So Mike Boone had his wireless problems solved. (I guess it wasn’t his laptop after all) As you might expect, he got the gold-plated service after news of his problems with Sympatico hit the news stands. A personal call from the vice-president of customer relations (after numerous calls to regular tech support got him nowhere), no-questions-asked delivery of a new modem, and when that didn’t work, same-day on-site tech support.

When was the last time you called Bell and the guy said “Hold on, I’ll be right over”?

Naturally, the guy was clueless about Macs (been there). But the problem was solved.

To Boone’s credit, of course, he freely admits the obvious: that he got special treatment because he’s a newspaper columnist. And he’s going to use the regular-people method next time, to show he’s still Mikey from the Block and hasn’t sold out to The Man.