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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Who's the idiot now.

Ok, I work in the support field. Networking and VoIP in particular. So, I think I know about networking and stuff. That's why this story is so painful.

So, I decided to make the jump to cable instead of DSL. Why? Because the DSL was slow and continuously had problems. So, I called DSL support. Their answer for everything was "its on your side". However, after 1 hour or so it would miraculously start working again without me doing a damn thing. So, I finally gave up and headed to cable.

So I order up cable. Now, since I work for a networking company, I thought I'd use our own gear instead of buying the gear from the cable company. I order it via internal employee purchasing only to find out that it will be like 1 month before I will get it. Well, I had to call and reschedule the install. Finally, I check on the status again and find out that it will be even longer. So, I cancel the order and head to Best Buy to get the same product only via retail. I buy it, happy I've contributed to my own salary and head home.

I get the install guy out on Saturday. Nice guy but had no clue about provisioning in Texas. You see, he was a contractor from the Michigan area just brought here to help with the unusual high volume. He finally gets things to the point where I need to register and BOOM!

The thing stops working altogether. He tells me I need to talk to support but that everything is working from his point of view so if I could just pay him the $93 for install he'd be off. WHAT? I tell him, "No offense to you, but I ain't paying nothing until it works." He says ok, and marks me down to be billed the install fee and is off to the next job leaving me with a non-working system.

I call support and they give me all kinds of reasons. Talked to three different people and got three different answers. Finally after like the 5th person they said, "We'll have a technician come to your home on Monday."

I desperation, I call my own company's tech support. After about 15 minutes, they tell me that I've probably got bad hardware and need to get new gear. Crap.

I go back to Best Buy today and get the new gear, come home and BOOM! It is now all working. Only I feel like an idiot because I gave the cable people so much grief about it being their problem, its a new install, you suck, blah, blah. Man, crow taste like crap.

So, I'm on the new cable, working great, happy to be done with DSL and on my way to fast surfing. So, lesson to you all: never give the cable company crap or they will prove you wrong.

:-)