Dial Up

One of the reasons we’re moving across town tomorrow is this park’s wifi, or lack thereof. To say it’s “hit or miss” would be kind. It’s actually more “miss” than “hit”. A lot more. With no AT&T 3G service in Gunnison, our aircard is useless. So, we’ve not stayed particularly well connected this month.

Yesterday afternoon found me wandering across the park, with laptop in hand, searching for a signal. As I sat on a picnic table in the shade, I watched our cute little four-year-old neighbor Jonathan pedal by on his bike. His young mother was walking not too far behind. We exchanged pleasantries and she asked if I had found a “hotspot”. I replied that I was lucky enough to be connected, but the speed was far from hot.

“I grew up with dial-up,” she smiled with an eye roll that implied that was a long time ago. “Once you have high-speed internet, it’s tough to go back.”

“Sure is,” I replied, suddenly feeling quite old.

You see, I didn’t grow up with dial-up. I was an early adopter at 30! Even as an “old fart”, it’s still tough to tolerate slower than snot, miss and hit internet service in the 21st Century.

I shared the story with Paul, who offered a quick quip that was supposed to make me feel better...I think.

“You didn’t grow up with dial-up,” he said. “But, when you were growing up phones actually had dials!”

True. True.

Speaking of dial ups, Paul’s phone rang just after 7:00 this morning. It was Forest City calling. We recently returned a customer satisfaction survey sent to us by Winnebago. The survey asks new Winnie owners to report on areas where their new motorhome has required service, their satisfaction with that service and the motorhome overall.

As we went through the survey, we realized we’ve had more than our fair share of service issues with our new Winnie. Most have been mentioned here, but we’ve spared you the details of a few others. By the time we completed the survey we were feeling pretty darn unsatisfied! There was a space at the bottom of the form that asked if we’d like to talk to someone about our responses. Paul said yes. This morning, somebody at Winnebago called.

Receiving that phone call impressed us. It would have been easy not to make the call, and we probably would have eventually forgotten we’d made the request. The call lasted about an hour.

We’ll spare you the details of that conversation. We’re not exactly sure how things are going to work out. But, suffice it to say that Winnebago has the opportunity to delight these less-than-satisfied two-time purchasers of their product. We’ll see if they do. We’re waiting for them to dial us up again and let us know.

We’ll keep you posted.