Matt was on the phone with Apple for almost two hours yesterday evening. It got to the point that I was cracking up trying not to laugh each time he got transferred to someone new and he tried to recall the whole trail again. A bizarre variation on Simon or something...

"Hi, Louise. Well, I started out talking to Richard, and he transferred me to Daniel, and he transferred me to Matthew, and... Wasn't there a Mary in there somewhere?"

When he'd called originally, last week, he'd been told that despite paying for a three-year protection/support plan (AppleCare) when he bought his computer and the AirPort, he hadn't "activated" the plan within the first year, so it was gone. Poof. Which hardly seemed fair to me - they hadn't told him he had to activate it!

Regardless, it was gone. So he had to pay a $50 one-time incident fee. That was a pretty well worthless phone call, because the guy misunderstood the problem, and gave us useless advice. At least he also gave us a case number, so Matt wouldn't have to pay again when he called back.

So Matt called back yesterday, and this time the AirPort specialist he talked to walked him through a few things like trying to hard-reset the AirPort, and eventually concluded that it was a hardware failure. Unfortunately, the $50 one-time incident fee does not cover replacement of broken parts. Matt was going to be out not only the $300 he'd paid three years ago for a plan that went poof, and not only the $50 for this incident, but now we were going to be out another $200 - $400 for a new wireless hub.

But wait! The AirPort specialist thought that sounded wrong, and just to be sure, he transferred Matt over to the AppleCare people. Matt still had his receipt and purchase order and invoice that showed he'd purchased the plan. The guy at AppleCare told him that, with all that stuff, he could retroactively activate his AppleCare plan - it would be back-dated to when he'd bought the computer, and thus only be good for another few months, but it sure beat the heck out of paying for a new AirPort!

The thing was, it would be faster if Matt could find the registration card that he was supposed to send in. So Matt hung up, and turned the house upside-down until he actually found the damned thing. I was impressed and astonished, having been certain that it would have been chucked into the attic with the rest of the Random Computer Junk.

There was some question at first as to whether the card (and its unique identifier) might belong to my AppleCare plan, but then I remembered that I did not sign up for AppleCare when I bought my computer. I signed up about three months later, when I called in with my first problem. So I never got a registration card, as they registered me right over the phone.

So he called back, got transferred a few times, and finally wound up back in AppleCare's lap. They got him retroactively registered (yay!) and even arranged to refund the $50 one-time incident fee. And then they transferred him back to the actual support people. Who had to determine yet again that the AirPort was actually broken before they'd agree to send us a new one.

We were sort of vaguely hoping, after all this, that they'd be forced to send us the faster, upgraded AirPort that they have in their stores now, but apparently they have plenty of the old AirPorts left in stock, and they'll send us one of those.

But at least we're getting a working AirPort base station. It won't be an upgrade, but it won't be a downgrade, either. And it won't be broken.

So in another few days, I'll be able to be back online in the evenings. Thank goodness.

We were on the verge of having to talk out loud there, for a bit.

--Liz