I finally reached an “agent” who was in Sri Lanka or someplace. She spoke too fast in a squeaky voice with an accent that made Sophia Vergera seem like Liza Doolittle post-“The Rain in Spain” by comparison. I must have said, “Say that again?” 20 times during the conversation. She kept putting me on hold to “check my account,” kept trying to distract me (“I see you have been a customer since 1994! Thank you so much for your loyalty!”), made me do all of the things I had tried already to no avail, asked me to read back what was on the “Error” screens, and then, after all that, asked, “What baseball game were you trying to see?”

ARRRGH! “I just told you that I’m getting the blacked out baseball game screen but one that says “Newsmix” is blacked out! It’s 8:25 am—there ARE no baseball games in the morning!”

“I know this must be frustrating for you,” she said I think, resorting to the script. “I will be able to help you with this problem, and I am sorry for the inconvenience” then she put me on hold for the fourth time, and came back with false information. “Newsmix is not included in your current package,” she says.

“What? It certainly is. I have watched that channel for 30 years!” She answered, accusingly, “When was the last time you accessed that channel, sir?” “Oh, last night!” She tried to gaslightme, saying again that it’s not in my package. Finally, when she discerned that I was about to find a way to will myself through the phone lines and rip her throat out, she said, “I will now transfer you to our technical assistance department.”

Back to that old AI voice: too bad, I really liked the other one. After confirming whom I wanted to talk to, I was told that my expected wait time was “less than two minutes.” Fifteen minutes later—DirecTV has the worst hold music I have ever heard, consisting of the same three bars on a scratchy recording repeated over and over: I’d rather listen to “It’s a Small World”—I was told that my “expected wait time is less than 30 seconds.” Five minutes later I received that message again. Two minutes after the second 30 second promise, I finally reached a human being who sounded exactly like the semi-incomprehensible woman I had just talked to! I even asked her if she was the same agent, but no, she told me, slower and more clearly than the other woman had been capable of doing. She assured me she was a tech specialist.

So I had to go through the whole narrative again. She admitted that indeed I do have Newsmix in my subscription package. I said, “So your colleague was trying to drive me crazy then?” “I have no idea why she told you that, sir. I am looking at your account. You should be able to access Newsmix. There is no outage in your area.” Then, after more back and forth, she said, and I quote this exactly, “I have to be honest with you, sir. Another customer right before you complained of the same problem.”

Well…

KABOOM!

I didn’t say what I wanted to say because Clone #2 was being sort-of helpful, but what was going through my mind was “You ‘have’ to be honest with me from the beginning! Why did I have to go through all this when you could have told me 15 minutes ago that this wasn’t my imagination or a problem unique to me?”

Finally, she informed me that the owner of “Newsmix” was having a technical problem, and until they fixed it, I would be getting the error messages. It was now 9:15 am.

I am now convinced that dealing with these kinds of disruptions helped kill my wife. And they may get me yet.

It’s 7:37 pm. I still can’t get Newsmix.