Well, Earthlink kept their promise and a new DSL modem awaited me when I got home yesterday afternoon. That's the good news.
On the other hand, I am still without DSL service at home. I opened the package, followed all the instructions and . . . voila . . . still no signal.
Back on the phone with another nice Tech in India. After a frustrating, long period of time with no solution revealing itself, he politely put me on hold to check with his "supervisor."
Eventually, an equally polite chap came on line and we tried some more things. I jokingly commented, "I see I have advanced to a Tech 2." "Oh, no," he replied proudly, "I am a Tech 3."
When success was not forthcoming, he gave me a ticket number, told me that he was passing my problem on to a "signal specialist," and that I should call back 4 hours later to a direct line for which he provided a new phone number. I called at the appointed time, entered the numbers requested by the recorded voice, and heard a new recording telling me that my phone company was checking the line and I should call back in 24 hours.
After I hung up, I thought to myself: They are utilizing a "signal specialist" and having the phone company check my line. Isn't that what I told them on the first call 2 days ago? Didn't I tell them I was no longer receiving a signal? It really took the inability of a new modem they provided to receive a signal for them to realize I might have been right in the first place.
Well, it's a new day and the saga continues. Currently, I am using dial-up to download my e-mail and the supermarket free Wi-Fi zone to carry on other business and write silly blog posts like this one.
6 comments:
I was digging around and came across this article, kind of makes you wonder if this is where your problem is Leon.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/earthlink/
wish you luck in your endeavers.
Thanks Eric! I just got back on line. I'll post about my 3rd day of chatting with Techies in India a little later. Can you see the wide, open mouthed smile on my face? :-))
Take care!
Hi. Thanks for the update at Frogma - I may try them one more time, although even if they do figure things out I'm feeling strongly inclined to switch to another ISP. One of my more computer-savvy friends - Stevie, who left a comment that began "Earthlink are horrible! Get off of them ASAP" has recommended a local one.
I just hope I don't switch & then have Earthlink gobble them up like they gobbled up my original ISP, Long Island-based firm with which I was perfectly happy.
Looking forward to your next post - maybe I can pick up a few hints of how to tell the techies what they might want to try next.
Bonnie: I have an advantage. I am retired and have the time to keep bugging them with phone calls. It took me a long time to become aggressive when it was necessary. Even with the return of my Earthlink DSL, I may, after nearly 10 years with them as my ISP, start looking elsewhere for better service.
Thanks for looking in. I look forward to reading about your continuing waterbound exploits
Yes, I'm still bummed that I had to cut off the first call, because that guy seemed to know what he was doing. But I didn't get home from work until late, started the call even later & after a long long long stint of unsuccesful troubleshooting I just got too tired to continue.
Had I only known the marathon of frustration that lay in store for me, I woulda stuck it out as long as I had him on the phone.
I have got 3 good waterbound exploits to blog about, with pictures & everything - just haven't had sufficient lunch hours to take them. Will have another fun one on Sunday. Sumer is i-goin out, gotta enjoy it while it lasts.
Greetings from BROOKLYN!
Blessed be he, indeed. Your report gave me the patience to try one more time. I had one guy hang up on me when I said I'd been through all the drills & that I wanted to get put through to the next level. The next person I got, Brooke, actually looked at the history BEFORE she started into the drills (it's surprising how few of the technicians thought to look at that first). She saw how long this had been going on & possibly a note that I was getting pretty touchy by now, so explained to me exactly what she was going to do & how long we were going to try before she did put me up another level, did exactly as much as she said she would, then connected me to a new person, who's name I didn't get. She reprovisioned my line, talked me through one more tweak of my connection setting, and I'm back on line!
Still no ACT light but the connection's the main thing.
I still think I'm going to switch ISP's because it shouldn't have taken 8 days to accomplish this, and I shouldn't have been told that it was because I didn't pay my phone bill.
So my new light bulb joke is: Only two, but you'd better have enough flashlight batteries to last a while until you get the right two.
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