I am so tempted

[torquill]

to start putting up large, snappy, colorful posters whose main message is "SBC sucks hairy monkey balls" (perhaps not in so many words). Everywhere. On bus stops. On bulletin boards. On the doors of public restrooms and hand them out at a booth at the Farmers Market.

Apparently, according to Amerion, our DSL is supposed to come back today, after two weeks of being shut off. That would be great. Then I talk to my dad, and he tells me the next catch.

The second line, the one the DSL is on, is in my brother (foogod)'s name, and has been for years. He hasn't lived here for a while, but my parents pay the bill on it so that they can use that line for DSL and for the Tivo sync, and if necessary as a modem line. At one point, while tangling with SBC over the DSL, one monkey at SBC got mad at us and threatened to cut off the second line if my dad didn't immediately switch it to my parents' account. (This is bogus... and a manager later confirmed it.)

What happened next was that we got a letter yesterday, to my brother (who is still on record with them at this address) saying that if he didn't contact them about this requested transfer of ownership, they'd disconnect the line. My dad called them up, and they said that unless they heard from my brother, they'd disconnect it... and sure, they could just swap it over to my dad's name instead, but that would require disconnecting the line. And the DSL. And then (eventually) reconnecting it all.

For a billing change.

We know how long it takes them to do disconnect and reconnect orders -- we'd be out for a week or more, with no DSL and no line to use for a modem other than the main voice line. My dad said no. Then my brother called them, and they filled our file full of notes. God only knows what's going on in that maze now, or what garbled messages are being passed back and forth internally.

So we might, just might, have DSL today. And then again, we might, just might, have the entire line disconnected in the next few days because some idiot at SBC forgot to cancel an order that was spontaneously generated when a cubemate heard the words "disconnect order" and set it in motion.

I know SBC is bad. But dear heaven, I'm tired of having to do without good internet access for weeks because of one error at Amerion, which is compounded by any attempt to talk to the people who are actually in control of the lines. I swear to god, the most dangerous thing we can do at this point is call SBC tech support. If we don't talk to them, the chances for misunderstanding and crossed wires are not significantly increased.

Deliver us from this hell. The only thing stupider than a tech monkey is ten of them playing "telephone".

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Comcast may be a bit evil, but at least they are not stupid.

Have you considered switching to a cable modem?

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for suggesting it... but we have considered it.

Between the horrible customer service Nick's parents have gotten, the unreliable speeds which depend on your neighbors, and the fact that we already have satellite and have no desire for cable TV... well. Let's just say that we're currently pinning our hopes on Covad as a line provider, no matter who our ISP might be.

Comcast has proved to us over and over again that they really aren't any brighter than SBC, and may be more corrupt in their billing practices... but just as some people have protested to me that SBC "isn't bad" and they've never had problems, I do not take that as a representative of what could happen. It's all good until it all goes bad. :/

[foogod.livejournal.com]

I dunno about that.. on some occasions in the past I've found them to be both evil and stupid.. granted, that's still not as bad as SBC, but not a huge improvement either..

The ultimate plan is to switch all this over to a Covad-based DSL provider, which should help a lot, but we wanted to try to get things stable and working again with the current setup before throwing that added complication into the mix too..