A Week Without Home Internet
Last Wednesday my internet connection went out. After a day, I called Comcast to have them figure out what had gone wrong this time.
They told me that resetting the router wasn't working, and advised me I needed to exchange my router for a new one at a convenient Comcast Customer Care Center.
Living Hell. The line was an hour long. The line was composed of angry customers, each holing a randomly sized rectangle of plastic and aluminum. Each time a new person walked in they went right up to the counter to ask if they needed to wait in the line. They did. When I got to the counter they took my nice old router and replaced it with a freaking' huge one that included WiFi and four ethernet connections. I got home, plugged it in, and saw … absolutely nothing.
The helpful Comcast operator told me that since -I- had now performed an installation which had gone poorly, I would now be charged for a technician to visit. The cost would be $26. I explained to the operator that I only drove out of my way and exchanged hardware because I had been explicitly instructed to do so by a Comcast operator - and nobody told me I was suddenly doing some sort of DIY hobby activity by plugging in a power cord and a coax cable.
A few frustrated phone calls later I finally got a human who was able to authorize a repair without charging me a BS fee. This took multiple calls and half an hour wading through their phone tree.
Tonight the repair tech showed up, and the list of failures came into shockingly clear relief.
The cable line was clearly dead. The tech checked the external wiring to discover another Comcast tech had cut my line at the end of March - thinking that I was the deadbeat in Apt 4 who had stopped paying for cable. (The wires were mislabeled!)
In other words: my old router was fine, and the problem was that THEY had made changes to my connection - and had attempted to charge ME for THEIR error!
Once that was sorted, the tech discovered that the replacement router they'd given me had not been initialized. That took half an hour, plus extra time for a firmware update.
Oh, and it turns out there IS enough noise on the connection to render it slow and buggy anyway! The tech has called for another crew to come out and look at the local switch.
At least my connection is now limping along, rather than dead. I really do hate my current ISP. I really wish any of the alternatives were much better. So far: all of my Houston internet connections have been crap.
They told me that resetting the router wasn't working, and advised me I needed to exchange my router for a new one at a convenient Comcast Customer Care Center.
Living Hell. The line was an hour long. The line was composed of angry customers, each holing a randomly sized rectangle of plastic and aluminum. Each time a new person walked in they went right up to the counter to ask if they needed to wait in the line. They did. When I got to the counter they took my nice old router and replaced it with a freaking' huge one that included WiFi and four ethernet connections. I got home, plugged it in, and saw … absolutely nothing.
The helpful Comcast operator told me that since -I- had now performed an installation which had gone poorly, I would now be charged for a technician to visit. The cost would be $26. I explained to the operator that I only drove out of my way and exchanged hardware because I had been explicitly instructed to do so by a Comcast operator - and nobody told me I was suddenly doing some sort of DIY hobby activity by plugging in a power cord and a coax cable.
A few frustrated phone calls later I finally got a human who was able to authorize a repair without charging me a BS fee. This took multiple calls and half an hour wading through their phone tree.
Tonight the repair tech showed up, and the list of failures came into shockingly clear relief.
The cable line was clearly dead. The tech checked the external wiring to discover another Comcast tech had cut my line at the end of March - thinking that I was the deadbeat in Apt 4 who had stopped paying for cable. (The wires were mislabeled!)
In other words: my old router was fine, and the problem was that THEY had made changes to my connection - and had attempted to charge ME for THEIR error!
Once that was sorted, the tech discovered that the replacement router they'd given me had not been initialized. That took half an hour, plus extra time for a firmware update.
Oh, and it turns out there IS enough noise on the connection to render it slow and buggy anyway! The tech has called for another crew to come out and look at the local switch.
At least my connection is now limping along, rather than dead. I really do hate my current ISP. I really wish any of the alternatives were much better. So far: all of my Houston internet connections have been crap.