Ordering DSL - A day from Hell

[Xyphus]

Ugh.. I am totally exhausted... I've spent the last two days *trying* to order DSL service. You would think it would be fairly easy. Call the toll free number, choose your package, wait for the hardware, hook it up and be done...

Oh, silly viewer... It's never that simple... :)

My problem is that I currently have ISDN service. ISDN is considered a "business class" line. So, first things first, I must have my line re-classed from business to residential. Simple enough you would think.. Well, no it seems.. It's not quite that simple. It seems no matter what number I called, I would end up with the same "Menu-Go-Round".. Please press this number, please press that number, etc. Well, after patiently pressing the various numbers, and choosing the various options from the menu, I *finally* think I am getting somewhere...

Alas.. it was not meant to be. I *always* got the same message... "Our office is now closed. Our normal business hours are from 7am to 6pm Eastern Standard Time. Your call is important to us. Please leave a voice mail message and a representative will return your call in 24 to 48 Hours..."

Hmmm... Strange because it was only 4:45pm... Okay, I think.. I will try again tomorrow...

So, I call back at 10:30am (even in another time zone, that would *still* be within the 7am to 6pm span of time), and what do I hear... The same message as before saying the office was closed, call back between..... blah blah blah....

Okay.. Getting a bit pissed by this time... So I now call the "Customer Care" line and after a bit of Menu-Go-Round I am offered the choice to speak to a real human. I of course jump at this offer as one would cling to a flotation device on sinking ship...

After a wait of about 5 minutes, a real person picks up the line and asks how they may help me. I explain my situation.. Have ISDN, need re-classed before ordering DSL, etc. blah blah.. etc..

They say that they will transfer me to someone who can help.... A click, a bit of music... and then the same damn message... Our normal hours are... blah blah... AIEEGH!!

Okay.. REALLY getting pissed at this point... Again I call the customer care line... Again Menu-Go-Round... Again a wait of 5 minutes on hold with country music in the background... And and another human on the other end...

Again... explain my story... explain my issues with the non-existant people who work from 7am-6pm in some alien world where time is different than on Earth... This person is helpful and understanding... She tries to contact a real person for me so she can transfer me... Sounds good to me... I start to hope once again...

*BLAMMO* No such luck... Her computer has frozen and she can't seem to get the information she needs... She asks for a number I can be reached at, and she will get back to me within 30 minutes... I believe her, offer my info, and hang up...

3 hours later and *still* no call back...

Once again I call the Customer Care line... Quite a bit perterbed at this time...

Menu-Go-Round... hold music.. wash, rinse, repeat... You know the drill... :)

Another human... This one seems chipper and quite happy to help.. I explain my problem... Need the re-class, can't reach anyone to help..

She says that I need not worry, she can help me... She calls the number for ISDN and is greeted with the same problem as I was... They are there only in some alien time frame, much different than on Earth.. She tries another number... Still no luck.. Finally she says she needs to put me on hold and will be right back... (I feel dread wash over me but accept the inevitable... I say okay... more country and western music...)

Suddenly, the chipper voice is back, she has tracked down a direct line, she calls... A real person picks up... They chitter about needing a re-class... They need to put me back on hold... More C&W music...

She comes back... She says that They can schedule a re-class for the 16th, but it could be up to 3 weeks from that day that they actually disconnect the ISDN... (sigh) I accept... (hey, this is the furthest I have gotten so far...)

She then goes on to take my order information for DSL... We find out I am approx 8,070 feet from the CO... Well within range (and should get pretty good speed...)

I order the "Standard Plus Package" which is 384Kbps-1.5Mbps down and 128Kbps up for $29.95. I order the standard phone service which comes to $34.95. (includes caller ID, call waiting, etc..)

All info taken, all orders placed... Of course, the rub.. They can't install the DSL until *after* the ISDN is disconnected. (which *could* be as early as the 16th, or up to 3 weeks after that...) and I have my line re-classed back to residential...

So, here I sit... Biding my time.... I *could* have the DSL installed as early as the 30th, or possibly sometime next month.. LOL!

But it shall be mine... Oh yes... It shall be mine.... Eventually...

:aol:

[panzerkw]

suckin

[Bad_Karma]

Dear God, what a bunch of crap from that phone company. Then again they sound like every fricken phone company in existence. You should phone back and try to get a deal like the first 3 months free or at half price. At least installation if any should be free for the bs you've put up with.

[Clutch]

Man I feel sorry for you m8. I went around with my telephone company for 2 weeks before they got my dsl up and running. They changed my password 3 different times and didn't inform me of even one change, so the whole time I could have it up, but they changed my password, so I couldn't log in. Boy I tell ya, customer support just isn't what it used to be. That's why I'm glad my business offers nice friendly customer support, mainly because I'm the only one to talk for cs, haha

[Red Dawn]

I feel ur pain, finally got the Phone company to say they'll upgrade our exchange to DSL after we tracked down 350 people in our area who were willing to sign up. thought then that maybe juat maybe they'd upgrade the exchange and all would be well.

Well its been 2 weeks now and still no set date for when the work will be carried out, phoned up today to try and get an answer. Spent 25 min listining to the same 3 tone music only to be told by a guy that doesn't fully understand or speak english that that information is not available:(

[danball1976]

Thats why you go cable service. Buy the modem, go to the Cable company store/office, set up the account, and they record the MAC address, and its all done. Once you get home, your connection is on.

[profdlp]

I don't know why it is, but nearly everyone I know who has gone the DSL route has had major problems getting things hooked up.

Don't the phone companies want our money?


Prof
(Hoping the situation improves for you:cool: )

[panzerkw]

I guess I'm lucky. On most military installations, DSL isn't available. You're stuck with using cable. Given the close proximity of all the soldiers on line in the barracks complex, the connection ain't all that great.

[danball1976]

panzerkw said
I guess I'm lucky. On most military installations, DSL isn't available. You're stuck with using cable. Given the close proximity of all the soldiers on line in the barracks complex, the connection ain't all that great.

Where are you at? Here at Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, LA, there may be a lot of people who have cable TV, but not many with Cable internet.

[primesuspect]

Xyphus:

The Worst DSL Experience Ever™:

When I opened my new office in 2000, it took six months for our DSL to be installed and working.

The End.

[Kwitko]

More people with DSL horror stories. Prime, at least yours worked after installation. My installation delay was only 2 weeks, but I had DSL for 7 months, of which I was down a cumulative total of 5 of those 7 months, including a whopping 21 day outage, followed by an 18 day outage.

Then when I tried to switch from Verizon DSL to Earthlink DSL, Verizon would find every excuse in the book to break appointments and find reasons why they couldn't hook up the local loop and get things ready for Covad to come in and make the connection.

My cable hookup to all of 4 days from first phone call to up and running.

[profdlp]

primesuspect said
Xyphus:

The Worst DSL Experience Ever™:

When I opened my new office in 2000, it took six months for our DSL to be installed and working.

The End.

You should've opened your new office in XP!


Prof
(Don't bother, I've already smacked myself):D

[leishi85]

woo, that must have sucked,

my ordering for DSL went really smooth, package arrived exactly at the time they told me, and line was activated exactly that day too, sweet time for my Phone company, by the way it's SBC

[primesuspect]

profdlp said
primesuspect said
Xyphus:

The Worst DSL Experience Ever™:

When I opened my new office in 2000, it took six months for our DSL to be installed and working.

The End.

You should've opened your new office in XP!


Prof
(Don't bother, I've already smacked myself):D

Profldp wins the official "Worst joke EVER" award for the Month of June on Short-Media!

[muddocktor]

I feel your pain, Xyphus.:) Reading this brings back flashbacks of me trying to get DSL from Bellsouth(those a-holes:mad: ) last year. I got a mailer in saying that they were coming into my area with DSL and that I was qualified for service, so I eagerly called them up and signed up for it. I live 3.0 miles from the telco and the wire follows the road, so I figured I should be kind of far away but still in range of DSL service. They said that it would be 2 months before they installed the equipment at the telco and then would be getting me going. So 2 months pass with no word on progress, so I call them. They say that they are running behind schedule but that the equipment will be installed by the end of the month. OK, I wait and a month passes and still nothing from these idiots. So I call up and try to find out what is going on and the fun really began then. These a-holes gave me the royal runaround until I filed a complaint against them with the LA Public Service Commission and finally talked to some higher a-hole that said my lines were loaded(whatever that is:rolleyes: ) and that they couldn't provide service. Cable was also out as the cable company that has the exclusive rights to my area is owned by some jackleg redneck Mississippi company that has some kind of Fred Flinstone type analog cable crap with no plans to upgrade. I ended up getting 2 way satelite broadband for significantly more money, but it at least has fast download speeds.

If they continue to give you crap, file a complaint against them with the public service commission in your state. They are the ones who OK rate increases for these a-holes and if they get enough customer complaints for poor service then maybe they will think twice about giving these a-holes any rate increases.

[Thrax]

I've had DSL equipment installed twice here by Ameritech. Both days the equipment was delivered ahead of schedule, the people came out to drop the line about two hours early, and the DSL was turned on three days before schedule.

[Kwitko]

And then you woke up? You're putting us on. Come on, I've never met anyone who had such a painless DSL installation! Tell me you're lying. Please?

[Xyphus]

Well, I hope the actual DSL install goes smoothly... I've been having all sorts of trouble with my ISDN connection for the past week or so... Keep loosing the D-channel. And I don't know if you know how ISDN works compared to DSL, but there are 2 B-Channels, and then the D-Channel. (the B-channels are what you transfer voice/data over, and the D-channel is what keeps you in synch, and actually controls the line...)

So, it's been quite a pain... Talking to someone on the phone and suddenly the D-channel goes down, and of course that means you no longer have phone service...

Good thing we invested in a couple of Cell phones... At least we can get out if we need to...

Today I've been up and down more times than a yo-yo... Who knows how long I'll be able to stay connected and actually post a message...

*sigh* And the Tech Support for ISDN is basically non-existant as well... We called them a couple times and of course they say, "Yes, there is an error showing on the line, but we can't tell if it's on our end or yours... We'll have to send a tech out to check your line..." And at $75 per 15 minutes we say hell no... We know it's not on our end... We've checked the equipment over and over, replaced the cables and cords.. I even checked to see if something chewed on the line outside... Everything is exactly how it has been for the past two years...

Ah well... I have high hopes for DSL.. Keeping my fingers crossed... :)

[Clutch]

profdlp said





You should've opened your new office in XP!



haha, omg I still don't know why I'm laughing at that.

[Thrax]

TD_Isles said
And then you woke up? You're putting us on. Come on, I've never met anyone who had such a painless DSL installation! Tell me you're lying. Please?

Wish I could honor that request. :ninja:

[mmonnin]

I cant believe a company like that survives.

[Tropical]

supply and demand! I can't believe you get that DSL for so cheap, in our town the only company is adelphia which is bankrupt and don't update anything and it's only 39.99. You think you get a static IP for that price or something but no, you don't get anything. well at least is better than dial up!

[leishi85]

same here thrax, my installation was like butter

[Camman]

primesuspect said
profdlp said
primesuspect said
Xyphus:

The Worst DSL Experience Ever™:

When I opened my new office in 2000, it took six months for our DSL to be installed and working.

The End.

You should've opened your new office in XP!


Prof
(Don't bother, I've already smacked myself):D

Profldp wins the official "Worst joke EVER" award for the Month of June on Short-Media!


AHAHAHAH I agree, just terrible man.

[Red Dawn]

i got some good news today, i phoned several isps instead of teh telephone company and got an answer outta them. from what i've been told the upgarde work on my exchange is due to be finihsed on the 16th of july. thats the date they've been given so i hope the telco keeps its end of the bargin with then otherwise i gotta wait even longer:(

[Xyphus]

Well, here's an update... We got a call from SBC's tech. Looks like he'll be out to disconnect our ISDN tomorrow (the 18th).

Now, if they worked this right, we should also have our "new" line installed the same day. Then of course, DSL should hopefully follow within the following week...

So, keep your fingers crossed for me... :)

(And my internet access will be spotty until that time... I have a dial-up modem handy, but I really don't feel like installing the thing... so, my access may be only from work (T1! w00t!) for the next week or so until my DSL hardware arrives and my line is configured...

Here's hoping.. :)

[Cyclonite]

/me crosses his fingers...

Good luck, buddy!

[Xyphus]

Well, here it is the 19th... Our phone service has been off since midnight on the 16th... *Supposedly* the tech will be out tomorrow morning to get our phone service installed... *sigh*

It was orignally set up that ISDN would be disconnected the 16th, and regular phone service would be installed the same day...

After not hearing anything from the phone company by 5pm last night I called them on my cell phone.. spend a good half hour on hold.. And found out that even though the ISDN was disconnected at midnight on the 16th, the paperwork didn't cross the desk of the installation department until yesterday at 4:10pm... And that the first opening they had would be on the 20th at 8am...

Who knows how long it will be until I get DSL.. if ever... If the phone company keeps up anctics like this...


:banghead:

[TheLostSwede]

I feel your pain Xyphus. My connection was down for almost 6 days recently and it took a verbal threat from me to my isp to get them to fix it. They knocked 20 bucks off my bill and gave me a 3 month upgrade to 8mb/s down and 800kb/s up for free. Thats pretty good service but i hope i will never have anymore downtime as long as 5-6 days.

[profdlp]

You are better men than I.

If I lost my cable modem service for nearly a week I would probably drive over to the local office and do something horrible. And I would have a fair chance of being acquited on the grounds of temporary insanity.:wow2:

Hope things come out alright for you.


Prof

[panzerkw]

Amazing how reliant we've become on internet connections in the just the past 5-7 years.

[a2jfreak]

It took us over 2 years to get cable. We kept hearing: it will be here in 6 months. 3 months. By summer. At the end of summer. By Christmas. Finally over 2 years later we finally got it!

We've had cable for over 2.5 years now and there is no way I could go back to dialup. I am completely spoiled, almost to the point that cable isn't fast enough :D

So why is it you couldn't get cable?
Did you not want cable? not available?

I hear people complain about cable being shared bandwidth, but in the over 2.5 years we've had cable, my connection has actually gotten better over time, not worse. Perhaps Time Warner just stays on the ball and makes the necessary changes to keep the customers happy, or maybe some cable co's just never get their stuff setup correctly in the first place. Who knows.

[panzerkw]

It depends on your market. On very high volume markets like New York City and Los Angeles, they cable companies introduce new technology more quickly. When I lived in New York City, with population densities in the thousands per square mile, my cable connection was screaming fast all the time.

When I moved down to Fort Bragg, I was able to also get a cable connection. This is atypical of most military installations, in that while nearly all have cable available, few have had their infrastructure updated to allow for internet cable accounts. The barracks I had moved into were relatively young, and so they had already been updated.

This cable connection was SLOW....dirt slow. So slow the connection would actually die from time to time, causing me to have to disconnect the reconnect the modem pretty often. The latencies were worse than 56K up in NYC before I had gotten cable.

As it turns out, the barracks complex, which houses about 5,000 soldiers, had been running off 2 nodes. The 2 nodes supported about 800 modems, theoretically more than enough for the numbers of soldiers who wanted broadband (there were only 500 or so active modems), but the bandwidth was being sucked up by soldiers using P2P programs like Kazaa, winMX, etc. Just within the last month, the cable company split the nodes, and now the speed is MUCH better. The company had been getting complaints from the soldier's commanders because their cable internet service was not meeting the advertised speed rates. So while the soldiers languished with massively laggy and unreliable connections the cable company continued to charge the normal rate with no refunds. The cable company's excuse was that it had not yet installed the infrastructure necessary to support the growing number of soldiers who wanted broadband. So while 3 or 4 years ago the available bandwidth may have been enough for 800 modems, today it was hardly enough.

According to the cable technicians around here, the cable technology and equipment in Fort Bragg and surrounding areas is about 5-10 years behind the technology and equipment used in extremely high volumes markets like New York City.

[profdlp]

I first got cable modem service about five years ago. At the time I lived about two miles from Fairfax Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals in the Washington DC area. I think we were in the first area of Fairfax County (Which I believe is the 3rd largest county in the nation) to be fully wired.

Since then I've lived in Arlington, VA, and now Charlottesville, VA, both with cable modem service. When my girlfriend asked me if I cared where she did her internship (she's a doctor), I said it didn't matter - as long as they had good broadband.:D


Prof

[a2jfreak]

I'm about 20 miles north/north-west of Houston. No where near as dense as New York or LA I'm sure, but it's fairly dense as it's still the Houston metro area. I have no clue how many people live w/in one square mile, but I would not be surprised if it was in the thousands. My particular neighborhood has between 700 and 800 houses (740 I think), and it's smaller than one square mile.

panzerkw said
It depends on your market. On very high volume markets like New York City and Los Angeles, they cable companies introduce new technology more quickly. When I lived in New York City, with population densities in the thousands per square mile, my cable connection was screaming fast all the time.

When I moved down to Fort Bragg, I was able to also get a cable connection. This is atypical of most military installations, in that while nearly all have cable available, few have had their infrastructure updated to allow for internet cable accounts. The barracks I had moved into were relatively young, and so they had already been updated.

This cable connection was SLOW....dirt slow. So slow the connection would actually die from time to time, causing me to have to disconnect the reconnect the modem pretty often. The latencies were worse than 56K up in NYC before I had gotten cable.

As it turns out, the barracks complex, which houses about 5,000 soldiers, had been running off 2 nodes. The 2 nodes supported about 800 modems, theoretically more than enough for the numbers of soldiers who wanted broadband (there were only 500 or so active modems), but the bandwidth was being sucked up by soldiers using P2P programs like Kazaa, winMX, etc. Just within the last month, the cable company split the nodes, and now the speed is MUCH better. The company had been getting complaints from the soldier's commanders because their cable internet service was not meeting the advertised speed rates. So while the soldiers languished with massively laggy and unreliable connections the cable company continued to charge the normal rate with no refunds. The cable company's excuse was that it had not yet installed the infrastructure necessary to support the growing number of soldiers who wanted broadband. So while 3 or 4 years ago the available bandwidth may have been enough for 800 modems, today it was hardly enough.

According to the cable technicians around here, the cable technology and equipment in Fort Bragg and surrounding areas is about 5-10 years behind the technology and equipment used in extremely high volumes markets like New York City.

[Xyphus]

Well, another update.... We **finally** have our phone service hooked up.. I am posting this from a *yuck* 56k dialup... Better than nothing at all.. But slow compared even to ISDN.. :)

Anyway... If all goes well, I *should* be getting my DSL hardware package sometime next week, and we should have our DSL service connected by the 30th...

I'm not holding my breath, but I am crossing my fingers and hoping it goes well...

[danball1976]

Right now, the central internet access on most bases are on copper wires, and the Air Force plans on updating that to Fiber Optics.

As for now, at Barksdale AFB, I don't know how old the cable infrastructure is for the dorms and housing. But the base's network is very unstable and slow during the day, and hopefully when they update the system to fiber optics it will be much faster.

[panzerkw]

Internet access via the LAN here on Fort Bragg very slow. Just like 56K. It depends on the buildings though. The Special Operations units are all in modern buildings, so their networks are fast. But most of the 18th Airborne Corps units (18th Soldier Support Group, 82nd Airborne, garrison units) are in buildings at least 35-50 years old, with infrastructure to match. The network usually stays up but the connection is dirt slow. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where all the money goes in Fort Bragg.

We're a 18th SSG unit that does customer service for the SF units, but our automation is probably among the oldest in the Army. The most modern machine there is a new Dell Pentium 4 system that the commander uses. Almost all the other machines are original Pentium machines on Windows NT. Most of the machines are P200, a few P75. A couple of the machines have Windows 2000. Our unit is MTOE'd for one computer per soldier (a computer is required to do our job) but right now there are only 8 computers for 15 soldiers, so those have not soldiers are left with little to do; they can't do anything without a computer! And no one knows when we'll get new machines (PLEASE..like they're gonna be new...just some ancient machines that Special Op units would have otherwise thrown away.)

I went over the Psychological Operations units once (they're part of USASOC) and it's like going forward in time 20 years compared to my office. They all have nice new Dell machines with flat screen monitors, Windows 2000, all updated, fiber optics connections, kinda made me depressed about where I worked (a dilapidated 47 year old building that use to be a TMC for the SF students across the street).

[Tex]

Bummer... I had ISDN. Just canceled it and ordered phone servcice from another vendor first. Took a day. Then ordered cable. My friends with normal residential DSL are getting half the download speed I get off my cable internet.

Tex

[danball1976]

There's one interesting thing that I can see by looking at the networked drives (apparently we can only have 8 network drives per account - Windows 2000 limitation, or just them saying that) is that they have an excel file with all the machines on the base network, IP address, setup, and Windows key for most of the newer machines.

They range from a P54C 75MHz w/32MB of RAM to a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM (our server) - there are at least 1000 computers on base - there are 600+ people just in the 2MXS alone, and in out building, our flight that is, Avionics, there are 9-10 (3 are for the flight office) computers with about 15-20 people on days, except for 464, they are civilians, so Swings and Mids there are about 10 people each.

[Khaos]

Hey Tex, remember when I was bitching last fall about there not being any cable service available out here? We ended up getting DSL from SBC, same package as Xyphus ordered (384 - 1500 Kbps / 128 Kbps) and the measured speed on a test server in California is 1296Kbps. I expected it to be a lot slower due to the fact that they only guaranteed a range and the low cost, but it's really good, smooth service. Getting it up and running was a bit of a pain, the lines needed to be updated on our street, but they did it pretty quickly.

[Tex]

so when you download from a good server what sorta speeds you get?

[Khaos]

~160KB/s is the most I've seen so far, and 19KB/s upline.

[Xyphus]

Been a while, but finally another update... We got our DSL hardware on Tuesday, and even though our scheduled install date was not until the 30th, on a whim I hooked everything up on Wednesday. And wouldn't you know.. We had DSL service... So I went ahead and registered, set up the accounts, etc... And of course, my next stop was to www.dslreports.com to test my line speed... I'm getting approx 1278 down, and 109 up. Not too bad... Although the 109 up did concern me a bit. We are supposed to get 128 up, but I guess with overhead, etc. the 109 might be pretty much on par...

The 1.2Mbps down is a nice surprise though... We were guaranteed anywhere from 384-1.5 down... So I'm doing pretty good I would think... :) Almost T1 speeds down... Whee!

(we have a T1 at work and get 1.5 up and down...)

Anyway... Just thought I'd post an update. :D

[profdlp]

Glad to hear it finally worked out for you. Must have felt like the quest for the holy grail.


Prof

PS: If you haven't done so already, please give us your input in the “Utilities Discussion – Week2” thread under General Software!!! This week we are asking for your recommended programs in these categories: HD Speed benchmark, CD Drive Speed Benchmark, Video Performance benchmark:nudge:

[Xyphus]

Eiieeeggh!!! The Hell Continues! :banghead:

After *FINALLY* getting the DSL service, and rather enjoying our speed and reliability, we have yet another setback...

Everything was working just peachy Friday morning when I left for work... Had a pretty standard day, and was looking forward to some online gaming over the weekend...

Well, when I got home and was firing up the PC I noticed the green "DSL" light on my modem was not lit. Hmm.. I thought maybe they might be doing some maintenance. They said they would do that from time to time and thought nothing of it. My wife and I were going over to the in-laws for dinner anyway. It should be back up by the time we get home.

Whulp, we got home around 6:30pm or so and the DSL light was still not lit. We called the customer service line and an automated voice said that they did have a scheduled maintenance around 6pm and that if you were not getting a DSL signal to turn off your modem, wait 30 seconds, and then turn it back on... We hung up and proceeded to follow the directions.

Still no light...

We called back, and this time elected to talk to a real live person... The tech had us do various things.. Switch phone jacks, unplug everything else from the line(s), etc. etc..

Finally, he pulls up our account and says, "Oh, here we go... It seems your service was scheduled for cancellation today. That is why you don't have any signal, you cancelled your service."

I reply, somewhat surprised and quite shocked, "Umm.. No, we just had the service installed, why would we cancel our service. We just got our first bill in the mail yesterday..."

He again states, "Well, right here on your accout, it says that a 'Michelle L. Gygla" requested a service cancellation for July 18th."

Getting a bit irratated, I respond, "There is no one at this address with that name, nor should anyone with that name have access to our account. My name is Stephen, and the phone line is under my wife's name of Kimberly..."

A little confused, he asks, "So you don't know a Michelle L. Gygla?"

I respond with a resounding "NO! There is NO ONE with that name at this residence, nor is there anyone with that name who has athority to access this account..."

The representative says that there is nothing he can do since the billing and tech departments are empty, everyone has already gone home. We will need to call the billing department in the morning.

Fuming, and quite a bit agitated, we decide that we'll call back in the morning...

*fast forward to the next morning*

We call, finally get a representative after waiting on hold for a while, and several rounds of "Menu-go-round"

To make a long story a bit shorter.... It seems that our account isn't fully terminated. In their computers, it shows that we still have service. This Michelle person is one number off from us, and she in fact did cancel her service. When they were typing in the number to disconnect, the person at the keyboard had her account pulled up, but typed in our number... SOooooo, she still has service and is not paying for it, we *don't* have service but are paying for it, and we can't do a damn thing until the disconnect fully goes through their computers (Supposedly by this coming Wednesday).

Then, we get to re-order our service, which shouldn't take more than 7 to 10 days to have re-connected...

(meanwhile, in the billing department... since we *supposedly* cancelled our service before our year's contract is up, we now will be having to fight a bill for $200 early cancellation fees, $100 for the hardware we recieved, and of course, still have to pay our normal monthly charges for the DSL service we are still being billed for, but actually can't even access...)

Oh, and while this is all going on, of course we will no longer have any e-mail access since our account has to be terminated, then re-ordered, then re-connected...

(all because some dufuss was in a hurry to get out of work on a Friday night and had some sloppy typing skills... and WE have to be the ones to pay for it...)

I am *REALLY* starting to *HATE* SBC/Ameritech...

Anyway... If I *ever* get service back, I'll see you folks online then... (I am typing this from my in-law's PC at the moment...)

In the mean time... I hope everyone has a great week...

:hrm:

[a2jfreak]

That's horrible!

Why can't you have cable, again?

We don't have year contracts and that crap, so you would have less to fight over.

Oh well, sorry you're having such a difficult time. Get them to give you a complimentary month or two for your headaches.

[Shorty]

Give 'em hell!

Damn it, that's worse service than some of the ISP's here. It's their mistake, it's their problem.

Don't pay, log all of this, make notes of the times you called and names of who you spoke to. Anything and everything.

No way should you have to pay! :banghead:

Oh well, sorry you're having such a difficult time. Get them to give you a complimentary month or two for your headaches.

As aj2 just said there, freebie time to keep you quiet, should be in order.

[Xyphus]

Finally got back online with DSL... Ugh... Torture I tell you... Nearly 2 weeks without internet access... It's SOOooooo good to be back online...

As for logs and stuff, we've been keeping one. (My wife works for a Law Firm as a Legal Secretary, so she's used to keeping track of all this stuff...)

Anyway... We're planning on fighting any bills that come our way that are out of wack due to the FUBAR we suffered through...

Off to catch up on all that I've missed!

Oooh, soooo good to be back! (GROUP HUG!) :)

[profdlp]

Don't forget the emotional pain and suffering.

If I was knocked off the 'net for two weeks I would need years of therapy.

Come to think of it, I probably do anyway...:crazy: :vimp:

Glad you're back in business.


Prof

[kanezfan]

when i got DSL installed from bellsouth down here, they were charging me for two, yes two accounts on the one phone line. FOR SIX MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!! every month i'd call and ask them if they didn't find it weird that I'd have two accounts on one phone line, but even better than that, two times they actually disconnected my entire phone service because they said I was overdue even though I'd spoken to someone who'd told me not to pay the whole balance..... anyhow, I feel your pain.

[Xyphus]

Whulp, my wife just got an email from SBC (the line is in her name) asking her to fill out a servey regarding the "service" we recieved in dealing with our call to them on July 19th. (which was when this all started... also my wife's birthday... what a wonderful present for her...)

Needless to say, she had a lot to say in that servey... :) I'm curious to see how they handle that one... Woooh, but she had some scathing comments in there...