Yeah. That’s what I thought.  Few if any takers on that one.   My snark is back because I was hoping that this rough week would be better.   Well, it is OK for now, because it finally passed but I had some nice drama this morning that I hadn’t anticipated.

I was finally coming out of the depression & anxiety cycle I had been trapped in for a bit. I also had that donor meeting I missed behind me & yesterday to rest & recover from it.

However, I noticed Wednesday on the way to Philadelphia, my portable oxygen machine wasn’t charging correctly.

I always carry a spare battery but it was the first time the original battery I usually used failed to charge in the car.   I was ok,  but it bothered me. I thought maybe it was just the car charger going bad.

Yesterday, when I was exercising & had it plugged into the wall next to the row machine (doing what I do), it was acting up too. Barely charging & charging slower than normal.   So immediately after I finished my half hour, I called my local oxygen company to tell them the problems I was having and asked if I could have a new battery & new chargers sent out to me.   They said they would do that, & scheduled the service call for today.

This morning rolls around & the delivery guy comes out with a new concentrator (oxygen machine).  I told him what the rep had told me.  I also told him that this concentrator wasn’t equivalent to the one I had & that it wouldn’t support me for exercise & might not even for walking around.   The flow on the oxygen didn’t go high enough & it didn’t have the right setting that I use to exercise with.

He goes out, calls, & said I was right but that there was nothing he could do.  I had to call the company back.   He was trying to take my concentrator in but I told him I couldn’t allow that without some kind of replacement (which none of the alternatives they offered were).

I very politely chewed out the rep for lying to me.

I said, “If you didn’t have the spare parts I asked for, you could have told me then & there. I would have made do for a few days or we could have arranged a work around with some extra tanks.   But you can’t come out & not service my machine & not leave me with something workable while you say you have to take mine away for servicing.  I’m not letting you take it & leave me with nothing.”

She didn’t have much to say,  just that she would discuss it with someone & call back….  That was about 1PM.   No call of course.

Now, because this machine sucks battery life quickly period, I do always have a spare battery I carry with me.

However, I paid for it myself because my insurance wouldn’t cover a spare.

If something is bad with one of the cells in this current battery that came with the machine, I don’t want it to affect my spare that I paid over $100 out of my own funds to have as a back up for emergencies or areas where there are no outlets.

So I’m not willing to use it right now until we know what the issue is.  I don’t want my spare going bad because of a problem with their equipment that they refuse to look into.

Plus if it’s their battery & their equipment, because it’s going through my insurance & my deductible, they actually do owe it to me to fix this since I’m renting it from them & sharing the cost.

It’s not on me to & I’m not a tech.  They are lucky I could narrow down the problem for them.

I don’t know why it’s such a chore to come to service call prepared & ready to actually service something.

Instead I just wasted two hours of my morning to get no help & no resolution.

I’m just tired of the games that both national & local suppliers play with people who need to use oxygen.

I was proud of myself for being as assertive as I was, but like I told them they “really need to get it together.”

Kind of reminds me of gripes with cable or internet service calls.

Probably why I have less tolerance for this b.s. when it happens.

Just had one too many crappy customer service experiences to tolerate it with something that I actually need to function.