~ given eyes to see : : personal journal, blog, photography (winter 2006)

It's About Damned Time
I had a killer migraine last night. Oh ye gods, it was bad. I haven't had one that bad for awhile. I've been really slacker for a month or so now on taking my vitamins - feverfew included. I'm sure this contributed to how bad the migraine was. I tried drinking a Coke (for caffeine) but it wasn't helping, so I took two Excedrin. Still didn't help. Love rubbed my neck and I put one of the migraine ice cold patches on my forehead. It just wasn't going away.

Problem was that because of (a) the caffeine and (b) how bad it was hurting, I couldn't relax enough to sleep. I finally decided to try and lay down for good around 2:15am. Before I did, I checked my email but got an error that it couldn't connect to any of the mail servers. I figured it was a hiccup and didn't give it another thought. Then I went to bed.

Got up this morning earlier than I wanted, but I was up, so I thought I'd see if I could get going. Turn on my computer and I've got no internet. Now, my phone is the Digital Phone (i.e. Voice Over IP) so I check to see if that's working. And oddly, it is. So I call Love at work and tell him the cable tv is working, the digital phone is working, but I've got no net access. He said that when he got up to check his email around 7am, it wasn't working either.

So, I decide to give Bright House a call. The damned automated voice system tells me that "based on my phone number, I'm in an area that's being effected by an outage." It gives me an option to have the system call me when it's corrected. I say no. It then asks if I want to end the call. Um, no. I want to talk to a person. So I end up saying, "support" again and it repeats the spiel about the outage and offers to end my call. Frustrated, I try, "operator" which thankfully works.

I connect with a real person around 11am. I explain to them that the automated system says I have an outage, but....my digital phone is working. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. They agree it's a little odd that the VoIP is working but basically tell me they can't do anything until the outage is lifted. It was officially reported into the system at 8-something in the morning. I tell them it's been out longer than that. She tells me that these things are normally corrected in two-to-four hours. Her advice is basically to wait until after 1pm and check to see if the outage has been lifted. If it is and I'm still down, they can work on troubleshooting at that point. While this seems terribly silly to me, there's little else I can do but wait. So I conclude the call.

I end up laying down for about an hour and take a shower. I then give them another call at almost 2pm since my internet is still down. I get the automated message about the outage again and again say, "operator" to speak with a real person. I explain to the guy that I've been down all day and ask if there's any kind of status on when the outage will be fixed. My concern of course is that since I have tv and phone, perhaps my net connectivity isn't related to the outage. And I'd really rather not have to wait until the end of the day to make an appointment for some point a few days from now to get it fixed. He tells me the same thing. Only adding that he's been working there for four years and it's usually around two hours to fix an outage. I remind him that we've been down for at least six hours at that point (having not realized until after I hung up the figure was more like twelve since it was down late overnight) and that six is significantly more than two. He seems honestly confused by how long it's been down but tells me to continue to wait. Basically give it another couple hours and check back.

There seems to be an echo in here.

Anyway, I conclude the call and continue the waiting. Again. Finally, about twenty minutes ago, my net came back up. It was down at least 13.5 hours and possibly more since the last time I know it worked was around 12:30am. I check their network status page and of course, there's no mention that there was an outage today. A little historical information on the page might be useful seeing as when your connection is down, you can't exactly log onto the page to see what it says then. *rollseyes*

I know these things happen, but it's pretty irritating how bad the service has been the past two weeks. I mean, last week they installed new, faulty equipment leaving me without many of my channels and expected me to wait three days for a tech. (Thankfully someone realized it was a wider spread problem and fixed it in about 36 hours, but still. They fully planned for me to wait that long to get back what I was paying for.) Today, I'm without net for at least 13.5 hours. You shouldn't have this much outage in the course of a few days. And if you do, they should give you a credit or something. I mean, I pay a disgusting amount for cable because I don't have any alternative. (There are no other cable companies in this area and the Verizon Fios which is slowly coming into the area won't be an option to me since they're not planning on re-wiring the apartment complex to accept it.) It's a case of take what they give you. Sadly, this often leaves them lax when it comes to timeliness and attention to service concerns.

Bah. I'm just frustrated that I've been waiting all day for them to get their act in gear. Sure I didn't have anything time-sensitive I needed to do, but there are a LOT of people and businesses in the area that use Road Runner and they do have time-sensitive needs. Heck, my temp job uses them, so I wonder if they were stuck waiting around like us residential customers were as well.

Alright. End venting mode. I just needed to get it out I guess. Damned frustrating when you're just sitting, being told to wait without any further information or timeframe.

~ snow falls on :: miss m :: at 1/23/2007 03:41:00 PM ~ ~