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Long Ago Musings of Shutyertrap...Earthlink
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<blockquote data-quote="shutyertrap" data-source="post: 157594" data-attributes="member: 134"><p><em>last time, on Chris vs. the Evil Internet Corporation...</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em><strong>Chris was trying to save a buck and signed up for some new service that would save him big dollars. Unfortunately the provider Earthlink wasn't able to hook it up. In fact, they royally screwed things up to the point that Chris lost internet and phone access.</strong></em></p><p><em><strong></strong></em></p><p><em><strong>Our story continues with Chris going deep into the bowels of the Earthlink help line, where he has battled the nation of India and numerous department transfers. Just as he thinks he's free from dealing with the thick accented...</strong></em></p><p></p><p>Hey, what d'ya know. Another goddamned servant of Shiva. I proceed to tell the guy all the info I have just heard from the tech that came to my house, how I've been without service for like a week, and that there needs to be a rush order put on my account to handle this problem immediately. He responds by putting me on hold for 15 minutes while he calls the 'vendor' to get there end of things.</p><p></p><p>It is here that I discover what is wrong with this whole process. See, Earthlink doesn't actually do the phone thing. They've bought the technology from this company Covad (who you might remember is the name of the company that came to our house). Earthlink is in control of the service itself, but if there are any problems, they contact Covad to fix it. Seems straightforward enough, no?</p><p></p><p>It aint. Apparantly Covad ALSO outsources their customer service lines. So the Covad tech is filing his report via laptop, where someone in India has access to it. They're contacted by Earthlink's India friend, who reads the report to them and they just parrot the info back to me. Info I've already heard directly out of the Covad tech's mouth. Nice and efficient. If you've never dealt with TWO middle men, I don't highly recommend it.</p><p></p><p>Realizing this is not really going anywhere, or at least nobody can tell me the info I want to hear, I call up Verizon. I ask them, 'why do you think I have no phone service?' They tell me in plain English, that the only reason I would not have gotten immediate phone service when things switched is if the party the number was switching to didn't provision the line within a very narrow amount of time. What happens if that time frame is missed? Well, the number kinda goes floating off into the ether, and good luck finding it. Kinda like a needle in a hay stack.</p><p></p><p>I call Earthlink back. I'm on hold for an hour. I tell them what Verizon just told me. They say they'll investigate and that I should call back later that day.</p><p></p><p>For the sake of abbreviating this epic tale, I'm gonna tell you that every damn time I called this 'TRON' department or was transferred to it, my wait time was anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour fifteen. Many times I'd have been on hold for an hour when my signal would drop and I'd be cut off. I begged and pleaded that rather than I always calling back for updates, maybe someone could call me so that I wouldn't suffer through this. No can do. I was calling every day for 2 weeks, sometimes twice a day. Some serious hours of my life were completely wasted.</p><p></p><p>Oh yeah, and the on hold music was on a 30 second loop. It was violins too. If you'd like, I could hum it for you as it is permanently burned into my brain.</p><p></p><p>Okay, back to what's happening. The DSL tech from Covad shows up to my house AGAIN! He yells at his outsourced friend that he's already been here, and that they need a 'transmission tech' sent to the central office of the local Verizon to check out the 'Covad cage'. What that all means is this...within any phone company's local branch, there is a separate area for all the competing companies equipment to reside. This avoids the whole monopoly aspect, though most people don't realize they have this choice. What Verizon did in layman’s terms is, hand my phone line over to Covad's cage. Once in their possession, Verizon can no longer touch it. The flip side is, Covad can't touch any of Verizon's stuff either.</p><p></p><p>So the DSL tech goes over to the office himself, where he finds that there is a 294 foot gap, and this is what is causing the open line. He says the equipment in the cage is fine though, so it must be Verizon's problem. Verizon sends a tech out to my house now. Everything's cool there (duh). They check out what they can at the central office. What they find is that Covad has missed the proper connection by '25'. Now the problem is, the Verizon guy and the Covad guy are not there at the same time to troubleshoot together, so all they can do is point fingers at each other. I'm siding with Verizon though, seeing as how I HAD PHONE SERVICE UP UNTIL THERE WAS A SWITCH!!</p><p></p><p>The Covad guy puts in a request for a transmission tech and a Verizon tech to meet, so that the problem can be resolved. Earthlink denies the request.</p><p></p><p>Excuse me? Why? Why would this be denied?</p><p></p><p>Well it seems this phone service, called LPVA is very new, and our fine friends over in the land of spice have no f**king clue about any of this tech speak. So you know what they do instead?</p><p></p><p>They send the Covad tech to my house for the 3rd f**king time!! This guy is pissed and keeps telling me to dump Earthlink, that they don't know what they're doing, and that this service is just not ready for primetime. Thanks pal. A Verizon tech shows up an hour after this guy leaves, and does the same tests he did the last time he was out. I speak to him...</p><p></p><p><em>time out----now I'm at work dealing with this. Andrea is at home having to put up with these guys coming over unannounced, having them ask her questions that she has no answers for. She's pissed as all hell, cause she's without a home phone and internet, so she's cut off from the outside world. With a one year old. She has a cell phone, but nobody knows the number, and that doesn't exactly get you online to the stuff you normally check out every day. I'm able to go online at work, but that's not much help to her.----time in</em></p><p><em></em></p><p>He says exactly what we all already know. The problem is not Verizon's, seeing as how if it were, we would have had this problem before the switch happened. Oh and his two visits, they cost Earthlink $150 a pop.</p><p></p><p>Seeing that this dog and pony show is just going to continue until I either kill myself or put an end to it, I decide the latter. I call Verizon and ask when's the soonest they can get me back up and running. The answer?</p><p></p><p>8 BUSINESS DAYS.</p><p></p><p>Okay, what if I just get a brand new number, would that be faster? Nope. Earthlink controls the line, and there's a legal process called 'win back' that has to be gone through. I ask if since Earthlink can't seem to get this working if it's gonna be a problem for Verizon. Nope, they guarantee they'll have it up and running on the date promised.</p><p></p><p>I call Earthlink and tell them they've got 8 days to fix things. This is on a Wednesday. They say somebody will be out to the central office on Friday. For sure, nobody will be coming to the house, they know now that it's got to be a transmission tech.</p><p></p><p>Still no dial tone Friday night.</p><p></p><p>I call Monday morning (you really may as well repeatedly punch yourself in the nuts rather than try and get answers on the weekend) and ask what the tech found. Tech? No, nobody is taking care of that till Wednesday. As in the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Meaning, if it's not solved then, it won't be looked at again till Monday, and that's the last day before Verizon takes back over.</p><p></p><p>I scream a while at the man who will hopefully be reincarnated as a tree so that he can be chopped down and turned into a telephone pole that carries my phone line that won't work.</p><p></p><p>He explains that it's not up to Earthlink to do the scheduling, but Covad. Or at least the outsourced portion of Covad.</p><p></p><p>I'm defeated. Truly, at that point, I just gave up.</p><p></p><p>So that Wednesday comes, and what do you suppose happens?</p><p></p><p>A goddamned DSL Tech shows up at my f**king door!</p><p></p><p>I just smile and let him in. I ask if he knows why he's here. He doesn't, ‘cause Rajish couldn't give him the info for some reason. He had to go through back door channels just to find out where my house was! As he's unpacking his things, I inform him that he is now the 4th tech to come to our house, despite the multiple requests for someone to go to where the problem is, the central office. He packs up his gear and screams into the phone to his Indian connection, apologizes, and says I might see service come Monday.</p><p></p><p>Well, yesterday (Tuesday), Andrea calls me from our home phone bright and early. Verizon came by, called their office, wham bam, we have dial tone. </p><p></p><p>Simply amazing.</p><p></p><p><em>Now this is not the end of the tale, no siree. It's just this particular blog has gotten WAAAY too long! Stay tuned for the horrific conclusion, where even after Chris has called and canceled Earthlink, they STILL want to send out a tech!!</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="shutyertrap, post: 157594, member: 134"] [I]last time, on Chris vs. the Evil Internet Corporation... [/I] [I][B]Chris was trying to save a buck and signed up for some new service that would save him big dollars. Unfortunately the provider Earthlink wasn't able to hook it up. In fact, they royally screwed things up to the point that Chris lost internet and phone access. Our story continues with Chris going deep into the bowels of the Earthlink help line, where he has battled the nation of India and numerous department transfers. Just as he thinks he's free from dealing with the thick accented...[/B][/I] Hey, what d'ya know. Another goddamned servant of Shiva. I proceed to tell the guy all the info I have just heard from the tech that came to my house, how I've been without service for like a week, and that there needs to be a rush order put on my account to handle this problem immediately. He responds by putting me on hold for 15 minutes while he calls the 'vendor' to get there end of things. It is here that I discover what is wrong with this whole process. See, Earthlink doesn't actually do the phone thing. They've bought the technology from this company Covad (who you might remember is the name of the company that came to our house). Earthlink is in control of the service itself, but if there are any problems, they contact Covad to fix it. Seems straightforward enough, no? It aint. Apparantly Covad ALSO outsources their customer service lines. So the Covad tech is filing his report via laptop, where someone in India has access to it. They're contacted by Earthlink's India friend, who reads the report to them and they just parrot the info back to me. Info I've already heard directly out of the Covad tech's mouth. Nice and efficient. If you've never dealt with TWO middle men, I don't highly recommend it. Realizing this is not really going anywhere, or at least nobody can tell me the info I want to hear, I call up Verizon. I ask them, 'why do you think I have no phone service?' They tell me in plain English, that the only reason I would not have gotten immediate phone service when things switched is if the party the number was switching to didn't provision the line within a very narrow amount of time. What happens if that time frame is missed? Well, the number kinda goes floating off into the ether, and good luck finding it. Kinda like a needle in a hay stack. I call Earthlink back. I'm on hold for an hour. I tell them what Verizon just told me. They say they'll investigate and that I should call back later that day. For the sake of abbreviating this epic tale, I'm gonna tell you that every damn time I called this 'TRON' department or was transferred to it, my wait time was anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour fifteen. Many times I'd have been on hold for an hour when my signal would drop and I'd be cut off. I begged and pleaded that rather than I always calling back for updates, maybe someone could call me so that I wouldn't suffer through this. No can do. I was calling every day for 2 weeks, sometimes twice a day. Some serious hours of my life were completely wasted. Oh yeah, and the on hold music was on a 30 second loop. It was violins too. If you'd like, I could hum it for you as it is permanently burned into my brain. Okay, back to what's happening. The DSL tech from Covad shows up to my house AGAIN! He yells at his outsourced friend that he's already been here, and that they need a 'transmission tech' sent to the central office of the local Verizon to check out the 'Covad cage'. What that all means is this...within any phone company's local branch, there is a separate area for all the competing companies equipment to reside. This avoids the whole monopoly aspect, though most people don't realize they have this choice. What Verizon did in layman’s terms is, hand my phone line over to Covad's cage. Once in their possession, Verizon can no longer touch it. The flip side is, Covad can't touch any of Verizon's stuff either. So the DSL tech goes over to the office himself, where he finds that there is a 294 foot gap, and this is what is causing the open line. He says the equipment in the cage is fine though, so it must be Verizon's problem. Verizon sends a tech out to my house now. Everything's cool there (duh). They check out what they can at the central office. What they find is that Covad has missed the proper connection by '25'. Now the problem is, the Verizon guy and the Covad guy are not there at the same time to troubleshoot together, so all they can do is point fingers at each other. I'm siding with Verizon though, seeing as how I HAD PHONE SERVICE UP UNTIL THERE WAS A SWITCH!! The Covad guy puts in a request for a transmission tech and a Verizon tech to meet, so that the problem can be resolved. Earthlink denies the request. Excuse me? Why? Why would this be denied? Well it seems this phone service, called LPVA is very new, and our fine friends over in the land of spice have no f**king clue about any of this tech speak. So you know what they do instead? They send the Covad tech to my house for the 3rd f**king time!! This guy is pissed and keeps telling me to dump Earthlink, that they don't know what they're doing, and that this service is just not ready for primetime. Thanks pal. A Verizon tech shows up an hour after this guy leaves, and does the same tests he did the last time he was out. I speak to him... [I]time out----now I'm at work dealing with this. Andrea is at home having to put up with these guys coming over unannounced, having them ask her questions that she has no answers for. She's pissed as all hell, cause she's without a home phone and internet, so she's cut off from the outside world. With a one year old. She has a cell phone, but nobody knows the number, and that doesn't exactly get you online to the stuff you normally check out every day. I'm able to go online at work, but that's not much help to her.----time in [/I] He says exactly what we all already know. The problem is not Verizon's, seeing as how if it were, we would have had this problem before the switch happened. Oh and his two visits, they cost Earthlink $150 a pop. Seeing that this dog and pony show is just going to continue until I either kill myself or put an end to it, I decide the latter. I call Verizon and ask when's the soonest they can get me back up and running. The answer? 8 BUSINESS DAYS. Okay, what if I just get a brand new number, would that be faster? Nope. Earthlink controls the line, and there's a legal process called 'win back' that has to be gone through. I ask if since Earthlink can't seem to get this working if it's gonna be a problem for Verizon. Nope, they guarantee they'll have it up and running on the date promised. I call Earthlink and tell them they've got 8 days to fix things. This is on a Wednesday. They say somebody will be out to the central office on Friday. For sure, nobody will be coming to the house, they know now that it's got to be a transmission tech. Still no dial tone Friday night. I call Monday morning (you really may as well repeatedly punch yourself in the nuts rather than try and get answers on the weekend) and ask what the tech found. Tech? No, nobody is taking care of that till Wednesday. As in the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Meaning, if it's not solved then, it won't be looked at again till Monday, and that's the last day before Verizon takes back over. I scream a while at the man who will hopefully be reincarnated as a tree so that he can be chopped down and turned into a telephone pole that carries my phone line that won't work. He explains that it's not up to Earthlink to do the scheduling, but Covad. Or at least the outsourced portion of Covad. I'm defeated. Truly, at that point, I just gave up. So that Wednesday comes, and what do you suppose happens? A goddamned DSL Tech shows up at my f**king door! I just smile and let him in. I ask if he knows why he's here. He doesn't, ‘cause Rajish couldn't give him the info for some reason. He had to go through back door channels just to find out where my house was! As he's unpacking his things, I inform him that he is now the 4th tech to come to our house, despite the multiple requests for someone to go to where the problem is, the central office. He packs up his gear and screams into the phone to his Indian connection, apologizes, and says I might see service come Monday. Well, yesterday (Tuesday), Andrea calls me from our home phone bright and early. Verizon came by, called their office, wham bam, we have dial tone. Simply amazing. [I]Now this is not the end of the tale, no siree. It's just this particular blog has gotten WAAAY too long! Stay tuned for the horrific conclusion, where even after Chris has called and canceled Earthlink, they STILL want to send out a tech!![/I] [/QUOTE]
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