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We'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.
