…but invoking the shade of John Denver, it’s “almost heaven”–for now–after a couple of months of poor service from my ISP (which shall go unnamed to protect the guilty *heh*). I had a real difficulty getting up to full curmudgeonly “gripe ’em out” mode, since the last couple of months of on again-off again service from my ISP was the first time in six years with this ISP that I’ve had cause to really gripe. Finally, six business days after my full mode “take no prisoners” assault on my ISP’s support, another tech came out, metered the input on my line and got a definitive number on the poor feed from them–same as ALL THE OTHERS he’d tested in town that day–and someone apparently kicked some a$$ back up the line, cos my numbers for the past couple of days’ service have been consistently better, and service has been–apart from a complete outage early this a.m. around 1:00, when I suppose someone may have scheduled some additional service, and I ought to have been sleeping anyway–better since Saturday.
(Heck, for much of the past couple of months, SpeedTest.net, when it would load at all, would time out testing my connection. That’s not good. And yes, I redacted the ISP’s name and the location of the test.)
It’s nice to–for now–have service that’s more like what I’ve been paying for. Nice that my repeated, pointed remarks about the ISP not investing enough in service (having too few service techs, as an example) seems to have resulted in TWO techs working the multiple calls in town last week, instead of the usual one, hugely over worked guy (it may have helped that I encouraged others that I know have the same ISP to list that in their gripes as well, ya think? *heh*). Also nice that, my repeated pressing for my ISP to “make me whole” also resulted in a rebate on at least a portion of the past two months’ service charges. Lesson: in today’s economy where companies are cutting back in the wrong places (not laying off or at least re-tasking useless management pukes but laying off, or not hiring, enough “boots on the ground” for example), rattling the cages of increasingly higher layers of support personel is sometimes the only way to get what you pay for.
Update: well after a mini-outage late last night and again this a.m., my current connection speed’s a slight improvement over yesterday… for now.
