If you didn’t read part one then this is a waste of your time. Of course, it might be construed that if you’re reading this stuff at all – it’s probably a waste of time.
As you may recall, I left off by comparing my impending battle with that of Great Britain during the early 1940s. If you don’t know anything about the 40’s then it might be worthwhile to get a history book and not bother reading blogs! That’s entirely up to you! The story hasn’t got anything to do that, but I thought I’d just mention it anyway. As a disclaimer, I have to tell you I was around, but had no clue as to the chaos being fermented in Europe, nor the challenges of what we now refer to as the “greatest generation.” To repeat, this has nothing to do with being between a rock and a hard place as it relates to my full-service provider or by definition full-non-service provider. As usual, I digress!
As you may recall, I was faced with an unreliable Internet connection, questionable phone service, and was totally screwed in attempting to record programs or download any films from the other service that I subscribed to. It actually, in some ways turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I rediscovered some old films back in the days when their intent was to make you happy and feel good leaving the theater, rather than so depressed or scared that you want to jump off a bridge. The oldies had little in the way of the messages on morality or the lack thereof. To digress for just a moment, I think the last time I walked into a theater was to watch “Lawrence of Arabia.” I really love musicals, and the closest thing that I’ve seen in the last 10 or 15 years has been “Dances with Wolves.” I kept waiting for Kevin Costner to break into a song and dance routine accompanied by Fred and Ginger, but it did not happen. And if you don’t know who those two people were, I can’t help you. Anyway, I digress.
Where we left off was the supervisor of the service technicians came to visit me. He reviewed my synopsis, however failed to congratulate me for being so diligent and supportive. I took that opportunity to mention of my lack of satisfaction with his erstwhile service technician, pointing out that the use of the word “service” was an extreme exaggeration. I suggested politely that this guy did a cursory job at best, and I was extremely disappointed. I made the point that his technician was superficial on both occasions, and suggested there might be a trend here. I was tempted to make a couple of nasty suggestions of my own, but better judgment prevailed, especially if I wanted the problem fixed. I may have mentioned he couldn’t find his ass with both hands, but I don’t really remember.
Anyway, the supervisor took a look at a few things, and made a few more suggestions. He played around with the modem, played around with the wireless network during which he informed me that it wasn’t working, and I informed him “you guys installed it!” He played around with the TV, and my general impression was this was more of a PR call than a technical support call, but in spite of this inclination and impression I remained calm, thanks to my Marine Corps training in self-control and anger management.
We talked about the wireless router as possibly being the culprit and I let him continue for a short period of time before hitting him with a sneak attack! I informed him that I had replaced the suspect router with another router which I knew worked, and the problem didn’t go away. I know this was probably an unfair thing to do, but I had reached the point of exercising the old adage of “don’t get mad, get even.” So, soon Dr. Watson exclaimed, “clearly the “non-working” wireless router was not the culprit!” The supervisor, having recognized that he had been outmaneuvered by Sherlock’s superior intellect, commented: “Oh!”
He really didn’t achieve much – like in nothing at all. When I told him that the phones had also quit working, he kind of ignored that and moved on to issues within the DVM supplier and that it was highly possible that was the problem with the degeneration of picture quality! I said “I find that interesting because your illustrious company just announced a great big huge deal with them to carry your subscription service, and it’s all over their menu.” I noted, “I would show it to you if the picture wasn’t so blurry!” You probably think that was a low blow, but as far as I was concerned I had not won a single round in this fistfight.
He finally agreed to send out a specialist to take a look at the problem and my system. I corrected him, “You mean our system.” Another blow to the lower body by the bloodied, but unbowed customer. He said “you probably have some bad wiring” and I commented that my doctor thought so too. I said, “well if that’s the case, you got a problem because your folks put it in when you installed the system.” In all fairness, I must admit he had a number of ideas, some of which were logical and some of which made no sense technically.
My basic point was that this had been going on for a little better than two weeks, that I know of, and it seemed to me they have a responsibility to correct the problem. He quickly agreed, and made arrangements for two specialists the visit as soon as possible, which meant two days, and naturally they would show up between 2 and 4 PM. I don’t think these guys work except during the hours between 2 and 4 PM.
A couple of days later I got a call, and sure enough, the guys showed up at the appointed hour. They called the office, ran some more checks and said that the signal was well within range, and in fact very strong. I showed them my diligent list of symptoms which I had presented to the original technician and they skimmed through it. Of course, I mentioned the phone problem, and their general response was “that’s not possible, it must be some other issue.” I have wireless phones in the house and their thought was that the system was probably going south. I responded by noting the two hard-line instruments in the house, and neither one of those were working. Their collective response was “Oh!”
Down they went to my “man cave” and looked at the system, ran some speed checks and basically told me that the router I had there was operating in such a fashion as to interfere with the wireless router, which didn’t work wirelessly, because of something called the same IP address, and that the solution was to replace that router with one that has a different address, or was basically a dumb router. The “dumb” part was a defining moment. I had no idea what the hell they were talking about and asked them to write down a recommended product (which shall go unnamed for previously mentioned reasons). They had come to the conclusion that, in their expert opinion, this was the issue, simple interference between two competing wide area network services, or in my vernacular, routers.
I was still hung up on the fact that everything was going down on a random basis. Nothing in the system had changed since their original installation the previous June. Why was I having this unique competitive issue with the routers after nearly 9 months of getting along rather well. Did one router say something the other router took exception to? The nature of this problem demanded that I consider all sorts of conflicting scenarios. It’s possible that the two routers were pissed off at each other. I know that electronic gremlins can be a real devil, but I just wasn’t sure that the problem was that innocuous, and there was a real issue as to why I hadn’t seen it before? Once again, thinking about the two phone lines, I knew that the routers have nothing to do with them, and as Dr. Watson had previously said, “it’s the modem, Sherlock.”
Nevertheless, I have to tell you I was impressed. I will say these two fellows paid more attention to the problem and the symptoms, and convinced me that it was my problem caused by this router phenomenon, and it could be cured very simply. Phenomena strikes again at the heart of Sherlock’s investigation. I was convinced that Moriarty was behind this entire devastating situation.
The next day I hopped in the car and drove down to the big-box electronics store. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to find somebody to help me find this product, and eventually walked out with a $35 product that was going to cure all my problems. Driving back home, I was still concerned about the loss of telephone service, but a lack of any cogent explanation forced me to rationalize it away by thinking “they probably had a problem with their system and it was just a coincidence.” Wrong! I installed the new server/router into the system and it came up and was working fine — for three hours.
I now had the ever familiar “no Internet service” all over again, and I’m back to where I started, on the phone again, talking with someone in Guadalajara, asking for them to call the local supervisor and tell him that his experts were incorrect. I gave them my cell phone number with the suspicion that the service to my telephone lines was probably intermittent. The next day, the supervisor called me back, told me how busy he was and that he was going to send his best technician, likely an oxymoron, out within the next day or two, you guessed it, between 2 and 4 PM. By this time, I had made at least 20 phone calls to the provider, had been basically without consistent service for going on three weeks, and there was still no solution in sight. I had lost rounds three, four and five.
Part of my frustration was the fact that from the get-go I had made it very clear to the first mentally diminutive support technician that the situations seem random and somewhat intermittent. Further, I made it clear that I had attempted to check out all of the internal plug-in connections, the coaxial cable going to the DVM, all of the ethernet connections, and had lit candles to the Internet God for a quick solution, or for that matter, any solution.
On a Saturday, I got phone call from yet another service technician who said he would be there between two and four to take a look at the situation. He showed up, instrumentation in hand, spent 10 minutes doing the same signal checks and then said he wanted to take this modem and test it in his truck. He came back in the house and said “it’s not the modem, it’s not your wireless router, but I got an idea!”
He disconnected a 4-foot ethernet cable going from the main outlet into the modem, and replaced it with a new cable, and guess what? He looked me and he said “I’ll bet you lost your phones, too?” My thought was “this guy is brilliant!”
I watched the system very closely for the next five days, and no problems! After three weeks, many phone calls, much frustration, a multitude of hate and discontent, damnation and destruction, the problem was resolved. The culprit was a 4-foot, three dollar piece of cabling which had been provided by my erstwhile new service provider and likely had a couple of loose wires. Unbelievable! As I said before, my doctor had suggested the same thing applies to me.
I had been smart enough to get a business card from the supervisor and called him, leaving a message. He called, and once again made a point of how busy he was. I was just a little more than frustrated that this could’ve been resolved by the first service call, had the technician paid any attention to my critique of the symptoms. As an after-thought, I was convinced that the supervisor didn’t know what the hell the critique was. I suggested that an adjustment should be made to my bill simply because I was basically in “never-never land” for approximately three weeks. His comment was that he would take care of that. So I hung up with at least a little satisfaction after having to contend with all of this misery. Customer wins round six, maybe.
To pour salt in an open wound, the following Monday I got my bill from this provider which showed an increase of $30 a month for services. Naturally, I got on the phone and ended up, you guessed it, in Mexico. I asked if they had seen a credit and they said yes, and it was for $25. I hit the roof. I had paid more than that for the dumb router that I didn’t need. I asked to be directed to someone in the continental United States so I could discuss this billing or possible cancellation of our entire relationship. He said, “I will transfer you” but in truth I never got out of Mexico. I talked to a section supervisor, who asked if he could put me on hold while he looked at the records. At this point I could see round seven going down the tubes. I was cut, bleeding and staggering around the ring when the bell rang. The supervisor came back on the phone and made a major financial concession that at least made me feel as though this imminent provider wanted my business.
All is well! I now have the ability to stream dumb movies without being told I have no Internet service, I haven’t had to reboot the modem, nor the router, nor my computer, nor my DVR, which leaves me very little to do but to sit around and write stupid blogs like this one.
There is no moral to this story other than “if it is too good to be true, it ain’t, Sherlock!”
J.J. Addingnuttin 