Yeh, I’m back griping about my ISP again. *sigh*
So, service had been “fair to partly cloudy” since about late Sunday evening/early Monday AM. Not stellar, but mostly up and mostly adequate. Then I got this in my email:
We appreciate that you have chosen Xxxxxxxxx Online High-Speed Internet service, and we constantly look to bring you a better service
with new improvements.We have just increased your download speed from 8 Mbps to 12 Mbps, and your upload speed from 52 Kbps to 1 Mbps.
All you need to do to get the faster speed is unplug the power cord from your cable modem, and then plug it back in to the outlet. That’s it!
“Really?” methought. “OK, I’ll just do that lil thing, since service seems slow today.”
Cycled my “modem” (it’s NOT a modem–“MOdulator/DEModulator”; it’s a specialized router, but who’s keeping score? Oh, I am, that’s who). Checked my connection. Yep. Still slow. In fact, checking with SpeedTest, the latency test timed out three times with three different servers before I could get a SpeedTest started. Then, when the download “speed” refused to go above 190kbps (WHAT?!?!), I canceled the thing and tried again. Yep. No matter what server I chose to test my connection with, the touted “12mbs” download “speed” was nowhere, mon frere.
So I called. Eight times. Seriously. And that doesn’t count the times the correctly dialed phone number refused to connect–either one of them. Why eight times? Disconnected when put on hold twice. Got a rude $%^&* named “Champale” (sp? What mother would name a child that?) once and hung up myself. The other five were cycling through attempting to find someone who would escalate the call to someone who knew something beyond just the first level diag chart, cos I’d covered all those bases in spades more times than the doofuses on the other end of the line have (and actually know what those things are meant to accomplish).
Once again I was told an upper level tech would contact me within 24 hours. Of course, when I’ve been told that before, it’s turned out to be false. In fact, the last person I talked to confessed to me that my record does not indicate an escalation has ever taken place.
Now? I’m back to a nominal download/upload speed–for now!–that is acceptable, but 1/3 less than the lying email I recieved today. And I’ll have an acceptable connection until… I don’t, if the record of the past couple of months is any indication.
Oh. Well.