ISP!! please don't send chip the cable guy to my house.

Okay so I've been out of ISP and 4G connection to my house for over a month now. My previous provider had 4G but it was bought out and the new carrier decided to shut it down. So I'm having to rely to customer no service company 1 or customer no service company 2. One had far worse reputation than the second so I went with lesser of the two evil.

round 1.

person marking where my other service was (water/gas/electric), was to call me so I can help him locate existing lines are located and where I wanted the cable to come into the house. No LUCK. He just marked my driveway, sidewalk, RV pad with bunch of spray paint Graffiti!! And left a note hanging on the door even though we were home at the time.

Crew came out again they were instructed to talk to me first. NOPE! They came and installed the cable and it came up where it was the worst possible location but it was convenient and easy for them. NO GO!!

Installer came to install the box and said it can't be done where the cable came up. Back to square 0

round 2.

person marking where the other services was to call me. didn't AGAIN but I managed to catch him while he was graffiting my driveway and RV pad.

Crew came out and they did call to give me a heads up. 10minutes and they were at my house. by this time they were about 3 weeks past the install date. They did drill several 6 inch holes into my RV pad to pull the line. :( and from their box to the RV pad, they ran the line less than 10 inches from the surface through my flower bed. So I have to rebury the line deeper so that I won't accidently cut the line when I'm planting flower bulbs.

They left and no word of when the final installer is supposed to come. It's been over a week so I called today.

round 3.

Customer no service left me out to dry for about 40 minutes on first go around and the guy hanged up on me saying he can't hear. Called back and I'm left out to dry for another 20 minutes and was told he needed to transfer me to ... you get the idea?

They said there is no schedule for the installer to come to my house. RE-A-L-LY...

So I'm supposed to have fiber connection to my house on Dec. 22. When on 22nd? between 8:00AM and 5:00PM ...

Now I wouldn't mind paying taxes for the internet connection (government owned) I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE MUCH BETTER SERVICE IF IT WAS. I know its a national past time for some to complain about having to pay taxes for having a radio or TV but do you want to deal with my headache?

so how am I able to post? I'm using my old personal hot spot 2G connection. I used to use it when I was traveling and didn't trust the hotel WiFi. Credit card sized 2G hotspot was collecting dust but it works and re-established a service. I'm limited to 6Gbyte of data transfer per month. so I'm limping by. And security is only WPA instead of WPA2-PSK. There is only one person in my neighborhood who has enough technical savvy and computing power to break the WPA security so not too worried.

When we decided to swap our DSL for a DSL + phone package they gave us the total run around. After weeks of talking to them on the phone (is your modem plugged in…. is it turned on….) I had one help desk guy tell me that oh, of course it isn't working, we don't offer DSL in your area. I think it was at that point that I totally lost it and told him that we'd had **** DSL for the last 5 **** years through their company so I was pretty sure it was and he hung up on me. I actually got black listed from the help desk in India…. The one good thing that came of it, when I finally did manage to contact someone at the company again, I was put through to a US help desk that actually figured out what had happened (a database error was preventing them from adding a service - they had to start it all from scratch like we were a new customer) and it was finally straightened out. We did however have to change our phone number (we were supposed to be able to keep our old one) and they *charged* me a cancellation fee… I think I got that refunded, but they were supposed to refund me the month of service I was charged for and never received and all of my cell phone time that I spent on hold with them, but I never saw any of that.

Eventually my SO figured out who was actually running the big switching center at the top of the hill and we dumped the above bozos (who were also throttling upload speeds horribly… emailing photographs to clients was a nightmare- it would time out on me) and went with the company who was behind the scenes leasing to the residential ISPs. The tech who came to do their install knew his stuff and we've never had another problem - not to mention it's faster - no throttling- and cheaper.

Yeah. I lost my Internet service one morning. Made appointment for them to send someone to look at it. Specifically asked them to call my cell instead of the landline for phone calls the day of the (afternoon ) appointment because I would not be home in the morning. Got home to find that their computer had called the landline, left a message that said "if you don't press 1 right now we will cancel the appointment." So they cancelled it. I called them, livid, asked why they didn't tell me I had to be home for hours before the appointment window or else they would cancel. They laughed at me and hung up.

I tried call their HQ in Philadelphia, could only leave a message, no one ever called back.

When I finally got a tech at my house, he found that someone had been stealing the service and the device they used had cut off my service.

Lately I've had problems with the wifi connection dropping momentarily. I'm avoiding the call to ask them to look into it. I know they will tell me to replace the modem -- by myself, so if I can't get it to work I'll be screwed. At some point when it gets really bad I will buy a modem from Microcenter, because they have great tech support if I have a problem hooking it up. Of course that might not solve the problem. I know that others in my neighborhood have the same problem.

Good luck, Smilingcat.

Round 4 Oh ohhh... this doesn't sound good.

After the last post, ISP had scheduled for FiOS install at my house for TODAY!! We don't have cable or POT (plain old telephone) line. nada. Time of the install was between 8:00AM and 5:00PM great time window!! Well... I got a call this morning around 9:00AM.

Ooops, we don't have a tech available today to install and have to reschedule. I guess they really don't want to provide me with a service. and I sure am not going to the worst of the worst companies for ISP.

At this point Chip the cable guy wouldn't be all that bad. It's almost two month without descent internet connection at my house. Personal hot spot is not meant for regular use.

Maybe its better to cut them off while I still can. Maybe someone is trying to protect me from the evil empire of sort. Another reason to emigrate out of this country. Like I said, I wouldn't mind paying tax(license) to have broadband connection, TV and Radio through a government agency.

So when are they supposed to come out? GORK (God Only Really Knows). They say they'll try for tomorrow but they are really overbooked. So if tech doesn't show up, call and schedule another day.

Hard to know the real technical problem. Could yo put it in writing?
If the line runs through a municipal right of way, phone the city to ask if there was even a Line installed properly.

i work in a division in govn't that approves lines that run through our right of ways.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by smilingcat

lSo when are they supposed to come out? GORK (God Only Really Knows). They say they'll try for tomorrow but they are really overbooked. So if tech doesn't show up, call and schedule another day.

---

As if you have nothing better to do than sit around eating bon bons just in case the guy shows up.

It blows my mind when people -- and the companies they work for -- think this level of incompetence is acceptable. I would be fired from my job for so much less.

Round 5

ISP tech showed up at 9:30AM. Nice guy, very pleasant. He installed the Fios box outside the house, connected to the existing COAX in the house. He then installed the "modem" inside the house then into my WiFi-router. Powered up my computer and internet connection worked. Tech went away after seeing that my computer accessed the internet.

Later in the day :( my home network is renamed. My partner's computer think the network has a different name. Then my computer refused to go on line. Can't access our printers.

After several very frustrating hours, it hit on me to connect the computer to the network through the WiFi. Both computers are able to access the internet, both see the WiFi connected printers.. Only drawback is that my WiFi is still only 801n and not the AC so data rate is only 300Mbits/sec instead of 1Gbit/sec.

When I have time, I'll find out why its not happy with ethernet cable to the router.

Not a very happy camper. This problem is definitely not something ISP will help.

Now have to go find out how to rename the network to what I used to have it. and how to restart the DNS server??? So why does it work with WiFi connection?

Well some progress is good, I guess. Good luck with the remaining problems. I hope you have phone service, too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by smilingcat

Round 5

ISP tech showed up at 9:30AM. Nice guy, very pleasant. He installed the Fios box outside the house, connected to the existing COAX in the house. He then installed the "modem" inside the house then into my WiFi-router. Powered up my computer and internet connection worked. Tech went away after seeing that my computer accessed the internet.

Later in the day :( my home network is renamed. My partner's computer think the network has a different name. Then my computer refused to go on line. Can't access our printers.

After several very frustrating hours, it hit on me to connect the computer to the network through the WiFi. Both computers are able to access the internet, both see the WiFi connected printers.. Only drawback is that my WiFi is still only 801n and not the AC so data rate is only 300Mbits/sec instead of 1Gbit/sec.

When I have time, I'll find out why its not happy with ethernet cable to the router.

Not a very happy camper. This problem is definitely not something ISP will help.

Now have to go find out how to rename the network to what I used to have it. and how to restart the DNS server??? So why does it work with WiFi connection?

---

For the part I bolded: Google and/or Youtube. I'm usually in way over my head with this stuff. I had a ridiculous password that came with my wi-fi. Someone (the tech, maybe?) suggested a simple search on how to change it. Success! I think it was a Youtube video that showed step by step instructions. Good luck.