At what point do you just play dumb

Update: The struggles is over! I have Fiber to the home now… Thank God!

My internet service provider is quite the pain in the ass. (At least if you are looking for “reliable” service and customer support) I live in the middle of no where and i pretty much have 4 options… your probably thinking wow 4 options and this guy is complaining ? Let me list them.

  1. Hughes Net Satellite Wireless
  2. WatchTV Microwave Wireless
  3. Dial up
  4. Reliable Wireless LLC” Wifi

So out of those choices its pretty obvious which one you would pick, the one that is offering an uncapped amount of transfer and is faster than 3Mbps for 54.99 a month. PLUS they have RELIABLE in their name…. how could it NOT BE RELIABLE right ???? (i made sure to link to their site just so google can associate this glowing review with them)

Well to say the least its not Reliable at all. I average about a 300-500ms ping time and the only way I ever see the 4Mbps I’m paying for is if I’m downloading something through bittorrent or a download accelerator that opens about 50 connections. Did I mention that packet loss averages about 5%, but on a “RELIABLE” day it can go as high as 80-90%?  I’m sure you don’t believe me… just like their crappy tech support doesn’t… but I’m smarter than your average broadband customer so I have pretty pictures

last10days

The dots should be green, and would be on a normal connection… blue is kinda bad with red being the worst… this picture doesn’t show any red, but trust me its there on others. But wait… what is all that white space on the right ?

If you said “his connection has been down for almost 3 days” then YOU are the winner! Sorry no prizes this time… unless you want a Microtik radio off my tower…..

So what to do right ? Well I call their tech support and report that my connection is down… a ticket is opened at 3:01PM… I then get an email at 3:11PM that says the ticket has been closed…. SWEET! NOT.

I then received a voice mail stating that they checked the radio and all seems fine and it must be in my network. WTF… would you treat a normal customer this way ? NO you would roll a truck and go figure it out because you want to keep the customer. Not “RELIABLE” wireless… they just point fingers back at me saying that it must be my stuff…. unfortunately I work with many CCIE’s and run my configs by them, so when my Cisco 1811w router cant ping 192.168.199.1 (my gateway) BUT I can get CDP information from the device… that tells me that my device is talking to their device just fine. Oh and just to make sure… i also plugged my laptop directly into the power injector for the radio and I am unable to get ANY packets from the device to show up in windows… not even DHCP. Clearly something is fucked up in that radio.

So back to the title….. at what point is it just better to play dumb and pretend not to know ANYTHING about computers so that they stop pointing fingers and just come fix the problem. Because me pointing out they flaws in an attempt to just get better service is clearly not working.

I could go on and on… like the fact that there are about 20 hops between my router and time warner (their uplink)… i mean really it takes 20 hops on your network to get me to time warner? Bigger ISP’s dont even have that many… clearly no one there knows network design.

Ok one last point…. not aimed at “RELIABLE” wireless completely though.

WTF do this ISP’s do with all the tax payers money they are getting ? If i do a google search for “broadband grants” or “last mile isp grants” I get TON’s of results… yet there are no providers on the road I live on… I talked to time warner and they said that I would need to somehow offset the build cost to get their service…. to the tune of $44,000…. yet there are 26 houses in the stretch between myself and their closest POP….

Obviously I could move… but why should I have to when I’m a tax payer who has some funds begin put into those broadband grants every year yet see no results.

 

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12 Responses to "At what point do you just play dumb"

  1. Hey you should move to Australia! We have this thing called the nbn (national broadband network) witch is going to deliver fibre to the home to about 90% of the population… unless a new government is elected.

  2. But the other 10% in Austrailia are probably still left out. That’s what we have in the US as well, if you live in a rural area then dial up, which is 14K if you’re lucky, is all that’s open to you. I have wondered about the broadband grants many times myself, and you have to wonder is that ever audited?

    I do wonder how much of our population wants broadband, but can’t get it. One of my colleagues was quoted over $8,000 by Charter to run a line to his house. Luckily, he can get by with a MiFi type device, but would otherwise be left out.

  3. Hmm! I can imagine how frustrating and ridiculous they can be!
    You should probably have a word with their Technical Head and give them a wake up call!

  4. The other 10% are currently getting heavily subsidised satellite service until the nbn launch their own satellites. Granted, it’s not ever going to be as good as fibre but it’s something.

  5. We have a similar problem near rural New Bremen, OH for one of our facilities… Went with Watch TV… We had to put up a radio tower to get a signal… I wouldn’t call their service optimum either, but it sounds more “reliable” than this!

  6. Yeah, they are my next option if Reliable cant get their crap together. Only issue with them is the cost a little…. maybe it would be worth it though lol

  7. I agree with Lee, a MiFi connection would be the way to go if you have decent cell service. It sounds like 3G would be comparable to what you have now and if you have 4G service out there you could get cable modem speeds!

  8. I have a Verizon 4G MiFi… however its rather limited even with the family shared data plan. But when the other stuff goes out that is what i use… or if i need something really quick… i have 4g service so i can easily get 10-20Mbps down with it… only downside is that it doesnt take long to burn through my 4GB plan 🙂

  9. This is nothing more than a direct result of not having competition. Despite all the intense bloviating of US politicians and the industrial complex, Internet access is a monopoly in most places.

    Recently in Salisbury, NC, the town was told to take down a very high speed network that was made available to all. It was magnitudes faster than the local cable. And half the price, and still made money. The local cable company complained saying that they could not compete against taxpayer funded Internet.

    Better for the town. Better for the People. Worse for the rotten cable company. Cable Company greases the palms of state politicians, and the_people_lose_every_time.

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