High speed internet access seems like a wonderful idea. Especially for someone with an internet business that requires a certain amount of time spent online. Will I ever know for sure? Maybe. Maybe not.
I've been trying since mid-June to get Comcast cable internet installed. So much for the 'be online tonight' idea! It's ticking closer to three months since my first call, and I'm still poking along on dial-up.
All the Comcast customer service people are nice. All the installers are nice. Even the contractors that installed the outside cable and cut the phone lines to half the neighborhood were nice. They worked until 10pm trying to fix the phone lines with duct tape, and managed at least to get my grandmother's phone line connected to the neighbor's fax line. So while the rest of us had no phone or internet service for several days, my grandmother was happily gabbing away on the neighbor's line.
So the problem isn't with the individual people. They are really, really nice. But believe me-- it seems that company policy is 'let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing.' For the first six weeks when I was calling about twice a week to get the process moving, they couldn't even find me in the computer half the time!
After spending well over a month and great wads of cash to get the cable up to the house (and the phone lines cut), I call for installation of the interior stuff. Here's how that goes:
A service person arrives at the door a week or so later, "I hear you're having trouble with your cable." Well, no. I'm not having trouble WITH my cable-- I need my cable installed. Okay, so they install it (leaving bright orange cable wrapped around the house outside, and fat black cable travelling through exterior walls, up the sides of door frames, down around baseboards and up the wall to where I actually want the connection). They hook up the modem. They go back and forth to their vans (two of them) and confer. They depart, shaking their heads and promising that someone else will come in a couple of days.
Half a week later, I call them back to inquire. They had no idea what could be the matter, but within a week, another nice service person shows up. Test, test, test.... everything is working. Except something that is not, and it's something he can't fix. He leaves, promising that the department that fixes this sort of thing will be out within a week.
They aren't, of course. So I call this morning, and after spending 24:23 minutes on the phone, am asked to call back later because their computer system is down.
It's later; I called back, and a recorded message states that they are undergoing scheduled maintenance and to please call back after 6 a.m. and they are very sorry for the inconvenience. Bah!
Why do I persist in trying to get Comcast? Because it's the only player in the game here (I don't want satellite). Too bad Verizon couldn't get its act together fast enough to get DSL out here. There would be no question as to who would get my business.
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