Wednesday, February 16, 2011 – and so we wait for failure…rock solid so far (since yesterday morning – no fluctuations) at about 5.15 Mbps, so I’m taking the sticky off  and we’ll see what happens.  Any more nonsense and it’s back up on top.

The Tech-0f-the-Day just left.  He replaced the “card” in the vault with a new card.  and now we wait … and so it goes…

Another news flash:  AT&T does not want my business!  quel surprise!  So now I’ve been transferred, disconnected, transferred, disconnected – each time going through the same “who are you” protocol the trained monkeys use in whatever country the call centers are located.  After the final disconnect, I realized that not only was I not going to get satisfaction from AT&T (and guess who has never been sent that customer satisfaction survey?), the only way I was going to make an impact was to call and have the DSL tech come to the house – EVERY DAY.  We’re gonna be BFF.  stay tuned.  grr and out…

I’m putting this out as a sticky just cause I’m so damned pissed.  Sunday morning the AT&T guy came and checked everything out 6 ways to Sunday. The only thing he could find that hadn’t been done was to reset some switches at the Ameritech offices, which weren’t open on Sunday… so that call was supposed to be made and a follow-up call given us.  you can bet that call wasn’t made…

So Sunday evening we’re running .2, .3, at one point jumping up to 1.3 (but that was only temporary). Too slow for Netflix. This afternoon husband wants to know what our speed is: oooh, great, it’s too slow to run the speed test.  That’s my favorite speed.  Started with the round of calls.  Each office says the same thing:  Oh, I’m sorry, I apologize.  I’ll be able to help you.  Until push comes to shove and they can’t and transfer you to the wrong office.  where you wait on hold hell.   After being on the phone for just over one hour, I was disconnected.  Apparently it was because, after complaining for years (their tickets go back to 2005) about shitty DSL speeds when I am being billed for the fastest service, the fact that I want some service credit is too much for them to handle.  They think that if they all ignore me, I’ll go away.  I think not.

So here I sit, waiting for the AT&T guy/gal (although it’s never been the latter) to show up and FIX MY DAMNED LINE!  but let’s go back to the beginning – about two years ago:

Started getting weird speeds.  We pay for the fastest DSL speed (currently between 5 and 6 Mbps) but the speed test was showing download times of .2, .416, 5.15, .2.  You get the picture.  Make the call to voice prompt hell and go through the “It’s your modem/wireless router that’s going bad.  You should replace it.  Your line checks out.”  Well it’s not, but we have.  In point of fact, we installed another one yesterday morning.  Instead of the 2-wire ones we’ve been using, we switched to Motorola.  It was a total pain to install, necessitating extremely long conversations with tech support.  At one point, we had the computers that were hard-wired up and running but the wireless ones (Macs and phones and laptops, oh my) were not.  Again the calls.  This time Nincompoop Broad wants me to check what operating system I’m running before doing anything.  Lady, did you even read the Cliff’s Notes in front of you?  Then she wanted me to move my desktop to a cable and see if that worked.  I said you must be kidding and she asked if the wire wasn’t long enough…Again, LADY DON’T YOU HEAR ME GOING UP AND DOWN THE STAIRS WITH EVERY ONE OF YOUR STUPID QUESTIONS?  Let me have level two support.  Starts up with all the reasons why she can fix the problem.  Hand over phone to husband before I pull this ignorant bitch out through the handset and choke her to death.  justifiable homicide…

Husband asks for level two support.  Does not get it.  Another 45 minutes to an hour of bullshit and gets it all to work, but at that point I don’t care because Elvis has left the building!  DH calls about a half hour later with the news that AT&T is going to send out a technician Sunday, sometime between 8 am and 5 pm.   So, after all these years of my telling them that there is a problem with the buried phone wire, they are finally admitting it?

Oddly enough, I haven’t gotten one of those survey calls asking me to rate the quality of their service… hehehehehehe… Oh, I’m sorry, but you don’t seem have anything less than 1 and there’s a missing spot where nincompoop should be inserted – preferably without lube.