In new heights of beating AT&T over the head...
I continue to feel a little bad about my seemingly ever-increasing ability to get what I want out of CSRs of enormous megacorporations whose machinations I distrust. But hey, I still haven't had specially assigned super agents assigned to deal with me yet, so I must still have a ways to go... (right heathey?). In the latest, a couple weeks ago I found that it was impossible to cancel one's AT&T DSL using the online interface (the one which of course does absolutely everything else, other than allow you to stop your service). Instead you have to call them, get through the voice-activated bullshit, wait on hold, run out of time to do the call, leave for other events, try to call back at 5pm, find that they are closed at 5 until after the weekend is over even though they claim operating hours through 7pm, finally manage to call back days later, at which point you are Not Going To Pay Another Penny beyond the day you first tried to cancel, and you might as well just have the supervisor on the line right away because you aren't going to deal with their crap any longer, by gum. Anyway, the earlier disconnect person was really quite curt with me after I called her on her obviously false claim that she "couldn't adjust" my bill to be prorated like I demanded. Suddenly she was able to credit me $5.... lying is tough to do when you're bad at it, hmmm? I think she also made several mistakes on that call, like never asking for my secret question or anything beyond my account number, yet still putting in the stop service request. When we were done, she just hung up... no goodbye, no "thank you for choosing AT&T and we hope you'll come back and use our services again." But I called back today to make sure the service had actually been stopped (it was, finally, on the 20th) and to try to get someone else to agree that since my last day of actually using the service was the 12th, that's how I should be prorated (in other words, an $8.77 discount rather than the $5 the other CSR had tossed my way). It's really not a lot of money either way, but the principle of the thing just irks me. You should be able to do it online, and it should go through that day, and they should prorate you automatically without you having to call up and be an Irate Customer (even if they don't manage to turn stuff off until later... but that's their problem). Thank goodness number porting with cell phones causes the previous service to cancel immediately, so there's no arguing to be done. Anyway, the new CSR was totally jovial, and intelligent, and asked me a secret question that I don't even remember setting up (yet I still correctly guessed what my humorously false response to it would be), and he didn't think my request was unreasonable. In fact just to smooth things over he declared that every AT&T customer gets a one-time "dispute" freebie of a full bill's balance, and since I was ending my service now and hadn't made use of it, he was just going to give it to me. So for these efforts I first went from a $34 final bill balance, to a $29 balance, and then when asking instead for a $25.23 balance, I suddenly end up with -$5.00 instead, hooray! Thanks for the free 30 bucks, CSR dude. I wonder if I ended up with him due to an "irate" flag in my file :-D
And now for more tech-related ramblings... I know some of you folks love to nerd out about these things (aren't utilities fascinating!) but others may want to skip ;-)
Meanwhile, in Comcastland, I must say that it's pretty freaking awesome to go from 2.5 Mbps DSL connection that would drop out for hours at a time once every few months, to a nearly 25 Mbps cable connection that so far is extremely solid. I negotiated my installation to $50 rather than $100, simply by telling the online live chat agent that this had been previously quoted to me (this is true), and meanwhile because I was ordering through Comcastoffers.com, I was already slated to get $29.99 a month for six months (normally ~$67) for the current 20/4-rated "Blast!" service, as well as a free wireless modem/router (all-in-one gateway unit), and an additional $100 of free money in the form of a prepaid VISA card. After six months I'll drop to their lowest level of high-speed service (at 15/3, dubbed "Performance") which will be ~$58 per month total (split with the roommate and landlords).
The agent who came to my house called a few hours ahead to see if I was available for him to come a couple hours early (I was), was wonderfully friendly and chatty, and replaced all the connections along the line, checked the signal integrity, and got everything working smoothly. (Side note: he's one of those young fathers that is experiencing a newfound bloom of sensitivity and considerateness that's come over him partly as a result of successful fatherhood (his son's 5)... after a more individualist, self-centered youth. Do you guys notice this among the people in your lives... that raising children sometimes makes people more other-oriented and community-focused than they were before? Whatever it is, I like it.). He left me his phone number and was off on his way.
Unfortunately, although download speeds were immediately great (downloading 1.5 GB in 10 minutes, holy crap!), browsing was strangely hiccupy (but still pretty fast compared to my old connection), with issues like half the pages failing to load if I clicked on 10 or so links all at once. Pingtest.net confirmed a major packet loss problem (usually around 60%, yikes), and a big fat "F" rating on my line. I figured it must be a mistake, because browsing and even online FPS gaming still seemed to work fine apart from the slight delay in opening pages, but after some inept online research I decided that such a seemingly severe problem might not render the line unusable, as you'd think, and instead just cause a lot of delay and occasional timeouts in the back and forth that takes place as a web page tries to load. Whatever, I have no idea how it works, but got the installation guy to come back, we did troubleshooting for a while, he had an installation buddy stop by as well, and eventually we confirmed that the line was fine, and so I agreed to at least temporarily lease a different modem instead and, sure enough, it was my gateway modem that was the culprit. Oh well, it was free after rebate (minus $10 shipping) so it's no real loss. With the swapped in modem, no more packet loss problems, and I can load 30 web pages all at once rapidly and without any of them dying. I learned my lesson... no more combined modem/router gateways, they're just too glitchy compared to separate units. I hooked up my old router to the new stand-alone modem and the problems were gone, browsing was faster, and all was right in the world (except for the $5 a month leasing cost). I may incur an additional $25 fee for the new modem "install", but maybe not, since they did only the modem and let me handle the wireless part, allowing the adjustment to fall under the purview of the original install a few days earlier. I also got the impression that the visit itself was going to be treated as part of the original install too, and that by going through him again way we were avoiding me paying for a separate service call, which would cost me money as well as look like some kind of demerit on his own personal service record. Interesting... but if that's how it works, then fine. (Comcast is disturbingly opaque about the actual costs of any of its services, for people like me who have no cable TV, so I'm not looking forward to navigating their possible nickel and diming in the future).
My old router (Hawking HWR54G) wasn't any great shakes though, and limited my wireless downloads to around 14 Mbps, so I went ahead and ordered a new highly rated long range Belkin G+ MIMO router I had already been considering until the free modem gateway presented itself. The new router arrived today and, sure enough I'm back up to maximum download speeds even over wireless, and browsing is totally gangbusters blazing fast. One problem though... Amazon shipped me a Belkin G+ router with one antenna, instead of the advertised G+ MIMO router with two antennas. It makes almost no difference to me in the house, but the MIMO version should give the landlords better signal over on the other side of the garden, especially since I already hooked their old iMac up with Belkin's G+ MIMO USB receiver. Luckily Amazon is really good about fixing these screw-ups: the item page is now "under review" because others have also already reported receiving this slightly wrong unit, and the guy on customer service confirmed the snafu and said that I can continue using my unit until things get sorted out in a week or so, at which point I can call again and have Amazon ship me the correct unit along with a prepaid label to ship this current one back. Honestly it's kind of Belkin's fault, because they don't bother having different product numbers for the MIMO vs. non-MIMO version of their G+ router! *facepalm*
Part of my excitement about suddenly 10x faster internet was to be able to watch a lot of the Olympics online instead of having to keep 8pm open all the time for NBC's ridiculous broadcast (having no Tivo is a real pain when the sport I want to see could happen anywhere in the 4-hour broadcast, with all its horrendously repetitive ads, argh!). Unfortunately, they are screwing us in yet new ways, because we can't watch any full replays online unless we are *also* a customer of some cable TV service such as Comcast's or AT&T's U-verse. Bastards! What a slap in the face. I wouldn't need to watch it online if I had cable, because then I could DVR it from the cable broadcast! But on the bright side, I've somehow managed to get a reliable HD signal over the air from NBC, through some truly impressive acrobatics with my antenna (both spindles have their ends squashed against the wall, perhaps boosting their pickup, and the central dish is squashed back against both spindles). Never before have I figured out how to reliably watch anything on NBC in my house, so this was very fortuitous. The difficulty is all because of the idiotic saga that is San Francisco's KRON 4's loss of NBC programming at the end of 2001 when they decided not to pay certain fees to NBC (or NBC decided to overcharge or something?), and as a result channel 4 became a ridiculously high-powered junk channel broadcasting from Sutro Tower, while leaving us to get all our NBC broadcasts from KNTV 11 which used to transmit from way too far away to be useful (in the Santa Cruz mountains), but now transmits from San Bruno Mountain, which is much closer but evidently still doesn't reach Berkeley nearly as well as all the Mt. Sutro stations do.
And now for more tech-related ramblings... I know some of you folks love to nerd out about these things (aren't utilities fascinating!) but others may want to skip ;-)
Meanwhile, in Comcastland, I must say that it's pretty freaking awesome to go from 2.5 Mbps DSL connection that would drop out for hours at a time once every few months, to a nearly 25 Mbps cable connection that so far is extremely solid. I negotiated my installation to $50 rather than $100, simply by telling the online live chat agent that this had been previously quoted to me (this is true), and meanwhile because I was ordering through Comcastoffers.com, I was already slated to get $29.99 a month for six months (normally ~$67) for the current 20/4-rated "Blast!" service, as well as a free wireless modem/router (all-in-one gateway unit), and an additional $100 of free money in the form of a prepaid VISA card. After six months I'll drop to their lowest level of high-speed service (at 15/3, dubbed "Performance") which will be ~$58 per month total (split with the roommate and landlords).
The agent who came to my house called a few hours ahead to see if I was available for him to come a couple hours early (I was), was wonderfully friendly and chatty, and replaced all the connections along the line, checked the signal integrity, and got everything working smoothly. (Side note: he's one of those young fathers that is experiencing a newfound bloom of sensitivity and considerateness that's come over him partly as a result of successful fatherhood (his son's 5)... after a more individualist, self-centered youth. Do you guys notice this among the people in your lives... that raising children sometimes makes people more other-oriented and community-focused than they were before? Whatever it is, I like it.). He left me his phone number and was off on his way.
Unfortunately, although download speeds were immediately great (downloading 1.5 GB in 10 minutes, holy crap!), browsing was strangely hiccupy (but still pretty fast compared to my old connection), with issues like half the pages failing to load if I clicked on 10 or so links all at once. Pingtest.net confirmed a major packet loss problem (usually around 60%, yikes), and a big fat "F" rating on my line. I figured it must be a mistake, because browsing and even online FPS gaming still seemed to work fine apart from the slight delay in opening pages, but after some inept online research I decided that such a seemingly severe problem might not render the line unusable, as you'd think, and instead just cause a lot of delay and occasional timeouts in the back and forth that takes place as a web page tries to load. Whatever, I have no idea how it works, but got the installation guy to come back, we did troubleshooting for a while, he had an installation buddy stop by as well, and eventually we confirmed that the line was fine, and so I agreed to at least temporarily lease a different modem instead and, sure enough, it was my gateway modem that was the culprit. Oh well, it was free after rebate (minus $10 shipping) so it's no real loss. With the swapped in modem, no more packet loss problems, and I can load 30 web pages all at once rapidly and without any of them dying. I learned my lesson... no more combined modem/router gateways, they're just too glitchy compared to separate units. I hooked up my old router to the new stand-alone modem and the problems were gone, browsing was faster, and all was right in the world (except for the $5 a month leasing cost). I may incur an additional $25 fee for the new modem "install", but maybe not, since they did only the modem and let me handle the wireless part, allowing the adjustment to fall under the purview of the original install a few days earlier. I also got the impression that the visit itself was going to be treated as part of the original install too, and that by going through him again way we were avoiding me paying for a separate service call, which would cost me money as well as look like some kind of demerit on his own personal service record. Interesting... but if that's how it works, then fine. (Comcast is disturbingly opaque about the actual costs of any of its services, for people like me who have no cable TV, so I'm not looking forward to navigating their possible nickel and diming in the future).
My old router (Hawking HWR54G) wasn't any great shakes though, and limited my wireless downloads to around 14 Mbps, so I went ahead and ordered a new highly rated long range Belkin G+ MIMO router I had already been considering until the free modem gateway presented itself. The new router arrived today and, sure enough I'm back up to maximum download speeds even over wireless, and browsing is totally gangbusters blazing fast. One problem though... Amazon shipped me a Belkin G+ router with one antenna, instead of the advertised G+ MIMO router with two antennas. It makes almost no difference to me in the house, but the MIMO version should give the landlords better signal over on the other side of the garden, especially since I already hooked their old iMac up with Belkin's G+ MIMO USB receiver. Luckily Amazon is really good about fixing these screw-ups: the item page is now "under review" because others have also already reported receiving this slightly wrong unit, and the guy on customer service confirmed the snafu and said that I can continue using my unit until things get sorted out in a week or so, at which point I can call again and have Amazon ship me the correct unit along with a prepaid label to ship this current one back. Honestly it's kind of Belkin's fault, because they don't bother having different product numbers for the MIMO vs. non-MIMO version of their G+ router! *facepalm*
Part of my excitement about suddenly 10x faster internet was to be able to watch a lot of the Olympics online instead of having to keep 8pm open all the time for NBC's ridiculous broadcast (having no Tivo is a real pain when the sport I want to see could happen anywhere in the 4-hour broadcast, with all its horrendously repetitive ads, argh!). Unfortunately, they are screwing us in yet new ways, because we can't watch any full replays online unless we are *also* a customer of some cable TV service such as Comcast's or AT&T's U-verse. Bastards! What a slap in the face. I wouldn't need to watch it online if I had cable, because then I could DVR it from the cable broadcast! But on the bright side, I've somehow managed to get a reliable HD signal over the air from NBC, through some truly impressive acrobatics with my antenna (both spindles have their ends squashed against the wall, perhaps boosting their pickup, and the central dish is squashed back against both spindles). Never before have I figured out how to reliably watch anything on NBC in my house, so this was very fortuitous. The difficulty is all because of the idiotic saga that is San Francisco's KRON 4's loss of NBC programming at the end of 2001 when they decided not to pay certain fees to NBC (or NBC decided to overcharge or something?), and as a result channel 4 became a ridiculously high-powered junk channel broadcasting from Sutro Tower, while leaving us to get all our NBC broadcasts from KNTV 11 which used to transmit from way too far away to be useful (in the Santa Cruz mountains), but now transmits from San Bruno Mountain, which is much closer but evidently still doesn't reach Berkeley nearly as well as all the Mt. Sutro stations do.