It appears as if Yahoo! SBC DSL has gone and made Chris Pirillo mad. Well, it appears as if “all” broadband providers want to piss people off.
We’ve (my housemates and I) got Verizon DSL and phone service.
No big deal; we call at the begining of the summer and have them setup phone and DSL. The phone turns on like clockwork.
The DSL stuff arrives in the mail…I take the time to read the paper and see that we can’t plug it in for another week. I hate not having my broadband…2 years on a college connection will do that. Anyway, we get it and we wait and wait and wait. Monday roles around and we plug it all in. Filters in perfect position, DSL modem plugged in, their stupid software humming away on my laptop…nada.
No signal, no nothing.
Just a blasted blinking light. I hated that light, yet I wanted it to stay turned on.
Thus begins my saga with Verizon phone support. I call and the lady goes through the whole initial support thing. Do you have it plugged in to the power and phone line without the filter? Are there filters between the phones and the line? Blah, blah, blah. I of course answer as politely as possible that everything is plugged in where it should be and it is in order. Then she says she’ll forward my ticket on and they’ll call me tomorrow during the day (I work from 8 to 5 what am I supposed to do?). Anyway, we try that and I tell her just to have them fix it.
Tuesday…nothing’s changed when I get home. Call support back again. Same questions…same answers.
Wednesday…I go home during lunch to make the call….sit on hold for the entire lunch hour…no human interaction. Call after work. Same deal, only I got forwarded to the “real” tech support people. Nadda…the closed before my call went through.
Thursday…I go home during lunch. Get a standard call-in help guy. Tell him to skip the standard questions. Tell him to read the information about me on the screen in front of him (I worked for the Census Bureau making phone calls, I know there are notes on the screen for return callers) and to give the me the number for the “other” tech support. He puts me on hold for a minute and returns with a number. Yay, finally some progress. I call the number and am on hold…lunch ends.
I go back to work. Make the call to that number, and sit on hold for 4 hours. I began to get weird looks from people who came by the Help Desk…good thing I had finished my real work for the day. Anyway, I finally get to talk to someone. Three minutes on the phone. I tell him everything’s plugged in and turned on. He tries to see the DSL modem and for some reason can’t seem to get through. Thus, making it not my fault. He takes my number (work number, so I might actually get to talk to him) and within half an hour someone calls back and tells me they didn’t plug me in at the local station.
I was sitting with DSL service that wasn’t plugged in on their end. I sat on hold for four days and wasted who knows how much time, and didn’t have internet access at home because someone forgot to plug me in on the right day.
What a wonderful world. I will say that once we got connect there have been no known problems.
August 20th, 2003 at 11:56 pm
Not the first time I’ve heard of that. Rarely happens where work (I won’t say never, but it’s almost never) but we do cable modems and we do cable modems good. I’ve actually heard that story for DSL many times. Usually just not provisioned.
August 21st, 2003 at 12:44 pm
Very interesting read regarding DSL. I too have heard some of the ’stories’ around getting DSL. It was good to hear what you have to say. I knew I didn’t want SBC DSL, but have been looking into Verizon DSL. I can’t really do anything right now, cause both are not currently offered in my neighborhood.