I am now up and running on the Comcast connection. yea!
It's only giving me about 5Mbs at the moment. But that's what you get when you try the cheapy tier, I guess. It's no 30 Mbs....but I can dream.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
And I try so hard....
I'm a geek for a living. And I have a confession to make. My bandwidth at home is awful. I mean, really, really - bad. So I decided to do something about it.
I finally decided, I had to go with Comcast. (Fios....you skipped my street you jerks!) We go back. I had dreams of fat cable modem bandwidthy-goodness filling my dreams for the first time in the late 90's. This is when cable modems first made their way into my part of the country - Bon Air, Virginia.
However, later in life - we had a falling out, when I bought my first house. The fat Internet pipe had to go, in the name of responsible budgeting. So I cut back down to DSL....saved a few hundred bucks a year. And now - a few years later - I've had it with my lame 500kbs DSL. There' s just too much stuff I could use a 5 or 10 or 30mbs for.......too much funny stuff on youtube....too much HD TV available for streaming.....too much, eh, you get the point. It's time for a change.
So I bite. I attempt to order Comcast. My first attempt failed in fantastic style. I was told I could not get service at my address - even though I used to have it where I live now. My neighbors wi-fi SSID is 'Comcastic' (oh....so clever.....) After I failed to sign up via the website (got a 'you have to call us for that' message) I called the number provided.
After about 45 minutes, of mostly hold, on the phone after I got a Human Comcast Rep on the phone - I decided I needed to think things over a little further when he asked for my SSN to check for service availability. Uh.....no.
After another week or so, I decide there really isn't anything truly private about this here series of tubes anyway - so I call back. Besides....perhaps this time they will find my street without my SSN.
To my surprise, I get a local guy - and he signs me up for a self install kit, and service at $33 a month for 12 months (plus tax and rental fee). He seemed to have some sort of issue getting the order correct - something about not being able to ship the self install kit anymore. No biggie - I swing by the local office on Monday and pick it up.
At this point, I can smell the improved bandwidth....just a quick install - and I'm home free. All is well.
I picked up my Modem - and (somewhat expect-idly on my behalf) I have some further trouble. But this time it's me and I know it.....We put in a garden this spring...and I likely chopped up the cable line a bit in the process. Modem won't sync....that seems important. I call back.
Very quickly and easily, I have an appointment for repair to the line on Wednesday. I had trouble getting home in time for the appointment....but luckily I managed to get home in time to have the tech run a new cable and restore full signal strength to my modem. Even though I knew the problem was with the line....somehow this did not make it into the notes the tech had for the visit. Eh, par for the course, I suppose - but certainly not a big deal. But it could have saved everyone some trouble.
Full signal is restored to my modem with the new run......Game On!
Not so fast. Turns out flashy lights on modem do not mean my account is activated. However, it does mean the install wizard (which is much better than it used to be....but still kind of annoying) finds a new error code.
I call for further support - and am told there was (in fact) a problem with my account - but that it should be fixed. Normally, it would be fixed while I was on the call - but there was a problem with one of their systems, so the case was escalated....and I should expect a call back in about an hour. That would have been around 3:30pm EST today. Needless to say...I have not received any calls back.
Turns out, their website (or at least the activation server part of it) is down....for maintenance. Not the normal, scheduled kind. The tricky - it's an update but we don't know when it will be up again, kind. Sounds like someone has an outage. Everyone has outages.....it's just kind of annoying when it's not called an outage. And it prevents me from my fat, new, pipe for another (8 hours and counting....)
It was in this deep pit of non-stop frustration where I found something good. My favorite part of our tumultuous and fragile renewed beginning together:
I got the link from the twitter account for comcastcares - which I heard about on TWIT. If that sentence confuses you....follow the links and read.
I email them asking for help - and get a response in 1 minute. In a period of under 2 hours - I have 10 e-mails in the conversation, and I have every confidence in the world that the nice folks on the other end will actually be able to take care of this issue. Let me be clear...the underlying answer I got didn't change very much (activation servers are down).
But the trustworthiness of the response is somehow bolstered by the technical environment in which it took place. Please don't let me down.
The activation issue is still there....but I'm not as pissed about it as I could be. In all likely hood - assuming they ever get the activation service back up....I will share the positive process with the smaller, connected support group widely. More people will likely hear about the prompt responses I received, than the calamity of errors (yours and mine) which preceded it. And that's pretty cool.
Of course, I also have had enough time to write out this blog entry....and I'm still on my old n' slow DSL. I look forward to updating soon with a full resolution. And for those of you who found this posting - and are in need of service from Comcast....give the e-mail or twitter accounts a try.
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