The IoT is making me paranoid

This past weekend I enjoyed a getaway with family in Washington DC. Beautiful weather, spring flowers everywhere. And an email alert, delivered at 12:42 am Saturday morning, that my Smart Hub is down. That means I can’t access the various smart devices attached to the hub. And, wait a minute, the hub is attached to the router and sure enough, the two Wyze security cams attached to the route are down as well.

Something similar happened the last time we were all out of town together, about a month ago. There was a bright flash recorded on one of the cams, then disconnect. (That time the connected light switches kept working.) I asked our neighbor across the street to peek in our back yard and see if anything was amiss. She said all was fine. When I got back there were no signs of any disruption and I felt like a jerk.

So, not going to bother her this time. The possibilities are:
–some kind of catastrophe like a house fire. I would have heard about this from the neighbor and it might even be on the news, since not much happens in our isolated hamlet.
–electrical failure. This is actually what worried me the most because we have two freezers full of specialty meats. And we do have outages in our area, usually caused by storms.
–a break-in! This would require the thieves to get past the security cams, which would have still been working at that point, then be smart enough to immediately find and disable the router.
–Spectrum internet went down. This is the most likely scenario, of course. Unfortunately I can’t remember my log in info since the account was originally set up in my wife’s name. I could get on the phone with them and try to prove I am who I am, but the blossoms are becoming outside my hotel window

By the way, our home is wired with security system sensors on every window but we did not renew when we moved in because it seemed a needless expense in our town which is very low on crime other than non-professional, nuisance activities. And what would that have done for me? Alerted a live agent who would have gone out to confirm a problem they couldn’t do anything about.

The irony of this, of course, is that before the Internet of Things I would have had no reason to be fretful. Thanks, Al Gore.

UPDATE: got home, restarted router, all fine now. The only sign of disruption was a box emitting a buzzing sound, on a table near the stairs. It turned out to be a “travel alarm”, an item we used before smart phones.

Bots run wild in ATT chat rooms

Here’s the transcript of a chat this morning with ATT:

opener : Hi, I’m AT&T’s automated virtual assistant. How can I help you today?
Otis : Our student is back from semester abroad so we would like to reactivate XXXXXXXXXXXX
agent :
Oh no! We can help you with reinstating your service.

Was your service interrupted because of:
Payment issue
Other
Otis : Other
agent :
The Reactivate Wireless Service page has detailed steps to restore your line!
Otis : ##Url#https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1011528
agent :
Here are step by step instructions for restoring your line.
Otis : ##Url#https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1011528
agent :
Here are step by step instructions for restoring your line.
Otis : the page doesn’t have the answer and your “step by step instructions” aren’t showing up
agent :
Hmmm. Could you rephrase your question?
Otis : I want to chat with a real person
agent :
Let me get you to a specialist. Please tell us your first name.
Otis : Otis
agent :
Thank you, Otis. You will now be connected to a specialist who will assist you.

How might this have been a better experience? Keep the bots out of the chat room. Specifically, when I clicked “Chat” I expected to be connected with a live person. This was the way ATT chat worked in the past. If you’re going to try to make me use a virtual assistant, make it clear you are doing so. (Because I assumed I was going to get the same experience as previously, I did not notice the reference to the automated virtual assistant till I read the transcript.) And it should be a separate help/support function than Chat, which has the user perception of being a conversation with a real person.