I feel your frustration, brother. I can chop my bill down and up my bandwidth by jumping Speakeasy ship and going Comcast Business class. I can't bring myself to do it.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Tom Freeman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tfreeman@intel.digichem.net">tfreeman@intel.digichem.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">To all - thank you for the use of your bandwidth here. If you are busy,<br>
or just don't need to listen to whining and bitching, please send this<br>
to /dev/null with prejudice. If I were not the one writing it, I would.<br>
<br>
Background: I have been with SpeakEasy on a 144kB symmetric IDSL<br>
service for nearly seven years, and have been largely happy.<br>
Unfortunately, continuing rise of web eye candy and other issues is<br>
making 144kB uncomfortably slow, although for my money there is a<br>
little more life in it. Not much, but a little. I would upgrade service<br>
with SpeakEasy in a heartbeat, but they are unable to provide better<br>
connectivity here. Customer service is AWESOME, and they have stood<br>
with me through two lightning strikes and a couple of strange sessions<br>
of gremlins. But it is time to move on, and their tech support has<br>
supported the change as a good choice for me. (Honest too - I like<br>
that.)<br>
<br>
Now I have registered my own domain, and host it here at the house, so<br>
I figured I need business class right off the bat. Since that is the<br>
only level of service at SpeakEasy, that part is an easy choice.<br>
Choices here for faster service appear to be the local cable franchise,<br>
AT&T, and a couple of local businesses have Windstream. Irrationally, I<br>
don't trust AT&T, and the Bush era stuff out west made that worse.<br>
Plus, after dealing with support for my girlfriend on her AT&T consumer<br>
line, I'm getting hives just thinking about them.<br>
Windstream took three days to return a sales call, and could only offer<br>
T1 service at this location, somewhat overkill for my needs. This<br>
leaves Time-Warner.<br>
<br>
This is turning into an exercise in futility. First, the cable<br>
operation expects only a business, so I'm now a customer listed as my<br>
name followed by "Inc." I can participate in a joke as well as the next<br>
person, but...<br>
<br>
It is a good thing that they answer their phones, since installation<br>
took three or four calls to get scheduled, and about 10 days to<br>
accomplish overall. This is for basic connectivity. The cable modem has<br>
at least one bad port on it (otherwise workable), but getting that<br>
swapped doesn't seem to be possible in the politest possible way.<br>
<br>
In fairness, getting the new cable buried in the back yard worked out<br>
well this time, with the phone line staying intact. Last time I had<br>
cable to the house, the phone company and the cable guys managed to cut<br>
each other's cables to the house twice each before getting it right.<br>
A positive note here.<br>
<br>
Well, with connectivity now established, it should be time to get the<br>
Domain Hosting setup. Three calls from me just to get to the right<br>
person, including them sending fresh copies of the router configuration<br>
setup in the process. Now 5 business days to see if the request makes<br>
it through the office to get the domain hosting installed. We will see<br>
how that plays out.<br>
<br>
In fairness to the personnel involved at Time Warner, everyone has been<br>
polite, and has made the correct noises respecting getting the<br>
customer's needs met. I'm not moaning much about the worker bees on the<br>
front line, as the problems seem to be systemic through the corporate<br>
structure.<br>
<br>
<br>
So far, the _only_ advantage I have seen with a new service provider<br>
over SpeakEasy is a larger bandwidth. The customer support people and<br>
sales people of the companies I've contacted (and there were a few<br>
others) should be instructed to answer the phone "<company name><br>
Customer Abuse - How can I make your life more complicated today?"<br>
<br>
Thanks for letting me vent. I do appreciate it.<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br>Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness <br>Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits <br><br> Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.<br>
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992 <br><br>