Lost and isolated by technology

A few nights ago, as we were out on our evening stroll, we ran into two elderly neighbors that we hadn’t seen for a long time. She is 82, he is 88. They are doing the best they can to get out but are visibly much less alert than the last time we saw them and are now moving very slowly. 

We began chatting and they told us that the new Sony TV they bought for their family room isn’t working at all. They said they bought it at Best Buy four months ago and the installers didn’t bother to make sure it worked after they were done hooking it up on the wall. 

I offered to help them and soon found myself inside their home trying without success to get it to work. To make a long story short I asked them “Where’s the cable box?” as I couldn’t locate it. I then called Xfinity and explained the situation. After 34 minutes on hold, I finally got a female agent that I briefed on the situation. 

She asked me to check the two other TVs in the house and locate their respective boxes, which I found easily, and when it came to the new TV there was indeed none and no HDMI plug attached to the TV. Then, the couple explained to me that they gave the old TV to some charity or junk removal service, that must have also removed the box that was there, hooked on the TV.

Over the four-month period, the couple had multiple visits from their kids and grand kids who tried unsuccessfully to get that particular TV to work but no one took the initiative to do something or call the cable company and get the problem resolved. A pretty pathetic tale on how kids treat their elders!