Quote:
Originally Posted by poohbear_nc
I'm finally back on line at home - FINALLY!
<...>
FINALLY - it all works! He was great.
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Let his office know he performed above and beyond the call of duty.
Quote:
I spent the afternoon ripping out all of the $#%&)_++*(&*^$# DSL cabling and boxes in the house and threw it out!
I'm tired now, but smiling.
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Time Warner is my cable provider, with Roadrunner as my ISP. I replaced Verizon DSL (though they were Bell Atlantic back then) with a cable modem years ago, and have been basically pleased.
I got DSL in the first place because cable modem service wasn't available where I was when I inquired, and DSL was the option. BA screwed up everything that
could be screwed up in the installation, and it took 3 months from placement of order till I was connected, with much back and forth with their customer care area to get things resolved. Once it
was up, it largely Just worked, but getting there was a challenge.
My boss at the time came into the computer room after I'd spent an hour on hold and finally had a pointed conversation about my woes with a human being and said "Dennis, are you all right? I heard what you were saying, and I'm sorry you had to go through that!" "It's okay, Larry. I'm fine. It's Bell Atlantic, and they have their head up their ass, as usual. I pound my head against the wall dealing with telephone companies here on a regular basis, but you
pay me for it! When I have to do it on my own time for free, it's another matter!"
BA was our local provider, with other companies providing long distance, but whenever we had an outage, the problem was always on the BA side. Getting them to admit it took doing. Without saying so in so many words, the techs on the LD telco side made it clear they shared my low opinion of BA...
TW remembered I'd inquired, and when cable modem service became available in my neighborhood, gave me a call. Basic service was three times as fast as my DSL line at the same price, a DIY kit was $99, and could be picked up across the street from my then office. Sold!
Since then, my speed has increased several times at no additional cost to me, so I'm on a 10mb/sec connection. I recently ditched Verizon entirely by taking TW them up on a VOIP offer, when it became slightly cheaper than standard Verizon rates. (I basically don't make LD calls, so the savings in VOIP had not previously been meaningful.)
For the most part, it Just Works. There are occasional outages when someone is digging in the street nearby, but they're infrequent. Customer service is fairly responsive, with the biggest hassle being the automated voice response system you must navigate to talk to a real person, and the necessity of going through a standard checklist of things to try over the phone before they can continue. (I make it clear I
am a tech, and already tried that stuff, but they have to follow procedure.) The last time I had a real problem, it was hardware: my original cable modem was dying. A tech was out in a day or so with a replacement and I was up and running again.
I could use DIY: the cable modem plugs into a splitter from the cable TV feed, and is just a modem. Wifi I added myself, with a wireless router connected to teh cable modem, and my devices connected to it.
TW here has built out so each building is a separate network segment, and I'm the only residential customer in my building, so I don't see the slow down others to when everyone on the same network segment comes home and jumps on the net at the same time.
For the most part, I've been quite pleased.
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Dennis