Yesterday for some unknown and maybe unknowable reason, our son says the user name and password "fell off the modem" or maybe it was that the modem "fell off" the user name and password. To me it hardly matters because the result was that we did not have internet connection all afternoon.

My intuitive feeling said that our modem needed to be replaced or that EarthLink was having connection trouble. Maybe the modem does need to be replaced. We tried doing that once and got a new one. We could not make it work with EarthLink and EarthLink said that we could not do that. Earthlink indicated that we would have to get a new modem from them and furthermore said that the problem then was not the modem. I still do not completely believe EarthLink.

In any case, we were back dealing with EarthLink customer service again and customer service is contracted out to some place in India. That might work but when we have dealt with India, invariably we have a lot of trouble understanding the customer service rep who has given us his/her name which is Tom, Erick, Theresa - - funny names for Indian nationals. I think that when customer service sees our incoming call, we are shunted to the single person who most needs to practice his/her English.

Customer service told us to go to the computer and key in a specific URL. We said, "How do you think this will help? We have no internet access." India said to just do it. We did and said nothing comes up on the screen. We were given another URL and funny thing, we could not reach it. India does not seem to understand that we have no internet access and what that means.

We explain that we really need to talk to someone in the US or someone who speaks American English because we are having such a difficult time trying to understand what India is saying and India does not seem to understand what we have described as our problem. We are given a telephone number that is supposedly in the US. We call but no one is there and we leave a message. That was yesterday afternoon.

Our son came home and began looking through our files to see how this or a similar problem was previously handled. We had it. We followed the directions and had internet access immediately. Our son thinks that India should have realized what the issue was with our description of what was happening and what happened when it started. If American English speaking person ever returns our call, we need to have a little heart-to-heart talk about how to solve problems.