[ale] [OT] Whine, moan, and complain - 6 day outage.

[Thompson Freeman]

I have been a fan of Speakeasy on this list for some time,  
and just had my first major bad experience with customer  
support - not from Speakeasy but from the chain of  
resellers business model. At least that is the way I'm  
perceiving it. I _continue_ to like the service, and expect  
to continue to recommend them, but I have been bitten...

Last Tuesday the iDSL line went down, and neither reboot  
nor replug with reboot brought things back to life. Called  
Speakeasy, and we did the trouble shooting dance, with the  
result that they shipped a new modem overnight (well, over  
holiday, but give them credit anyway. Expected Friday,  
because I called late) Unit arrived Thursday, and no joy.  
At this point, somebody, somewhere, dropped the ball, as a  
local service call was recommended but not scheduled. The  
call did get scheduled Friday afternoon, which meant that  
the local technician (AT&T man) didn't arrive until this  
morning.

Ok. The weird part is, we have no idea what was wrong! The  
AT&T guy showed up, and nothing was working. He tied in his  
gear, back tracked up and down the line, came inside to  
double check all the way to the modem, and the blasted  
_old_ modem started working! He (the AT&T guy) claims no  
clue as to what happened, and I sure am clueless. Maybe he  
just scared it into working...

Any how - I have now vented, and I do feel better. I still  
like using Speakeasy people. I just wish there was a better  
solution for the final mile headache.

Thanks for the use of your bandwidth.