[ale] [OT] A vent and whine - ignore with dignity

[Tom Freeman]

Jim

Being snoopy - but what is your SpeakEasy bandwidth? Won't do me a lick 
of good, but I'm nosy.

Feel free to not respond.

On 06/19/2010 01:41:06 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> 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.
> 
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Tom Freeman
> <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net>wrote:
> 
> > To all - thank you for the use of your bandwidth here. If you are
> busy,
> > or just don't need to listen to whining and bitching, please send
> this
> > to /dev/null with prejudice. If I were not the one writing it, I
> would.
> >
> > Background: I have been with SpeakEasy on a 144kB symmetric IDSL
> > service for nearly seven years, and have been largely happy.
> > Unfortunately, continuing rise of web eye candy and other issues is
> > making 144kB uncomfortably slow, although for my money there is a
> > little more life in it. Not much, but a little. I would upgrade
> service
> > with SpeakEasy in a heartbeat, but they are unable to provide 
> better
> > connectivity here. Customer service is AWESOME, and they have stood
> > with me through two lightning strikes and a couple of strange
> sessions
> > of gremlins. But it is time to move on, and their tech support has
> > supported the change as a good choice for me. (Honest too - I like
> > that.)
> >
> > Now I have registered my own domain, and host it here at the house,
> so
> > I figured I need business class right off the bat. Since that is 
> the
> > only level of service at SpeakEasy, that part is an easy choice.
> > Choices here for faster service appear to be the local cable
> franchise,
> > AT&T, and a couple of local businesses have Windstream.
> Irrationally, I
> > don't trust AT&T, and the Bush era stuff out west made that worse.
> > Plus, after dealing with support for my girlfriend on her AT&T
> consumer
> > line, I'm getting hives just thinking about them.
> > Windstream took three days to return a sales call, and could only
> offer
> > T1 service at this location, somewhat overkill for my needs. This
> > leaves Time-Warner.
> >
> > This is turning into an exercise in futility. First, the cable
> > operation expects only a business, so I'm now a customer listed as
> my
> > name followed by "Inc." I can participate in a joke as well as the
> next
> > person, but...
> >
> > It is a good thing that they answer their phones, since 
> installation
> > took three or four calls to get scheduled, and about 10 days to
> > accomplish overall. This is for basic connectivity. The cable modem
> has
> > at least one bad port on it (otherwise workable), but getting that
> > swapped doesn't seem to be possible in the politest possible way.
> >
> > In fairness, getting the new cable buried in the back yard worked
> out
> > well this time, with the phone line staying intact. Last time I had
> > cable to the house, the phone company and the cable guys managed to
> cut
> > each other's cables to the house twice each before getting it 
> right.
> > A positive note here.
> >
> > Well, with connectivity now established, it should be time to get
> the
> > Domain Hosting setup. Three calls from me just to get to the right
> > person, including them sending fresh copies of the router
> configuration
> > setup in the process. Now 5 business days to see if the request
> makes
> > it through the office to get the domain hosting installed. We will
> see
> > how that plays out.
> >
> > In fairness to the personnel involved at Time Warner, everyone has
> been
> > polite, and has made the correct noises respecting getting the
> > customer's needs met. I'm not moaning much about the worker bees on
> the
> > front line, as the problems seem to be systemic through the
> corporate
> > structure.
> >
> >
> > So far, the _only_ advantage I have seen with a new service 
> provider
> > over SpeakEasy is a larger bandwidth. The customer support people
> and
> > sales people of the companies I've contacted (and there were a few
> > others) should be instructed to answer the phone "<company name>
> > Customer Abuse - How can I make your life more complicated today?"
> >
> > Thanks for letting me vent. I do appreciate it.
> >
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
> Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
> 
>  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.
>    Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992
> 

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