08/03/1999 – The cable modem is finally here, but who cares…
I wake up at around 10 am (I’m on vacation from work Monday through Wednesday, it’s not like I’m always sitting at home waiting for stuff to be installed) and decide not to rush to the computer to see if my line has been changed out. Instead I make some coffee and eat a bowl of cereal, have some chitchat with my girlfriend and then decide it’s off to either play or just get upset. I fly over to MP3.COM and start another download. 10kb/sec… 5kb/sec… 7kb/sec… All right, it’s still broke. I begin to collect my thoughts and myself so that I don’t scream too unintelligibly to the tech support person I’m about to call.
Call number three results in the answering service promising me a call back with in twenty minutes. An hour later I call back the support center. I get through to a tech support agent and again explain the story and tell the person to look up my record. I mention various things like "illegal FTP site" and "network problems", things that I had been told the previous day. Of course the tech support agent homes in on "Illegal FTP site" as if to reassure me that if another tech said that, it must be true and I should just wait. I stopped him before he could give me that answer and told him that the tech I spoke to last night told me that someone would be out to replace the line last night or this morning. This tech tells me that my trouble ticket can be upgraded to "Critical". I explain that I don’t care what designation my ticket gets, I want my service fixed and I want it fixed today. He then says there is no way that any tech in Michigan set a specific date or time for someone to come out. I ask him what he’s going to do and he tells me that my ticket is the hand of a Madison technician as we speak. The tech also says that when they show up they’ll leave a note hanging on the door. I leave it at that.
The beginning of August is moving time in Madison; this is a college town after all. So in addition to myself moving a friend of mine was also moving. I spent the rest of the day helping him move. I got home and didn’t find anything hanging on my door. I try out my connection speed. There is not a bit of difference. I get on the phone for the fifth time and call up. I ask what happened and what’s going on with my issue. The support person tells me that there is network congestion. To me that is just not a good answer. Having worked tech support in the best you never leave a problem completely unresolved, you offer a solution, an approximate time of fix or a scheduled call back to let the customer know what’s going on. I asked for the supervisor. The phone got transferred to Dwayne. I explained to him again the problem and let him look at my history. He explained my ticket was critical, I explained that I could care less what my ticket was designated, my service is defective. I told him that I wanted my service fixed and I wanted it fixed tomorrow (8/4). He told my that it was impossible for him to schedule someone to come out as he was in Michigan, he could only generate tickets and make sure they are assigned to someone. Mine was assigned to someone and marked critical. He did note that he didn’t know why nothing had happened thus far. He told me he would call Madison and remind them about my ticket. He also has me do a speed test, which is located on Microsoft’s site. The site shows that I am getting 0.3kb/sec. He tells me that I should be getting around 30kb/sec. He says he’ll make a note of that and pass it along I let him off the phone.