Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Have I mentioned I hate COMCAST recently????
Two lightning strikes in the month of July took out my internet service.
First one COMCAST repair crew was out on the pole within a day .... took
them the better part of an afternoon with one guy in the bucket and the
other driving the truck trying to find the problem. They eventually replaced
a splitter a few poles down. My cable modem came back up, but being the geek
that I am I know how to look at the signal levels on the modem and saw the
UPLINK power was higher than normal. Not much I could do .... can you
imagine how that call to customer support would go:
"yes, Hi, my cable modem uplink signal strength is higher than normal can
you send someone out to check on it .... why, yes my modem is working ....
why am I calling? ... well I though you could do something proactive to fix
this before it becomes a real problem ..... Hello??? ... Hello ???? are you
still there???"
The last strike on July 27th took out the PHONE and the INTERNET. The first
time in the nine years we've been living in the house that we've had any
phone problem. Sprint was out the next morning to fix the problem. Comcast
said they would be out on August 2nd!!! Are you kidding me I have to wait
seven days to get this fixed. Several calls to customer service over the
next WEEK to try to improve this date failed. I had to dig a telephone modem
out of the junk box and hook that up so we could at least do banking. It's
amazing how dependant we've become on this stuff.
So there it is morning of August 2nd and the first COMCAST tech shows up
around 10 or so. First thing he wants to do is come in the house. I mention
this because the other DOZEN or so times I've had a problem they've always
checked the signal from the outside first .... but be that as it may I show
him in to the "Telco closet" where his first statement was "Dam, that's an
old modem. You need a new one." Granted it is OLD but he hasn't checked
anything yet. I'm just philosophically opposed to fixing something that's
not broken ... you never know what you going to screw up in the process.
Fine, he goes out to the truck, brings in a new modem, and hooks it up ...
to find out it still doesn't work. DUH!! Now he hooks up the test instrument
to find out he can't get an uplink. Double DUH!! The uplink light was
flashing on the old modem!!!
At this point the technician has determined the problem is outside, like it
has been the other DOZEN times I've had a problem. We walk out to the truck
parked by the pole, he takes off the ladder and decides the splitter on the
pole is too high for him to reach. I said "you're kidding" .. you see the
other DOZEN times I've had a tech out they've had no problem getting to the
splitter with a ladder .... what-ever. He said he would need to have a line
engineer come out with a bucket truck .... didn't surprise me ... they've
needed to do that before also ... problem is usually the amplifier about 500
feet down the street. So I went back in the house and waited some more.
So, at about 1:30, line engineer shows up, I spot him out by the pole
working. He says he needed to replace an amp at the other end of the street.
Odd, I didn't think the signal came in that direction but what do I know. We
check the signal inside at the modem .. still no go .... after a little more
trial and error at the pole he removed the signal trap (I only have cable
internet not TV, can you blame me) and changed the port. Wonderful! We now
have uplink and a pretty decent level! Short story here, had the earlier
tech got up on the ladder and checked this he would have seen the blown trap
and port and this all would have been done at 10:30 AM.
We still have one more problem. It appears Mr. Tech from this morning forgot
to call in the new modem he left so it wasn't provisioned on the account. It
took us about another hour and another COMCAST tech (number three if you've
lost count) to get that straightened out.
At 4PM we were back online.
#posted by Rob Roschewsk @ 8:54 AM
Comments:
Sounds like all cable companies are pretty much the same!
