We've been officially offline for over a week now, and likely to be so for about another week. Which is why my reputation of being here 24/7 is now on the rocks.
The modem shorted on us. So I called it in, got to speak again to a very pleasant rep with that accent I really love (honestly!) in India, halfway around the world, and of course transferred to another rep Stateside just for them to tell me what I already knew. Standard procedure. So the guy said he'll order us up a replacement modem - 3 to 5 business days. That's fine, I said. When it arrived, the adapter was missing
. So I tried using the adapter from the broken modem. It didn't work. I called them again, went through the whole drama of speaking to another pleasant Indian for 30 minutes, then transferred to an American technician for another 30 minutes, all so that he could tell me he'll send a replacement adapter. Another 3-5 business days.
Great. 3 days pass, I call them back. Turns out they ordered one for me, but it went 'missing' in the mail.....
. I said, "Goddammit, I WANT THAT ADAPTER SHIPPED OVERNIGHT NOW!" They said they'd ship it FedEx 2nd Day Air
.
Okay, so it finally arrives, my brother-in-law watches me install it. Modem power light goes on. But there's no signal. I call them again, have a 'lovely' chat with another Indian fellow, but this time he walks me through the entire modem re-registration process
, which I was never told about when the modem was ordered. We're back online for one night. Yep, one night.
Next day we're offline again. I call them. Yep, you guessed it - 30 minute chat with Indian rep, 30 minutes with American techie. The problem this time is that the 'transmission cable' is fukced up. Which means a service call, someone will have to come over to fix it, which means another 3-5 business days, and having to WAIT for the contractor to call us to arrange a time to come over to fix it. This whole thing was what, four phone calls, average 1 hour per call. 4 hours total of my time for them to tell me the modem's dead, the replacement modem's gone MIA in the post, the adapter's missing, re-registering the modem, and telling me the transmission cable needs fixing. On top of the fact that we're offline for at least 2 weeks from a service that costs almost twice as much more than cable service (t.v. AND internet) with equipment that costs several hundred dollars to buy and install.
I'll emphasize as well that ever since my moron-in-law started this service we average 1 to 2 tech support call-ins every month for one kind of problem or another.
And you're asking how I can post this now? Well, my moron-in-law has a trial subscription to AOL (frightening yes) dialup.
Have nice f#&king evening.
