My Kingdom for a Decent Internet Connection

After the hellacious year that 2016 was, I was really hoping against hope that 2017 would be the pause that refreshes. However…

Shortly after Christmas our Internet connection started to go wonky until it went flat out nutzo on New Year’s Eve. Since I live in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains, whenever it rains we have Internet problems. It’s a fact that can be counted on. And of course it rained on New Year’s Eve – so I figured, once things dried out it would go back to normal.

Not so much. My room mate is a computer engineer, so he tooled around with routers, modems, IP address thingies and all those things that computer nerds know about that flies right over my head. But to no avail. Nothing he did changed anything. This, of course, was before, during, and after he talked to the Internet Service Provider on the phone several times. They assured him that absolutely nothing was wrong on their end. Nothing. No, nothing at all. He finally got them to agree to come out and at least look at their modem, which praise God, happens tomorrow.

But in the meantime, the connection has gotten worse and worse. Having to spend anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes to bring up my gmail account is getting very old.

We also surveyed our neighbors, and most of them use the same service provider and guess what? They are having the exact same problems as we are. So I guess we’re all wrong because, hey, the service provider says there is absolutely nothing wrong on their end. I call BS.

I realize of course that my writing a blog about this won’t do anything to fix the problem (except perhaps give me a little venting relief) but if you, evil Internet Service Provider who shall not be named, are out there reading, let me give you a little friendly advice:

1. There is absolutely something wrong on your end. And if I had privy to your call logs I could prove it.
2. We know there is something terribly wrong on your end, despite your insistence to the contrary.
3. If you hope to remain in business, your first policy change is to admit a problem, and provide at least some clue as when the problem will be fixed.
4. People will stop trusting you once they know you have lied to them and you will shrink your own bottom line.
5. Liars do not stay in business for very long.
6. People who are not valued as customers go else to get the service and respect they deserve.
7. This situation has gone on for five days in my case (who knows how long for others) – and you’ve done nothing to inform your customers or offer solutions, which means I am switching providers as soon as possible. Likely so are many others.
8. You could have prevented losing this customer and probably hundreds or thousands more if you had just leveled with us.
9. Oh and hire some folks who know what they’re doing because obviously your current crew is clueless. (what ISP lets something like this go on for days?)

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, when I have a normal Internet connection again, I can write about more interesting things. Please God, make it so.

How about you? How’s your Internet connection? Are you in spinny wheel hell like I am 

or are you cruising with wild abandon?