This conversation took place on 08/11/1999
<redcat> is me

Hello,

My name is Jeremy (I left you a brief messgae around 10:44am today) and just wanted to e-mail you to make sure you get my message. I'm not sure who you are affiliated with (Bresnan or @home or something else) and would like to find that out.

Really long story made shorrt:

I got my cable modem service installed on monday August 2nd and have expereinced very poor service. I have also expereinced very poor technical support. I have been in contanct with the madison office and had another RF guy come out and take levels and give me a new modem. To no avail however. It's a week and a half later and my service is still nowhere near that advertised speed. Please get back to me!

Hello,

I'm dealing with two companies that are pretty much jacking me around with their service.

The first one that I am activly pursueing is Bresnan's @home service. This a cable modem service that boasts speeds of up to 100X faster then a standard modem. Currently my cable modem service is going no faster then a standard modem. I've been dealing with tech support and local "experts" for the last week and a half and gotten nowhere. I put a web page detailing my problems on August Ninth. Suprisingly enough it has generated over 160 hits alone today. So that's gaining some exposure.

The other company is TDS. They were supposed to put in a phone line for me August 2nd and due to mix ups in the schedule program, they never showed up. They said they would have someone out on friday, but when I got home from work there was no phone line. Long story short, they need to work with Ameritech to get me a phone line, Ameritech showed up on Friday and left without doing the line crossover. Why did they leave? They claimed that the box they needed to get into was in a locked porch. As I had just moved into this place, i decided to check out that claim. There is no lock on the porch door, nor does it even stick to give the apearence of being stuck. So now, TDS has to make another apointment with Ameritech (for tuesday 08/17/99) to come out with instructions that the back door is not locked and they should enter. That portion isn't TDS's fault. However, did TDS call me at work to tell me this? Do they leave a door hanger saying that someone was out? Do they call me on Monday? No! I had to call monday afternoon to find all this out.

In my current job I called Midplains to complain about some poor service they had provided to my company and Imediatly I had a rep on the phone apologizing up and down for their poor service.

My point is, how come buisnesses are treating individual customers worse and worse these days? I know the answer; money, but it's worth at least a commentary.

Your web page does not clearly show anyone to send complaints to. I am sending it to all the above addresses in the hopes that it will be forwarded to the correct party.

First of all, I use your @home service in Madison, WI. That would be the Bresnan franchise. I had my service installed on 08/02/1999 and it has not worked properly since. I have been on the phone with technical support in Bay City, MI. They were incompetant and useless. I was told mulitple stories from multiple technicians. I was falsly told that technicians would be at my house at certain times. The entire week of 08/02/1999 no one did anything with my trouble ticket except move up the priority. It wasn't until I called my local office that finally an RF tech was dispatched to my house the following monday (08/09/1999). This RF tech was unable to solve my problem. Now my issue has been passed to the Network Operations Center in California.

This service is unacceptable. I have contacted the cable regulatory coordinator and have designed a web page to inform others that try to use your service what the can possibly suspect. Because of the web page, I have been in contact with 3 other people in my area that are experienceing the same problem.

Your customer support agents are of the worst skilled I have encountered for any national service. Your local system administrators are an embarassment to the technical field. Your service is one of the most porrly planned I have seen.

I don't want to recieve a form letter from you stating that this is a new technology and we are experienceing growing pains. This new technology (Cable Modems) has been around for five years and has been promised to our area for the last three. Most computer technologies have expired in that amount of time.

What I want is for my issue to be resolved and to no longer get the run around from anyone I speak to,

====================================

Jeremy,

This is Mike DeMarco at Bresnan's headquarter's in NY. Here is our current
situation in Madison:

Excite@Home is in the process of switching to a new backbone network to
address growing demand for its cable modem service, and improve performance
speeds that have slowed recently for customers in Madison, WI.
The reason for the current performance problems is that T1 information lines
running from Bresnan's headend to Excite@Home's regional data center in
Chicago are filled to capacity due to enormous response to the product.
Excite@Home is implementing several solutions to address the issue, short
term and long term.

Excite@Home is adding more information lines to augment the network's
existing configuration offering a short-term fix to improve the speed
performance for Bresnan@Home customers in Madison, WI. In addition DS3
circuits, with even higher capacity have been ordered. Since the delivery
time for these faster circuits is longer than T1s, the additional T1's were
ordered as an interim strategy.

In the meantime, Bresnan is planning to ensure that our customers are
compensated for any inconvenience they experience.
There are many advantages to the Cities we serve and to our customers by our
aggressively introducing the newest products and most advanced technology.
Regrettably there are the problems inherent in new technology and customer
interest far greater than that imagined by any of us. We will work
diligently with all the companies involved in bringing this exciting service
to residents of Madison in order to provide the quality and dependability
available in our other @Home markets.

@Home is a new and innovative service that is available to a small
percentage of cable customers nationwide. Bresnan is determined to provide
not only a state-of-the-art product, but also a service that adheres to our
traditional high-quality standard. We will keep you updated on our progress