I’ve now gone over 48-hours without DSL at my house, and seem nowhere closer to getting this fixed. The good news is that Qwest’s automated tech support line reports that I actually have an open ticket. The bad news is that it reports that I’m scheduled to have it resolved by January 1. After 45 minutes on hold, I gave up waiting for a live representative.
Technical breakdowns happen, but the most annoying thing about this outage is that there is nothing technical about it. My line and my modem were fine until somebody at Qwest reprovisioned me to faster, more expensive service without my permission. And despite support’s promises, they’ve been unable to reset my line to the where it was prior to 9:30 am Monday.
I’ve probably wasted five hours over the past two days attempting to deal with this, and many more hours traveling about in search of open WiFi networks. This sort of customer service is inexcusable.
How is the DSL at Reagan Dunn’s house ? Might be interesting for you to “investigate” :-)
OT but Breaking News: Obey to retire. Dicks is likely to replace Obey as Appropriations Chair.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo.....-to-retire
A friend of mine had a problem years ago, when some salesman changed his long-distance service without his permission. They claimed they had a note from the LD service provider which claimed that the homeowner had given them permission for the change, but the only one at home on that day was his wife, who didn’t speak a word of English. The salesman took advantage of that.
Anyway, after getting almost a thousand dollars of long-distance charges in one month (which shouldn’t have been over $100 under their previous plan), he asked me to help. I probably spent ten hours on the phone over the next week trying to resolve it, but the Qwest representatives merely said that we had to deal with the long distance provider, who simply insisted it was a legitimate switch, and they had the tapes of the call to prove it (but wouldn’t let anyone else listen to the tapes). Qwest even shut off their phone briefly because they wouldn’t pay the bill, although they aren’t allowed to do that at all over a third-party service charge.
Very frustrating. Finally a “supervisor” agreed to remove it from Qwests’ billing (after warning us that the third-party would submit their bill to a collection agency), but insisted on my friend paying $30.00 fee to switch it back to the orignal LD service. He finally agreed out of frustration.
Oh, and the “changes which won’t be in effect until tomorrow” is often simply a way for them to get you off the line. Many customer service reps get performance reviews (& bonuses) based upon how many calls they can handle in an hour, and the last thing they want is for a customer to stay on the line until they can see that the fix worked. As soon as they see it’s not going to be a quick fix, they often promise you it’s been taken care of, but you won’t see the change until some time tomorrow. When you call back, you get someone else entirely, and have to start the whole process all over again.
I have to say, as much as I get upset at Comcast for regularly attempting to raise my cable TV bill beyond reason, I haven’t had any complaints about my internet service through them.
I think I know who’s responsible for this and just you wait until I get my hands on him!!!!
Go with Comcast already!
I like speakeasy
Any candidate who refuses to identify himself as a Democrat to voters simply can’t be trusted to uphold Democratic values
which are what these days?
DSL isn’t going to get better. It’s always been a dead-end product. Pretty much a hack. In downtowns it works fairly well because of the density and the proximity to central offices but even there…
I credit Verizon for in effect skipping right over that DSL madness with FIOS – but even that seems to me kind of a dead-end approach – locking in specific grades of fiber plant for a long time.
Now Comcast has gone the more conservative route moving fiber closer to the neighborhoods. Now they’re charging for tiers of service which appears to be a means of financing the next generation of investment – hopefully fiber to the subscriber’s doorstep.
But without vigorous competition, the motivation to keep upgrading that network will vanish.
I got my fingers crossed for Google.
This is one more reason I am a loyal Comcast customer. My internet service has only been interrupted twice in the last 10 year. When a tree fell they had a crew out 20 minutes after my call. When my original modem died it took all of 35 minutes to have a tech at my house and the modem replace. In both cases they issued a credit on my bill for a day’s worth of service even though I was off line less than an hour each time.
Lawyer up, Goldy.
“I got my fingers crossed for Google.”
Don’t hurt yourself.
“This sort of customer service is inexcusable.”
No, it’s normal. This is what you get nowadays from the Corporate World in exchange for the higher prices we pay today. That and outsourcing jobs and slashing wages. Someday the CEOs will wake up and discover they don’t have businesses anymore because there’s no customers left.
Are Newsweek‘s Days Numbered?
Washington Post put Newsweek up for sale today, but industry insiders don’t expect any takers for the money-losing magazine, which means it’ll probably be shut down within a year.
My DSL service provider is Isomedia. In many parts of the Puget Sound Area, they will provide DSL service & do all the necessary talking to Qwest–no Qwest customer “service” at all.
Recommended.
Conservative Pervert #010-00897432-9
Conservative activist George Rekers, a Baptist minister and co-founder of an anti-gay group, recently returned from a European vacation in the company of a young male escort from Rentboy.com (NSFW). Rekers claims he hired the kid only to carry his luggage.
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/.....t/19465448
http://www.democraticundergrou.....15;8271471
The QWEST dude told me that the upgraded service didn’t cost any more.
@8 “which are what these days?”
If you have to ask, the explanation would be wasted on you anyway.
As someone who worked for qwest a few years back, I can tell you that the people that you talk to when you call CS have to meet an arbitrary (set by management)sales goal or you get fired. I was one of the people that was fired for not meeting my goals over a 3 month period.
See, there is (or was)an agreement with the union that said if you were on the job for more than 12 months you get an automatic raise. After 24 months you can transfer to another position. When I was there our monthly goal was around 30-35k. The last 3 months I was there the goal was 110k plus. Qwest basically lays off a huge portion of the reps so they don’t have to give out the raise.
Part of the salary that I got was commision. If the sales goal was not hit, no comm was paid. You could hit 99% and all you would get was an attaboy. I used to go to the bathroom, and when I got back a floor manager would be waiting at my desk asking why I was off the phone for the last 3 minutes.
I would never, ever, give that comapany a dime of my money.
Goldy, sorry. Somebody probably changed your service so they could keep their job for another 30 days.
the precise result of years of regulated monopoly.
Qwest’s basic operational structure in it’s trad. POTS service is designed to maximize customer misery. Because maximizing customer misery has the salutary effect of maximizing legitimate operating expenses. It’s nearly impossible for Qwest to quarantine the contagion of its non-competitive land line operations from infecting services in competitive open market products such as high speed internet service. So don’t expect the situation with Qwest to ever improve, Goldy.
Ya, Goldy. Whine, whine, whine. I have had to put up with DSL outages using Quest for years. Big deal, it happens. I live with it because we have a God Created FREE MARKET. The Market decides what’s best (along with making a great quarterly report). It’s a free market and we love it don’t we? Who could possibly think to replace all the lousy customer service, lack of infrastructure upgrade, on and off service – – – hey, it’s a lottery, just like investing these days – – – someone is getting rich (it’s just not you). I mean, do you really want to have to deal with a smooth running, customer service oriented, government owned public utility? Christ! That would be Socialism! Look, how great is it? We have all this choice – – – this is true American Freedom – – – well, okay, the choice is between screwed up Qwest, stupid brain dead Verizon, evil AT&T, screw-the-customers Cumcast, etc. but at least it’s all FOR PROFIT. Geezz, what do you want, perfection? You’re experiencing the best of Capitalism, man! BTW, your time is worthless to the Free Market (Uncle Milty said so) because you’re not one of the “owners” (and neither is wisepunk – why he got fired), you’re just a surf and we surfs don’t get squat unless we pony up our bucks for a half wit and a bucket of crap. Long live Qwest – I mean Century Tel.
# 14: All the weekly news magazines (Newsweek, Time, etc.) have numbered days. They used to provide us with a re-cap of the week, a chance to do a bit of analysis and perspective on the daily news stories, and lots of color pictures you couldn’t get in the newspaper. Now they are as obsolete as an albotros – old news, not as much detail/analysis as you can get online, etc.
It may be time to replace that Commodore 64
DAMN YOUS, DAMN YOUS ALL TO HELL! :)
As a side note, when I was there all of the computer systems were the same systems as when it was ma bell. nothing like starting up windows to open a command window, text based computer system. Seeing “copyright, AT&T 1981” at the bottom of the window does not mean cutting edge technology. Having different text commands for different windows, up to 15 at a time, made it quite a complicated job. It is hard to get good customer service when 80% of the people in that complicated of a position have been there for less than a year.
Goldy,
if you happen to see a Qwest truck, stop them and get their business card. The guys out on the street know a lot more than the phone answerers. They just recently upgraded the service in my neighborhood to allow DSL, but Customer Disservice was tellling my neighbors that it wasn’t availble in this area for weeks after I already had it installed.
Or yeah, switch to Comscat, though down here it’s more than twice the price for just net access. Maybe things will get better if the FCC really does re-regulate.
I had a very similar problem with Qwest. In my case, I moved, and it took four tries and about 10 days to get service hooked up.
Anyway, I mentioned in my blog (a silly little daily photo blog with only about 50 hits a day, but I digress) what I thought of Qwest and their business ineptness. I got a comment with the following response from somebody at Qwest:
I didn’t bother responding (the tech crap in his comment really didn’t apply to the situation, anyway), but I’m almost surprised he didn’t show up on a real blog like this. Or, they’re afraid of you….
Goldy, ask your messiah to nationalize another industry and bring you free fiber optical lines…
Its Your Mac!
I just got off the line (Comcast) with Ahmed, my friend in tech support at Qvest. Ahmed told me THEIR side of the story.
Goldy has been not quite truthful with us. Turns out that Qvest told him that they no longer supported the Apple II Goldy uses as hit spot for his DSL connection. Goldy was outraged so the service rep, a Tawanna Brawley, offered to get something called legacy services (QveL (pronounced “KVELL”) Tel Aviv) involved.
At my request (I really like David), Ahmed called Tawanna and we both spoke with her. She assured me that Qvest was doing everything possible because it recognized that David a big cheese publisher whose voice carries weight.
Qvest’s latest offer to David was to give him a refurbished PC to run the connection. apparently Mr. Goldstein refused, claiming that Windows was not kosher in his house.
Professor Schwartz told me that he was going to make this post.
I am not allowed to speak for Qwest .. however Steve or David want to misspell our old name.
I do, however, want to be sure David’s readers understand our policies when it comes to religion. David, as an Othodox J (Jobsite) is entitled to his beliefs. We respect them and will do all we can do to provide service to him.
Ahmed P.
Service Rep.
Qwest DSL Support Group
Bangalor
Our DSL service in Wedgewood is fine. It was a different story for my folks in Magnolia, which has some of the oldest telephone physical plant in the nation.
@3 Ah, yes…”slamming”, as it was called, was a loophole that fly-by-night long-distance resellers used to basically “steal” long-distance customers without notification until it was finally outlawed. Truly business at it’s “why-does-a-dog” worst. A lot of the players in that game were also the same ones that set up “independent” pay phones at roadside stops in the middle of nowhere that charged twenty bucks a minute, until the proliferation of cellphones ended that game.
@31
Isn’t capitalism great! This is why we should oppose all regulation of the free market. Just think of all of the chances to
get screwedmake a profit for some entrepreneur (btw did you know there is no word for this in French?) that are being passed up every time you purchase a good or service because of excessive government regulation.