the result of giving our e mail out and said the outfit that was “helping” had probably sold our e mail. I now realize why they keep calling. They know we have a problem and think they can con us into fixing a problem they created.
I carefully delete these emails as spam (even though that doesn’t work) and I am going to switch to Gmail, which had been on my mind to do anyway because Embarq that I now use has many problems.

Stress was not over however. I went on line and found out how to change the administrator from Edward to myself. And I did it. And then realized I hadn’t written down the new password. I conjured up what I might have used but wasn’t sure. Once I shut down, if it wasn’t right, I’d be locked out and the problem would need a finer brain than mine to solve this. So for three nights I just didn’t shut down. My plan was to go on line and change my password but wanted my bff Nadine, to help me and was waiting for her to make time to do this.

Then the problem was taken out of my hands because “updates”, those tried and true auto updates, got installed and when that happens, whether you like it or not, the computer shuts down all on its own and reboots itself so they can take effect. When I got back on the computer this morning, there was the dreaded sign-in screen. I typed in what I thought I had used and it was correct. What a relief.

Meanwhile, I have written to Hewlett-Packard corporate headquarters and told them their referral system was a disaster and would backfire, particularly since I was about to spread the word. I am also writing to the trouble shooter at the News-Press who showcases abuses by vendors.

I suggested that they owed it to their customers to change the terms of use with their sub-contractor. For one, they should insist no resale of e mails take place, and that any one agent cannot deal with more than a small number of customers at any one time. They probably won’t pay attention, but I had to try.

xx, Teal