Last Friday, our fiber optic service crapped out. I called AntelData to file a reclamo, a complaint, and learned that service was down for an entire zone. Not much to do but wait.
Saturday I learned that our neighbors had their service back. Sunday we spent a delightful afternoon with a couple of friends with whom we explored northern Argentina a few years back, at our favorite restaurant. Got home: still no internet.
Monday morning, a computer-illiterate Uruguayan friend mentioned entering usario and contraseña, and suddenly it clicked: Antel insisted the correct modem lights were lit. Then I remembered that on my first call, they’d had me enter user name and password, which I did—obviously incorrectly?
So I wondered if what I took as a capital A at the beginning of the handwritten password the tech left months ago, was instead a 4. The passwords are all upper case. LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES LOVE ALL CAPS.
No, not 4.
Then I looked at out ambiguously written handwritten user name, one letter and 5 numbers @adsl… and wondered: was K supposed to be k?
Bingo! In a trice we were back to wasting huge amounts of time glued to the screen.
