I must have blocked it out of my mind

Spent two full days trying to get our computer fixed. What a nightmare! Neither mail nor internet were coming in, so first I had to make a call to Shaw to see if the connection was the problem. Of course, you have to wait two to three hours to get an agent. At least they offer a feature which lets you hang up and get a callback, but you still have to wait around. After an hour on the phone with a technician, crawling around on the floor, tracing wires, unplugging and re-plugging them, it was determined the connection was not the problem. "You'll have to call the Norton antivirus people 'cause something is blocking your mail," he finally said. "Thanks, I already know that," I said, exasperated.

Before I called Norton, I decided to make another call to Shaw to see if another technician could help. You never know. So, it was another two-hour wait and another hour of tryng-this-and-doing-that-and-checking-the-other to get to the same conclusion. Not the connection.

Then it was off to Norton. Don't need to get into the three hours of that ordeal. What gets me every time is that you have to explain the same thing over and over to one guy, then another one and then another one. Why is that?! The final step was forking over $60 to be transferred to a very "expert" expert in the Phillipines. Yep, you guessed it, after uninstalling Norton completely, he still could not fix the problem. "What about my $60?" "Oh, you'll get a call tomorrow confirming they will refund that immediately." Yeah, right.

At 11:30 that night, the second Shaw technician actually called me back on his own unheard-of initiative to say he had thought of another way to correct the problem. "Just go to 'system restore' and pick a date when everything was working and hit 'enter'," he offered. He walked me through it, I hit "enter" and presto-change-o, two seconds later everything was working perfectly! Amazing! But how can I have had to go through all that rigmarole for two days to get a solution. Scandalous.

But it was not over because remember, the Norton guy had me remove Norton, but, obviously I needed it back. After carefully weighing the pros and cons of going back to Norton, the cons had it. I called an independent computer repair company and made a "remote" appointment to get help re-installing it. At the appointed hour, "Mitch" called me back from Atlanta, Georgia (have to admit his accent was completely captivating and made the ordeal much less of a tribulation). Another "ureka" moment took place and everything was back to normal.

Until it happens again. B will be dealing with the hydra next time.