My 77 year old mother sufferes from damentia. Over the years her communication skills and ability to understand and retain information has dimenished to a point where the important issues of her life like meals, medications and paying bills have to be overseen by others. As the disease has progressed she has increasingly withdrawn from interactions with others and now spends most of her time to herself, her only activity on her good days, playing dominos on her computer.
Her doctor's recognizing her love for the game prescribed this as a thraputic mental exercise that would help to slow the progression of the dimensia She fills her productive hours playing dominos on Pogo.com. She can turn her computer off and on, click the icon to go to Pogo, open and play her game. That is the totality of her computer leteracy, she's not been able to learn how to get email, do searches or use any othe aspect of the technology.
Recently her computer began dropping the IP connection while playing her game. I had the cable company out to check the modem and throughput. It was determind that it was a software or hardward computer problem so I called ITOK after reviewing the information on their internet site stating that they could link to my mother's computer and diagnois the problem for free and fix it remotely.
I live in Texas, my 77 year old mother resides in Nebraska. I called ITOK and was told that if they could not diognose and fix the problem that there would be no charge for their service. I explained that my mother was not computer literate, limited in her ability to understand instructions and that the best she would be able to do is turn on the machine so that they could access it in order to get in to determine and fix the problem. I was told that that was all that was needed in addition to a telephone number to contact her.
ITOK contact my mother and got her debit card information for a $149.99 to fix the problem. They then attempted to walk her through a series of instructions that would allow them to diagnois the problem and connect to the computer. Unable to do so because she couldn not aide in that effort, the tech told her that there would be no charge for the service and her payment would be refunded.
The next day, 09/04 an ITOK representative called to say that they would send someone out to fix her computer for an additional amount. She told them she could not afford to pay more and just wanted her money back. She was then told they would check to see if someone could come out for the same amount she had already paid. She continued to say she just wanted her money back until they hung up on her.
After receiving my mother's tearful frustrated call, I contacted ITOK and recited what I was told and emphazied the fact that they had neither gotten into or diagnoised nor fixed the problem and had assured both my mother and myself that there would be no charge. I also referred to their customer satisfaction guarantee and was told they would only refund $49.00 because a tech had tried to work with her. I told them that was unacceptable and they should be ashmed to rip of the elderly this way.
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