Blogging on stone tablets
Posted on February 11, 2004 @ 8:48 am
It’s been a week now, and I’m still without Internet access at home (I’m presently blogging from my department’s computer lab). After spending about four hours total on the phone with my cable company’s technical support staff over the past several days, running through the troubleshooting flowcharts time and time again, the current prognosis is that it’s “unclear” when I can expect to have Internet access again. At this point, I think we’ve reached a philosophical impasse. Since we’ve apparently done all the troubleshooting that’s possible over the phone — both on my end and on theirs — I tend to think that we should step our efforts up a notch. You know, maybe send a technician over to make sure that my cable modem is working properly — stuff like that. They, on the other hand, seem to have come to the conclusion that there’s no problem at all and that any Internet outages I’m experiencing are simply a figment of my imagination. Therefore, we should just wait it out and give me a chance to come to my senses.
While my cable company has yet to successfully diagnose the problems with my Internet connection, I think that I have diagnosed a significant problem in their technical support protocols. From what I’ve gathered during our recent discussions, the company runs a two-tiered support system. First, I call a toll-free number that handles all technical support at the national level. They run through their standard troubleshooting questions (”Is your cable modem plugged in? Are the lights blinking?”) and, if the problem isn’t fixed by that point, they submit a technical support ticket to the local office so they can take a look at it on their end. Unfortunately, my support ticket in this case has been saying something to the effect that I’m having trouble pinging the DHCP server. In turn, the people in the local office take a look at the DHCP server, see that it seems to be working fine, and then kill my ticket.
End of story. No call to see if my problem has resolved itself. Nothing. The ticket is dead. Passed on. Ceased to be. It has shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile. It is an ex-ticket.
So, I call back a day or two later to remind the national office that I’m still without Internet access. They pull up my record and note that the local office killed the previous ticket and once again marvel at the fact that I’m not online. Yeah, I know — I’m shocked, too. Anyway, after running through the whole troubleshooting rigmarole again, they submit another ticket. Did I mention that it takes the local office two business days to get around to even looking at a technical support ticket? Well, it does.
As far as I can tell from speaking with the faceless technical support entities, the local office has killed two of my tickets so far. Unfortunately, there’s apparently no way to me to get in contact with the local office directly. In fact, the last person I spoke with at the national office said that even he couldn’t contact the local office directly. The only way is through the aforementioned tickets.
As it stands, my latest support ticket has been “escalated” — whatever that means. The most recent technical support person I talked with, however, didn’t have particularly high hopes for the future of my Internet connection. It was his opinion that since there doesn’t seem to be a problem on my end or a problem on their end, there just might not be anything that we can do about it. If nothing else, it warms my heart to know that my hopelessness is contagious.
On the other hand, if I see another television commercial touting this company’s willingness to go the extra mile to guarantee my satisfaction, I think I’m going to shoot my cable box. Maybe that will lure a technician to my house and we can finally get this whole mess sorted out.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Blickity-Blog |
4 comments so far...
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Jess,
It seems that your cable modem is the most likely culprit, especially if you’ve eliminated all other possiblities on your end and they’re claiming no problems on their side. I don’t know how your cable company handles it, but most seem to give customers the option to purchase their own cable modems. If you’re renting one from the cable company, you’re ultimately losing money anyway. So, if at all reasonable in your case, I’d buy your own. This way, you’re entirely in control of any problems on your end (cable modem, NIC, computer/network settings, your house’s internal cabling). Also, if you raise a big enough fuss, your cable company will likely give you a discount for their lack of service (if you prove it was their fault).
The modem was my guess, too, but damned if I can actually get somebody out here to check on it. In fact, when I suggested the modem theory to one tech support person and asked what we would need to do to get it replaced if, in fact, it was the case, he responded, “Wow. That’s tough.”
Fortunately, I’ve already begun the “complaining about my bill process.” I’m sure that they’ll be able to get a discount through their billing department sometime this year.
The ‘escalated’ usually means that the new ticket that you logged is one of a higher priority. The way this works for most companies is that only higher priority ones get escalated. Escalation happens after a certain amount of passed time, the support people getting into more hot water the more it escalates.
It could also mean that they’ve simply escalated it to a higher priority.
I have the same problem…I am going to fdisk, format, and reinstall. the modem is likely fine.