Rural Towns

[DawnM]

I for one am sick to death of only having three options here: Dial up, DSL, and satellite.

I posted a thread regarding naked DSL already so if you have comments or suggestions about that please let me know.

Bell is fairly reliable but my main complaint is with their tech support. Whenever I call up with a problem, I tell them that I have gone through the basics - no there is no new programs that have been installed or uninstalled, I have tried rebooting my computer, I have shut everything down and turned it off at the power source, I have restarted my modem. I know it's their job to be thorough but geeeezzzz....if I tell you that I've done all those things then I have done them ... let's start from there instead of wasting half an hour going over everything that I made a point to do BEFORE calling you.

[chelle123]

I totally understand what you are saying. I have to go through the same thing with Century Tel every single time also!

[MechaTurkey]

Hmm...maybe i'm not as rural as i thought. I get alot of help from being so high up in the mountains...and being in a bit of a valley also.

[cooljoebay]

I have setel DSL and usually I have great speed. But last Wednesday, the speed became erratic for the first time. On Thursday morning, it was down to about 2x dial up speed. Then on Saturday it became non existent at 0.1Kbps. I was on the phone with technical support for at least an hour, troubleshooting over the phone. And they can switch it on and off right there at the office. Anyway, they were gonna try to get me to try a million things I already did before. I finally told them that I took my laptop(instead of desktop) and a new modem, new cords, and went to the service box outside, effectively bypassing home wiring and any possible viruses. Same thing. No doubt the problem was no longer mine.

What did they do for me?

They sent a couple of patsies from 100 miles away to my house just to sit down at mu computer and browse the internet. They guy must have tried Speedtest.net 50 times. He copied and pasted my modem stats and emailed them to someone to look at. Even though I already sent a screenshot to technical support before today. To me it was a complete waste of time. I can understand if a grannie sitting at home could need that kind of help. But I have to IT degrees, working on another one. The last thing I need are a couple of hillbillies that know 1/8th of my knowledge driving across country wasting theirs and my time.

Anyway, they claim that they would file with repair and see what happens.

The one thing they dont know about me is that I can be the biggest, most spiteful jerk on the planet if I dont get my way. I am actually pretty good guy. But my experience tells me that people will quickly railroad you if you let them. And sometimes you gotta stand tall. When you're spending years dealing with idiots at colleges, you learn that YES there are a lot of idiots in the world.

Maybe with some luck, my 3Meg line will get hot again. But you can bet until then I will be slamming them for a credit.