Crawl

[filkertom]

For a bit over a week, my internet has been stupid slow.

As in, about one-twentieth the normal speed.

As in, damn near dial-up, rather than The Fastest DSL AT&T Has Which I Pay For Dammit.

This has delayed several things. And caused me no end of annoyance.

Fortunately, my experiences with AT&T are much like my experiences with Disney: hate the corporate masters, love the minions I interact with directly. Thanks FSM. 'Cause taking two minutes to load Yahoo simply ain't no fun.

Any good service stories lately? Alternately, any internet horror stories?

Comments

[ruisseau.livejournal.com]

My internet connection has been dropping randomly. It takes the little indicator icon in my toolbar time to notice, too. I always notice first when pages won't load. Then it can take anywhere from 2 to 3 minutes to 10 minutes to come back. We've checked all the stuff under our control and are forced to assume Time Warner's got some issues.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

My primary email provider has finally gotten flaky enough to make me publicly announce on FB that I'm giving them up for Gmail. Blech. Now I have to go through everywhere that has the OLD address and change it. Double blech.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I would never use an ISP-based email provider as my front-facing address that I gave out. I use gmail as my provider, but even that's masked; I bought my own domain and I redirect from there, so it doesn't matter who I use for a provider, gmail, an ISP or whatever, my address is always me@mydomain.com. When domains cost $10/year, what the heck? And I get something like 100 free redirects for the $10/year.

Think about it. Otherwise when you decide to move from gmail you'll have to go through it again.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Our cable modem has been pretty solid for years. These days I typically get about 120k bytes per second up, and about 900-1000 kB/s down.

Occasionally it'll slow down quite a bit, but usually to something like maybe 120kB/s down (which is about 1.2 megabits per second). That's still 20x faster than dialup when it's slow, and 180x as fast normally.

[arensb.livejournal.com]

my internet has been stupid slow.

I'm not surprised. The Internet is pretty stupid.

And with the recent Breitbart nonsense and the Onion video taken as gospel by the teabaggers, it seems there's even more stupid in it than usual.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

This is an ancient internet bad service, probably 10 years ago, but I'll tell it anyway.

Me, to the cable internet provider: Hi, my name is Janet Miles, my husband and I have an internet account with you, and for the last three days we haven't been able to send or receive email. We can get on the Net, we can browse the Web, and we can get to Usenet and post to it, so I think it's something on your end. Have you changed the POP and SMTP server names?

CSR: You need to reboot your computer.

Me: I've done that, and I don't think that's the problem -- we're connected to the Net, and we can do everything except send and receive mail. Have you changed the POP and SMTP server names?

CSR: You'll need to reboot your modem.

Me: We've done that, and I don't think that's the problem -- we're connected to the Net, and we can do everything except send and receive mail -- we can browse Web page and we can connect to Usenet and send Usenet posts. Have you changed the POP and SMTP server names?

CSR: If you are using a router, you need to disconnect the router and plug your computer directly into the modem.

Me: We've done that, and I don't think that's the problem -- we're connected to the Net, and we can do everything except send and receive mail -- we can browse web page and we can connect to Usenet and send Usenet posts. Have you changed the POP and SMTP server names?

CSR: What's Usenet? We don't support that software for email. You'll need to uninstall that and install Microsoft Outlook. That's the only software we support.

[at this point, I begin to think that I've reached a wrong number, because surely this is not a tech support person]

Me: NO. REALLY. I DON'T THINK THAT'S THE PROBLEM. Have you changed the names of the POP and SMTP servers? [caps here are indicating slightly slower speech, firm tones, but not yelling. I don't yell at people unless I am pushed beyond sanity.]

CSR: What's POP and STMP?

Me: Those are the Internet protocols for receiving and sending email. HAVE YOU CHANGED THE NAMES OF THE SERVERS?

CSR: I don't understand what you're saying.

Me: Please connect me to a Tier Two rep.

CSR: [puts phone down on desk, does not put me on hold or on mute] [to room at large] This caller says her email isn't working and keeps saying that the POP and SMsomething server names are wrong. What's she talking about?

CSR: [to me] This-is-a-known-issue-the-engineers-are-working-on-it-thank-you-for-calling-goodbye.

*click*

Our email connections did reappear in another day or so.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Out here at SDCC and there are so many Geeks Twittering and Facebooking and such from the show floor that all flavors of 3G cell networks are totally swamped. I'm only on cause I'm across the street using the WiFi at Nobo's Sushi.

[sdelmonte]

1. Time was that if I needed help from our DSL provider, Verizon, it was near impossible to get it. The tech support person would lead me through a series of hoops that did nothing to fix my situation. Over time, the situation itself has happened less, and the times I've needed help in the last 18 months, it's come to me in rapid order. One technician successfully talked me through hooking up my router to my system on two occasions. (Never mind that now Verizon's modem is also a router. Would be nice if they offered upgrades.)

2. Got a doozy of a cellphone bill last week. Somewhere someone his the wrong number and added a whopping fee for a business service that the rep at AT&T had never heard of. The bill was resolved within a day and the actual amount owed was charged to my account instead.

[ladypoetess.livejournal.com]

I went to the store yesterday, and as often happens after a shopping trip, I was tired and didn't think I'd be up to cooking when I got home. I took my little motorized shopping cart over to the deli and got some chicken salad for sandwiches and a bit of the 'Mississippi Mud' dessert they had. When I'm sitting in one of those little motorized carts, I'm substantially lower than the deli counter, and normally have to get my cane and stand up to get my items.

Not this time. This time, the guy who had taken care of me at the deli walked to the end, around the counter, and brought me the items, rather than making me stand up, even though it surely took longer to do it that way. I was so blown away by his compassion that I went directly to the service desk and asked for a manager to make sure they knew how happy I was with the service I'd gotten. The assistant manager that answer the page clearly looked like he was dreading a complaint of some kind, so it was really neat to watch his face light up when I gave him the compliment on the employee, and he told me he'd be sure to leave a note for the store owner/manager.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Comcast seams to be capping my net at night now. This is causing me to keep loosing the connection to a server I am casting music to. Has happened every night for two weeks now, daytime is fine but once people get home then thing suddenly starts dropping. I think my segment is getting overloaded. One of those "too sucessful" situations.

[smparadox.livejournal.com]

Well, there was a "Sync-No-Service" outage of AT&T U-Verse Sunday afternoon that started in three cities in Texas and Chicago and spread across much of the country. Made for an interesting day on the phones...