This time, I would like to concentrate on their website. IT SUCKS! And here are the reasons why:

1. The UI (user interface) and navigation are really confusing.
As you can see, by viewing this website, I am no stranger to the web, however, I find their website to be the most confusing piece of crap there has ever been. I always end up going in circles looking for what I need. Instead of all roads leading to Rome, all links lead to the main page.

2. The design is just… bad.
Not so much from a standpoint of whether or not I like the design, but that it’s not necessarily compatible with all machines. For instance, here’s what it looks like on my laptop:

What is with that? Shouldn’t the design be fluid? Now granted, that’s a 1288px width, but they should at least center it if they’re going to make it fixed for 800×600. Even in 1024×768 it looks like crap.

Also, there are many bugs in the design such as the drop down menus going behind whatever graphic happens to be right below them so that you can’t get to the bottom menu items, things not fitting in the defined space and overflowing in strange patterns, common occurrances of errors (something about a directive not found), and many links opening in new windows for no reason whatsoever, etc.

3. I am routinely logged out.
The very first thing I do is log into the site. Then I may browse a few pages looking for what I need and before long, it’s logged me out, and I have to start all over again. This has made it extremely hard to ever email support. I’ll log in and get to the support page and then it wants me to log in again, doing that returns me to the main page. Go back, and try to email support, and have to go through the whole thing all over again.

4. Adding anything to my plan is near impossible.
I had to add Steve a text messaging plan for his phone. (First of all, it’s completely stupid that I have to do this per phoneline and not the whole package like the minutes are.) So I finally find what I need and start filling out the form. They want to know what package I want, my first name, my last name, what phone number it should be applied to, last four digits of my social security number, my zip code, and email address. That’s all basic, easy information – for me, right? It keeps some idiot who hacked my account from adding stuff to my plan. Great. Only the stupid thing kept telling me that the first name does not match that on the account. Um, hello!? I know my first name. It was the first thing I learned to write. I know how to spell my first name. After several tries, I figured it out. It went through when I put in my first name, a space, and my middle initial. Sheesh.

Finally, though it’s not website-related, so much, here’s another Cingular rant. Apparently if you are shopping for ringtones on your phone and you preview it, you are automatically charged for the whole thing. Sheila has been doing shopping on her phone the whole time she’s had it. And while she knew she was going to get charged for the internet usage, she didn’t know it was going to charge her for previewing it either because this is a new thing or because they didn’t charge her for that the first several months. From May, I told her she’d had six ringtones on her number and she freaked saying she hadn’t downloaded any. When I called, they told me you get charged for previewing and that there were nine coming up on the next bill. You figure the cost, that’s $2.49 each plus any internet usage. They were supposed to credit us half of the nine, but so far I have yet to see that. I think that is completely rediculous, because, in her words, she previewed to find out she didn’t like the tone. Why should we be billed for that?

Again, if Cingular wasn’t the only company that could guarantee us service in our area…

We ended up driving around town for about an hour… seeing who had wireless internet and who didn’t.

And you know what? I was actually surprised at how many people have wireless in this po-dunk town, but I was not surprised that about half of them are not password protected or encrypted… including most businesses.

As equally interesting was how I couldn’t connect to my own wireless until we’d pulled in the drive. Strange considering that time I was a mile away (by road, not much less direct), opened my computer, and was connected.

Now, of course, I have no need to actually tap into and use someone else’s internet connection, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Just thought you might like to know that.

Well, shall I say instead, my wireless internet is up and running again.

I got the part (my wireless internet card) late this morning by FedEx, which surprised me. The tech lady estimated it would come tomorrow and the internet tracking had said Friday. So that was quite nice, even if I did have to run outside and to the front of the house where the guy was knocking as he’d parked on the highway. Silly delivery men.

I put the part in and at first it didn’t work but when I opened it up and tried again it did. Then it took me a little bit to get connected again – it kept not finding my network. A few resets and a few restarts later, and it connected automatically.

This is good, I was going through withdrawl. I don’t know how I ever survived before a laptop – that desk chair down there is just killer on my back no matter how long or which way I sit. Five minutes, five hours, doesn’t matter, the result is the same: I become Chimpanzee Woman.

Either way, I’m glad it was this easy to fix, all I have to do now is locate a UPS store and send back the old/bad card. As for the fan, however… I just hope that problem goes away. :-D

After discussing it through email with tech support, they sent me a manual with instructions on how to get the fan out. First you take out the cd rom, the memory, the keyboard, and everything in the freaking thing!! It took me several hours, I’ve never done it before, and I was interrupted here and there. Cleaned the fan, which wasn’t all that dirty, really. Put it back together.

Wouldn’t boot up.

Checked again, one memory chip was not in correctly. It booted up. But my wireless internet is broken. After much discussion with myself and re-checking all the connections about a billion times, I finally broke down and called HP/Compaq.

I got the best tech support ever. This woman actually spoke English (no offense to those of you who English is not your first language – I applaud you, I only know one language myself – but when I call tech support, I appreciate being able to understand them, you know?) and when she realized my level of expertise (haha), she didn’t treat me like a child or a moron, etc. Like previous techs have, ahem.

You know… I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I spoke to a woman this time? She wasn’t a moron. :) She even talked with me while we were waiting on various things about how stupid Geek Squad was for whiping my system clean and all that jazz and how stupid Best Buy is, citing the person she talked to before me and all their troubles.

Anyway, we never did fix it. They’re sending me a new card to try, if that doesn’t work, she thinks it might be the connector but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Best part is, I don’t have to pay for the new card, provided I send back the old one. The fan though? Yeah, still buzzing. She says I’ll have to send it in for that one. :\

Needless to say, one or more of the following is going to happen over the next week:

a) I go without internet
b) I spent lotsa time on the desktop
c) I have major back pain like in BNAWI (before notebook and wireless internet) days.
d) I get a reeeaaaaallllly long phone cord and suffer on dialup
e) I get a reeeaaaaallllly long ethernet cable and molest the desktop for a direct connection to the laptop
f) All of the above (if that’s possible)

Well, either way… let’s hope this new wireless card works. Until then, if you don’t hear from me a lot it’s either because I’ve resisted the temptation to spend time on the desktop (and buy that long phone or ethernet cord) or because I’ve died from internet withdrawl… or both.

The various problems I’ve run into today? Well, there have been several, but the biggest one was the fact that no one around here knows what the network key was. I am proud to say I finally figured that out (as you can see by my posting on my blog from my laptop). Go 2WIRE493! ;-)

Now my remaining problems are the fact that Zoom Text will not run on her computer (which turns out to be this refurbished item that runs Windows 2000. I personally think they overpaid for it also) and that I need a power strip for the basement computer. Oh, they bought a new mouse – some fancy thing – to use on that, I hope it’s plug and play because we don’t know where the cd is.

I love these people but this place is incredibly disorganized. And they’re the type of people who say just look through whatever and get what you need – I’m not the type of person that is comfortable doing that, and plus, it’s not my place to begin with so how would I know where to even start looking for something? But hopefully the son can find me a power strip and I can set that computer up and then worry about Zoom Text later. (She’s called “someone” and hopefully he can hook her up with a new version or some other solution.)

I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten yet today. Blah.

Okay, so they send me a thing that says “WELCOME! You are now part of the ALLOVER network…” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to thank me for getting a second line with them, my phone is eligible for a free ringtone*!

Note that *.

I picked out my ringtone last night… Spoken For, of course. :) And I went to check out and it told me insufficient funds for my coupon. I look at the fine print on the website, my free ringtone is only valid up to $1.99, music tones are $2.49.

What is up with that!?!?

Now, I’m not squabbling over 50¢, mind you. It’s just the principle of the thing. Another 50¢ and they can’t reward their new customers with that? I mean, c’mon, how much money are we giving them each month?

That’s just dumb.

I hate fine print.

And I still hate Cingular.

My fine print: To all you people who come here with search terms like “I hate Cingular” and “Cingular Sucks” (and believe me, I get those a lot), I just want to clarify something: I am only with Cingular because they’re all we can get in our area!!! :P

Well… I ended up going with Good Charlotte’s I Just Want to Live.

All the “Why I Hate Cingular” posts:
Why I hate Cingular
Why I hate Cingular II
Why I hate Cingular III
Why I hate Cingular IV
Why I hate Cingular V