ramblings of a {sys,net}admin…

I have a Blackberry through T-Mobile. Where I live there are no T-Mobile cell sites. That’s alright with me, though, because my Blackberry “roams” between T-Mobile and Cingular cell sites without any problems (usually) or additional costs. I’ve had one or two minor issues in the past (I can’t even remember what they were right now), but they were always taken care of after a quick call to support.

Tonight, I left Bloomington and headed home. Once I got out of the “urban” area and back into my “rural” area, the Blackberry switched to a Cingular cell site and was showing “GSM” as opposed to “GPRS”. Having a GPRS link is pretty important to me because without it, I can’t do anything “data-related”, such as send or receive e-mail or browse the web. Turning off the wireless, removing the battery, and “restarting” the Blackberry took care of the GSM vs. GPRS issue.

I found, however, that I still couldn’t send or receive e-mail (even though the phone was showing GPRS). I VPN’d in to work, logged into my Blackberry Enterprise Server and verified that there were, indeed, “messages pending”. There were. I checked to see if the BES box had a connection out; it did. I sent two messages from the BES directly — one via e-mail and one via PIN — and neither have arrived.

Anyways, long story short… I talk to the first tech at T-Mobile, he has me restart the Blackberry again and, after that fails to resolve the issue, transfers me to “Blackberry Support”. I spoke to a very friendly gentleman there who tried sending me an SMS to verify that it would arrive. It never did. After a fair bit, he decided to escalate me to “Tier 2 Blackberry Support”. That was fine with me (I want it resolved, of course) and transferred me into their queue. (He did tell me that there are “always long lines” for Blackberry support, which makes me wonder why they don’t hire more support personnel??)

I was immediately informed that I could wait on the line or enter a phone number to have one of the support folks call me back. Normally, I’d just wait on the line, but after being informed (via the automated attendant) that my wait time would be “…between 1 hour 22 minutes and 2 hours 3 minutes…”, I punched in the phone number of another mobile phone here.

That was just over an hour ago. While writing this the other mobile phone rang. When I answered, I was informed — again, via an automated attendant — that it was T-Mobile and that I would be transferred “shortly” to a support person. That’s been about five minutes ago and I’m still listening to their annoying ass hold music.

I’ll give ‘em credit for calling me back in less time than they quoted me, but since I’m still waiting to talk to someone, I’m not quite happy yet. And since my issue isn’t “fixed” as of yet, I’m definitely not happy. I have spent about 98% of my time in Bloomington the last few weeks (I haven’t slept in my own bed in about four weeks) and as soon as I get back to a T-Mobile cell site, I’m sure this will work fine. That’s beside the point, however. Even when I’m at home, I’m not always on a computer or even in the same room as one. Granted, I can take the laptop anywhere throughout the house with me — or come in here and glance at Outlook to see if I have new mail — but the main reason for having the Blackberry is to be able to send and receive e-mail from anywhere. Since I pay for it out of pocket (even though 90% of my usage is work-related), I tend to get upset when it doesn’t work.

I’ll update again if I ever get to speak to another live person. I imagine they’re looking over the notes from my previous calls before they jump on the line…