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solarbirdWe're down again, it's Comcast's fault again, as usual Tier 1 service bots are presuming we're idiots and it's our fault. So I wrote this on Twitter.
I got into an argument a couple of months ago with a guy who was Damned Well Sure that I had a zillion internet options that could meet our needs other than Comcast, and that he - in Montana, I think? - damned well knew that and I should STFU about infrastructure internet.
As I sit in my fourth major provider-caused outage since October, knowing we can't get an on-site tech from our provider for at least four days, having no idea if or when we might hear from Tier 2 to be sure we actually need one, I think on that, while talking again to providers.
We have Comcast, who we're with now.
We have HughesNet Satellite. 25mbps maximum down - about 15% of what we have - and negligible speeds up.
We have ViaSat Satellite. 100mbps maximum down - a mere 50% cut - and negligible speeds up.
We have Earthlink! It's DSL! But 75mbps. 43% of our current, though I have to say, infinitely more than the 0% we have right now.
But what I know _from experience_ is that the copper in this neighbourhood is nightmarishly bad, as in dropped calls on landlines bad, so hard pass.
We have a variety of cell phone companies, of course. That's how I'm online right now. Bandwidth isn't bad, but hoo boy the latency. I don't know if they offer fixed IP these days, but I guess I should check.
And we have Ziply. They're fibre. The numbers are fine and I go to the website and find that these days they're offering fixed IP services at last! Are we in business?
I look for pricing, and can't find it, so I use their chat to ask, and they can't tell me! Because the business services page links to consumer sales chat, not business sales chat, and they give me a phone number.
It's the wrong phone number.
So I go back to the website and find the right phone number, and I call it, and after some phone tree, I actually get to business sales. Yay!
And they tell me there's a greater than 10 minute wait to talk to BUSINESS SALES and I should use the website or call back later.
Think about that for half a second.
It's a >10 minute wait and I should call back if I want them to... _sell me service_.
And I just think about what that implies for support.
Mind you, I've been trying for an hour to get online @ComcastBusiness support to confirm that they've received the information I provided them and added to the latest outage ticket, so it's hard to imagine it being too much worse.
It's literally a matter of "Please confirm the above DMs describing our current situation have been added to ticket [number]."
It's been an hour. I'm resending the request every 10 minutes.
To be fair, they said they needed the account name and address too about 20 minutes in.
But I gave them that.
No response.
So, yeah. As I sit here trying to get support even to acknowledge the information I've sent, and as I sit contemplating being told to call back to be able to talk to _sales_, I think about how many, many choices we have.
As long as we choose for everything to suck.
I got into an argument a couple of months ago with a guy who was Damned Well Sure that I had a zillion internet options that could meet our needs other than Comcast, and that he - in Montana, I think? - damned well knew that and I should STFU about infrastructure internet.
As I sit in my fourth major provider-caused outage since October, knowing we can't get an on-site tech from our provider for at least four days, having no idea if or when we might hear from Tier 2 to be sure we actually need one, I think on that, while talking again to providers.
We have Comcast, who we're with now.
We have HughesNet Satellite. 25mbps maximum down - about 15% of what we have - and negligible speeds up.
We have ViaSat Satellite. 100mbps maximum down - a mere 50% cut - and negligible speeds up.
We have Earthlink! It's DSL! But 75mbps. 43% of our current, though I have to say, infinitely more than the 0% we have right now.
But what I know _from experience_ is that the copper in this neighbourhood is nightmarishly bad, as in dropped calls on landlines bad, so hard pass.
We have a variety of cell phone companies, of course. That's how I'm online right now. Bandwidth isn't bad, but hoo boy the latency. I don't know if they offer fixed IP these days, but I guess I should check.
And we have Ziply. They're fibre. The numbers are fine and I go to the website and find that these days they're offering fixed IP services at last! Are we in business?
I look for pricing, and can't find it, so I use their chat to ask, and they can't tell me! Because the business services page links to consumer sales chat, not business sales chat, and they give me a phone number.
It's the wrong phone number.
So I go back to the website and find the right phone number, and I call it, and after some phone tree, I actually get to business sales. Yay!
And they tell me there's a greater than 10 minute wait to talk to BUSINESS SALES and I should use the website or call back later.
Think about that for half a second.
It's a >10 minute wait and I should call back if I want them to... _sell me service_.
And I just think about what that implies for support.
Mind you, I've been trying for an hour to get online @ComcastBusiness support to confirm that they've received the information I provided them and added to the latest outage ticket, so it's hard to imagine it being too much worse.
It's literally a matter of "Please confirm the above DMs describing our current situation have been added to ticket [number]."
It's been an hour. I'm resending the request every 10 minutes.
To be fair, they said they needed the account name and address too about 20 minutes in.
But I gave them that.
No response.
So, yeah. As I sit here trying to get support even to acknowledge the information I've sent, and as I sit contemplating being told to call back to be able to talk to _sales_, I think about how many, many choices we have.
As long as we choose for everything to suck.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-08 02:14 am (UTC)Say what now? Any kind of fiber is exactly the kind of thing that forms a natural monopoly. And the through-the-air (satellite and cell) are notoriously expensive and vulnerable to weather.
My view is that anyone with more than one wired broadband provider is lucky.
And my experience is that cable companies are *slightly* less evil than telephone companies. For perspective, our local phone company was more user-hostile than *the IRS*.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 05:46 am (UTC)The situation with Comcast has become even worse, and there is in fact now one (1) other company who can provide us the services we need, so we're gonna try it. We're moving basically from cable to fibre and wish us luck, because we're gonna need it.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 06:07 am (UTC)There was a point during my troubles with IInet/Covad when the Comcast guy stopped by to ask if we wanted cable+internet service (since we stopped all that completely in 2010) and actually seemed clueful, but I guess I dodged a bullet there.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 09:30 pm (UTC)I suspect they merged consumer and business - Tier 1 got a LOT more scripty overnight - and things have gone downhill from there.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 03:26 pm (UTC)