From the Windows Technical Service

David called. There's a problem with my Windows computer.
"Oh no!" I said, doing a pretty good impression of a scared and stupid muggins.

He spent five minutes talking me doing things with the computer before I revealed that the computer was in the other room, and it was taking so long because I had to go back and forth between that and the phone.

He told me to move the computer next to the phone and he'd call me back.

Actually, Richard called me back. Richard was a lot easier for me to understand, David's accent was tough for my ears. So Richard talked me through starting up the computer, and running "Event Viewer" and he told me that each line of that represented an error in my computer, but not to worry, he'd walk me through fixing it. I was *so* grateful!

So then Richard and I started up Firefox, and downloaded an application from supremocontrol.com that would let him control my computer. The file downloaded, and then he got me to click on it to install it. And it was at that moment that the screen went blank! "What do I do now?" I asked. he tried talking me though clicking on things, but I kept saying that the screen is blank, there's nothing to click on until eventually he twigged and got me to power cycle the computer. "Ooh, you've fixed it," I said, "I'm so happy! Thank you so much." "No wait, " he said,"there's more to do."

So we went round that loop again, download, click, blank screen, and then he passed me over to Roger. Roger had a really clear voice, I could see that I was at the top of the tech support tree now. The only higher power would be Bill Gates (who I met once, by the way, but that's another story) and he talked me through starting up Internet Exporer and accessing the "Support Me" web site. He gave me a six digit number, which was his account number, and that was great, because there was a place on the site to report abose, which I did, and I would hope that by now they've cancelled the account.

And it was shortly after that, that Roger just hung up on me without even a "Have a nice day".