Netflix Roku

There are a lot of scams going on every day in this country and I believe I was the almost victim of one of them just the other day. I’ll tell you about this one so’s you can keep a look out for it should it come your way. It involves a company I’ve never heard of before and one everyone in the world has heard of.

I can’t afford to pay 80 or 90 bucks a month for Dish Network or DirectTV, so I rely on the 22 channels I can get off the antenna for $20 bucks a year. You heard that one right ... twenty smackers a YEAR folks. And I get all the local stations. I figure with the quality built into most TV shows these days, if I can’t find something worth watching with 22 stations to pick from, I’ll read a book.

But then again I get tired of reading and crave a good old time black and white movie without all the “gratuitousness” and “realism” of the X rated language, sex and violence prevalent in today’s flicks. That in mind, I bought a Chromecast thingie and plugged it into my TV and viola’, I can get a movie now and again on Netflix for another 8 bucks a month.

Netflix has it’s disadvantages though and one of the most irritating things happens when I watch a show like Longmire or Burn Notice, something an hour long without commercial messages. (They are actually 42 minutes of action, but who counts?)

Anyway this Chromecast thing gets more cantankerous every time I use it, and longer to get warmed up and tuned in. Sometimes I have to close out of Netflix and try again. Irritating. And after you’ve watched three shows in a row, on the fourth show the screen darkens, the show is blacked out, and these words come on the screen. “Are You Still There.” See, they think you have gone to sleep. All you have to do is get up, go to your PC and punch pause then play and the movie comes back on. But now you have to do that every time an episode ends and a new one starts.

So I had occasion to call Netflix the other day about the quality of service. The young lady I talked with, after a few minutes of discussing Chromecast, suggested I buy a Roku thingie to replace the Chromecast. She extolled the virtues of Roku saying it was much better than what I was now using. She said that installation was a snap: just plug it into the TV and wall outlet and start watching my favorite shows. She said it was just a one-time cost between $40 and $80. “Just do what it tells you to do on your TV screen and you can have it running in just a few minutes,” was what she told me.

So Dumas that I am, I went right down to Shopko and shelled out the $40 bucks. I removed it from the box, installed the batteries in the remote, plugged the “stick” into the TV and plugged the other thing into the wall outlet.

The very first thing I saw was a notification that my “code” had expired and I would need to activate a new “code.” All I had to do was to punch in the three letters and three numbers it showed on my TV screen and a representative would help me re-activate my “code.”

I’m thinking, “Why the hell do I need to re-activate a new code when I haven’t even used the new one yet?”

After several minutes of trying to get a phone number to call, I finally hit the right key and up it came. I dialed and got India. The lady said she was in California, but I doubted it, and I’ll tell you why later.

She asked what was my problem and I told her I had to punch up a new code. She said, “No problem. I’ll have you up and running in no time. It’s very simple.” At least that’s what I thought I heard her say. She had a terrible accent.

Here’s where my aforementioned Dumasosity kicked in. She asked for my e-mail address and without thinking I gave it to her.

The voice said, “I’ll have it fixed in a moment, OK?” See, after every statement she said “OK?” What if I said it was not OK? Then where would we be? But I digress.

After about 30 minutes or so and with her being able to use my PC screen with her mouse, the alleged scam started to come into view. After punching in the aforementioned secret letters and numbers, the message appeared on the screen that Roku couldn’t be activated because my network was “compromised.”

I said, “what does that mean, compromised?” She explained that I have viruses in the form of foreign e-mail addresses, and went on to show them popping up on my PC screen, all 5,248 of them!!! I said, a tad bit concerned by now, “where the hell did those come from?’\” She told me they come from “dishonest people from all over the world” and that Roku could not be activated but “we can fix it” she said. “Fix it how?” I asked several times.

I was getting nowhere with her and really couldn’t understand her, so I asked to speak with someone with a better grasp of the English language. She said, “Wait a moment...OK?” “Yes!, yes! Yes OK OK I shouted into the phone.” Now I’m really getting steamed.

But it was nothing compared to how steamed I got when I heard the next voice. It was male and not one single bit better at English than the female. That’s when I knew they were not in California!

He tried to explain what the woman was telling me and was getting no better at explaining. So in desperation I asked him point-blank “How much more money is this going to cost me?”

He hemmed and hawed a bit and got tongue-tied several or more times, and finally tried to explain that Microsoft has a safety program that will “fix” my problem and allow Roku to be activated. I asked him why my Chromecast works and his Roku doesn’t, to which query he had no answer except to say the viruses were from “dishonest people from all over the world.”

I asked him if Roku was on the list. He didn’t have an answer and I told him I thought this whole thing was a scam of epic proportions and that I was going to contact Microsoft to see if they approved. See, the “fix” from Microsoft would be about $129 for the first year and every year thereafter, but it would definitely stop all the viruses!

He hung up when I told him I thought maybe a consumer protection group might be the right answer to my problem. I re-plugged my chromecast back in.

That’s it for now folks. Thanks for listening