So I'm irritated and don't have anywhere to vent right now, so I'm going to indulge myself in getting the word out that my ISP is bat sh*t insane.

For starters, THIS is my internet speed:



(I don't know how long they keep these images hosted, but if it's not there, my download speed right now is 0.41 megs down.)

Not even a freaking meg! I pay for 15 meg down (which is the highest my ISP, Suddenlink, offers). So it starts off like this: I have speed issues, so I call up there. After the rep on the phone treats me like I don't even know how to operate a calculator, much less a computer, he finally gets to helping me on the issues. He decides that my modem has gone bad. Well fine. I've had it for years, and I know they don't live forever. So I go to walmart, which is the only place that sells modems in my podunk town and they don't have Linksys... which is the brand of networking equipment I prefer. So I have to settle with Motorala. I'm not happy about it, but I want my freaking internet working. So I take it home, hook it up, call back to Suddenlink and gave them the mac address and serial number as the modem has to be manually set up on their side. Eventually, I finally get ineternet. But wait.... it's still slow as sh*t! It didn't fix the problem. There was nothing wrong with my modem to begin with! So there went $60 for nothing. Awesome.

So I thought I'd wait it out and see if the problem just doesn't fix its self. And of course it doesn't. I call back up and tell them everything that has happened up to this point and they decide to send a tech to my house. A few days later and said tech arrives. He finds a splitter in my line. The previous owner of my house had about 50 bajillion TVs set up in the house, so I expected there to be several splits in the line... not just one. So he patched a cable straight through to my modem and went on his merry way. Well, my internet was working fine for a year and it was going through said splitter, so you can't blame me for my skepticism... which was completely founded as it didn't fix the problem. So I call back up there and have to explain all of this to the rep as it is never the same person. And then that person tries to tell me that my modem is bad.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? No. It's brand new. And in fact, the last one was working fine. So after complaining long enough, they decide to send another tech out. So a few days go by and the tech gets to my house. And upon further inspection he notices that I'm getting a terrible signal on the direct line to my house. NO FREAKIN SHIZ. It took you this long to figure that out? I expected as much the second the new modem didn't fix the issue. So he tells me that he needs to call a different tech to come in and get on the poll to check the line. And he assures me that'll happen before the sun goes down. Well guess what... it never happened. I'm sure you're as surprised as I was... which was not at all.

So I call back AGAIN and have to explain everything that's happened up to this point AGAIN, and the lady tells me the ticket was shown completed. But she says that maybe the guy just got busy and to give it another day. I do, and he doesn't show, so I call back... get another tech, and explain everything that's happened for the 50th f*cking time. I'm pretty irate at this point, but I'm trying not to get angry at the rep on the phone as I know none of this up to this point was that person's fault. Anyways, the lady this time tells me they will re-open the ticket and get someone out on the poll as soon as possible.

And it turned out that as soon as possible was 8 days.

*face f*cking palm*

So now I'm going to have to wait till next friday (the 11th) for them to fix this. And I don't think you can blame me for being skeptical. I can not believe I've been dealing with this for so long. It's been about a month of all this and it's enough to make me want to go to freakin DSL. I'm sure I'll get better speeds than f*cking .4 megs down if nothing else.

RAGE!

It's bad that your down is about the same speed as my up. o.o;

I lived with AOL dial-up for something like 15 years before I moved twice last year and arrived at my present home.

But, yeah... (hugs for Lantis)

You've demonstrated more patience here than I'd be likely to have. God bless you, dude.

i used to have that problem a lot in my last place and if i'dever ring up we'd do a little test over the phone ten they'd send an engineer who would go piss about in the box outside until it worked. smart ppls. poor lantis.

Good luck with all of this. On my end, Faeus and I can't have both 360's connected at once too often. Because of this, last night, I upgraded our package from 15MB to 28MB. We'll see if this helps in the next few days.

I'd hope so. I don't see two 360's needing more than 28 meg down to run. In fact, 15 should be more than enough as well.

As for me, I've started looking around at other options. Unfortunately, there are no other cable internet providers where I live, so I'd have to switch to DSL. DSL is kind of lame as it just doesn't have the ability to reach the same speeds as cable.

But as it stands, I pay about 60 bucks a month for 15 down with Suddenlink. I'm getting... well, you know. The DLS provider offers 10 meg down for 30 a month. I'd have to eat a 5 meg drop, but I'd cut my bill in half... so I guess I can live with that.

So this is what's going to happen. Friday, I'm heading over to Ix's house to help him move some stuff into his new digs. Friday is also the day Suddenlink will be getting my sh*t fixed. If I come back Sunday and it is not, I'm going to call the DSL place and get me some real internet. And then I'm going to call Suddenlink and not only cancel my account, but see if I can't get them to compensate me for the modem they made me buy as well as the month where I wasn't getting the speeds I've been paying for. I know it is very unlikely, but it's worth a shot. And honestly, at this point, I don't really care which of the two scenarios happen.

Dude, that's weird. But I did notice that your Internet seemed to be rather slow when I was at your house the last one or two times. Maybe there's somehow actually a huge difference between the SuddenLink ISP in El Dorado and the one we had in Magnolia, because I remember being fully satisfied with SuddenLink for the entire time we lived in Magnolia.

Oh, no... don't get me wrong. I've had not a single problem from Suddenlink for the past year and a half. Everything was running just as good as it was in Magnolia. It's just like they suddenly decided to just screw me over for whatever reason.

So, they fixed my internet friday. I just got back from Ix's. Let's see what my speeds are now.

...



WHARRGARBL

So yeah, I'm actually curious now how long they are going to do this to me. I've started recording all my phone call conversations with them (two so far) and the second one, which I just off the phone with, was a manager or something. Now, these conversations aren't anything all that interesting. The manager or whatever was very polite and apologetic. So it's not like I have something that shows how much of a dick that Suddenlink as a company is being.

So he's hooked me up with a bunch of guys that are supposed to come out thursday and get this knocked out. Again, I won't actually there and my wife will have to step in for me as she's off that day. If it were me, I'd hold them at gunpoint till they had the damn speeds back up the way they were. But yeah, I'm getting a hold of another ISP in the time being and getting ready to switch over to the other ISP if this doesn't hold up.

At least I have enough internet to do light browsing and chatting...

Actually I would have been a little shocked to see that just 0.29 megabits/sec could handle either of those two Internet activities well enough.

Thanks, SuddenLink!

Well, .3 meg down is still around 6 times the speed of dial-up. And browsing and chatting weren't too much of a problem back in the 56k era, so yeah...

Did they say anything about being reimbursed for not having what you paid for these last two weeks?

Yeah, the manager I was talking to said that he wasn't authorized to add a credit to my account and that I'd have to talk to billing. So I'm going to get that conversation recorded today because I'm sure that one will go a lot less diplomatic than the past few.

Actually it was a month. This has been on-going for a month now. I've been on the phone with probably half of Suddenlink's tech support employees now and have had multiple visits from the cable guys. So while I was waiting for thursday to roll around, I thought I'd take that guy's advice and call billing to see if I can't get compensated for this.

What I was looking for was compensation for the entire month (around $60 bucks) as well as the modem their reps said I needed which I didn't (also around $60). I explained the whole story to the billing lady and after putting me on hold for a good while, she came back and said she could only credit my account $45. She completely ignored the whole modem thing and then told me she could only give me $45 for the month since I had partial service... and I told her that if you want to go by partial service, I was getting less than one fifteenth of what I pay for. But completely unphased she told me that's all she could do. So I told her that if these guys don't fix my net thursday, I'm calling back to get properly compensated for this. And if they couldn't do that for me, I'm switching ISPs.

And this conversation was totally worth recording. This one will definitely go up at some time.

So the techs came by my house today. It just so happens the only time they can come by is when I'm at work, so once again, my wife was there to oversee the work.

And you know what they did?

Nothing. Absolutely f*cking nothing.

They claim I'm getting 12 meg down and I am inclined to call bullsh*t. So I'll post again at five when I get home. I just wanted to post now and call BS on them before I even get home.

Oh, and I went ahead and called that one place to see how much their service was... they don't offer it in my town. So I looked around and the only other provider offer 6 meg down at 40 a month. I'm not sure what to do now...

Well, 6 megs down is probably still fast enough for YouTube, at least.

why is removed? =(