Our cable modem service went flooey on Saturday night, about 9:30p or so — which, to be sure, meant we got to bed at a reasonable hour, but was still pretty frustrating.
Margie did initial point person on calling Comcast, and then sat through some relatively dimwitted fellow who walked us through all the obvious tech support tasks outlined in the three ring binder (powering things off and on like we hadn’t done that already and be sure you turn it off at the power strip and not by unplugging the cord on the stupid cable modem that doesn’t have a power switch; disconnecting the router and are you sure that might not be causing the problem because after all it isn’t something we rent to you on a monthly basis; repeat for the fifth time which of the four lights on the front of the cable modem is doing what), and then finally gave up and said they’d have to have a truck roll to us, and would we mind being home and up at 8 in the morning on Sunday?
I was on the phone by this point, Margie having reached her stupid repair man quota for the day.
Now, mind you, I’ve done tech support, including phone tech support. It can be frustrating as all hell from the other end of the line, too, since you get people who haven’t cycled the power on the unit (or who, for some reason, don’t want to seem dumb, and thus lie to you about having done it). But this fellow was obviously both technically clueless beyond his script, and not terribly customer-conscious either.
Next morning, of course, all was well with the world and the Net, and I had to call Comcast back to let them know that they shouldn’t roll a truck (because if they get there and there’s not a problem that’s their fault, you get stuck with the $50 service call fee). They did credit the day back to our account (memo to self: confirm that), but it was still irksome.
I keep thinking I should actually buy a frelling cable modem, since they’re only $40-50 or so, and we’re paying $3 a month for this POS. My concern is that it will be one more thing that the cable guys can say, “Well, you don’t have one of ours, so there’s nothing we can do.”
Rrg.
I’ve been meaning to purchase a cable modem myself, but always forget about it when I’m at the store.
Charter’s e-mail servers went down last night. I called and asked if the server was down. The guy spent twenty minutes making me try to change my password, which wouldn’t work because I couldn’t connect to the server. Eventually he put me on hold, then came back and said “My manager says the e-mail server is down.” Doyyy! That’s what I asked at the beginning of the call! “Must… control… Fist of Death!”
Still down after 10 hours.