its not that I've wanted to be away

[-CB-]

First time, job etc etc... that eases up, and... taaaadaaaa... my phone line goes dead.

Been a month, three service calls, and they still dont have it fixed.  Hopefully this week.

Problem is, bad line.  I called ATT, they say call DSL folks since at first DSL went down.  COVAD/MegaPath did a telco line check (called in the order), and it checked good.  They says its my modem.  I bought a new modem.  Nada.  I hadda scream at them to let them know I had no synch.  During that time, the line itself got scratchy, then went dead.  I didn't know it, so... they came out, and that was that.  So, I hadda call telco.  ATT came out, sorry its DSL folks problem.  No no... no dialtone dude, its your problem.  Sorry cant fix it, its bridged into your neighbors house, we have to get access there.  She's outta town all last week.  Back this weekend, so hopefully I can get the damn line fixed and DSL back up.

Wish me luck!

(by the way, officially, when you get referred back to the place you started, its a bona-fide "runaround")

 

[vic108]

What a goat cluster......pita!!

the only folks they didn't blame was NASA

 

[ezas]

Any reason why you can't switch to cable broadband?

I switched and I'm getting better availability, no outages that I have noticed, and customer service is better. I also saw a independent report that showed that cable did a better job of delivering the advertised speeds.

 

[AutoBat]

just wait for the at&t service bill. might as well hire a mechanic for the rates they charge.

 

[Dan025]

i dont know about where cb is but there could be some shanangans between service providers that prevent him from using alternative services. in my area we have frontier for the phone lines and dsl and time warner for cable, between the two of them we can't get any other internet providers other than cellular, we also cant get othe cable companies other than satellite. so you either get a cable connection with a capped upload speed at under 500kbps and a decent download speed depending on neighborhood trafic, or dsl that's consistanly slow up and down. something like 1mbps (which is much slower than 3g with hspa+ on my cell phone)

 

[Cagey]

It's not just the service providers, it's local politics. Detroit, at one time one of the 10 biggest cities in the country, never even had cable TV until the mid '90s. Due to the sheer size of them, nobody was willing to pay the bribe(s) necessary to get local rights-of-way and wire the city up, which would also be an astronomical cost with painfully expensive ongoing maintenance. So, here's a city of roughly a million people in a metropolitan area of about 5 million who was still relying on rabbit ears to watch 3 to 5 channels of insufferable crap.

They finally got it once Coleman Young (former mayor) went tits-up, but the cost is high and the reliability of the service is pitiful. But, out here in the 'burbs, we have no problem. I have my choice of Comcast, WOW and AT&T for general cable, and whatever I'm willing to pay for satellite, and they all compete so prices are low and service is impeccable. I get about a million channels of hi-def TV and 12Mb/s Internet for about $85/mo. I do Vonage for the phone, though. Comcast is insane on their VoIP pricing, and they really do treat you badly with it, so they can keep it.

 

[DangerousR6]

Y'all still have a party line or what... :icon_scratch:

That went out in the 70's man... :toothy12:

 

[AprioriMark]

I've told this story before, but it's worth sharing.  Fkn telecom companies.  I worked from home a lot at the time (4 years ago), and I had to be in contact with people constantly.  For many people, that meant AIM/Yahoo/MSN/Googlechat etc.  My net/phone went down and I got the typical runaround ("I'm going to need you to unplug the modem for 60 seconds..." *sounds of snack munching and surfing the internet ensue from their end*).  I was trying to get a tech out there for almost 2 hours, while an industry friend of mine looked up the personal email of the CEO and CFO of Comcast.  I'm not saying where we got those, haha.  She and I wrote a scathing email (she had to send it because I couldn't) about the incompetence and breach of contract displayed by their employees, and I *literally* had half a dozen trucks on my street within 30 minutes.  It turned out that one of their trucks had eff'd up a major connection while repairing something minor down the street.  I got personal letters of apology and all sorts of follow up calls from supervisors checking on my happiness.  I also got some sort of credit, though I don't recall what it was.  I think I got free HBO etc for a year as well.

Anyway, the point is, find someone to irritate who matters, and go big. 

Another piece of advice that I got from one of the supervisors was to call and hang up on support and call back until you found someone who hated their job enough to help you.

-Mark