I’m at home this week, as I am working a second shift. It’s pretty important to be able to work a week of coverage now and then since I’ve been basically broke since starting school.
The one thing I must have in order to work from home is Internet. When we moved to this house in 2009, I took the opportunity to switch from Comcast over to DirecTV/Qwest. This was a result of Comcast completely screwing up the move and then telling me it would be at least 2 weeks to fix it.
I have been 100% satisfied with this migration. DirecTV has been better than Comcast in practically every way. Despite what I had read online, satellite essentially never goes out. This is in an area which occasionally gets a few feet of snow so I’m comfortable with that judgment. It only gets interrupted in the heaviest, wettest, snows. Likewise, DSL just never goes down. Comcast would go down roughly five times a week.
But with the transition from Qwest to CenturyLink, I am not so happy.
First, since the merger we have been bombarded by telemarketing calls for long distance providers.
Next, the billing has been confusing and changed for what appeared to be no good reason.
Tonight brings the kicker. At midnight I was working on a call when the Internet went out. Given this was exactly 00:00, I suspected this was for some type of maintenance. I gave it about 90 minutes and then started trying to call CenturyLink. After a short wait, a polite representative did answer. The first question he asks is “oh, you’re not in a Qwest area, are you?”
Turns out, despite migrating my area over 6 months ago, they still don’t have any support for Qwest. I was transferred cold back into the VRU and tried different options this time. The next person I reached had me on hold for 15 minutes, while coming back every now and then to tell me to unplug/replug/default all the settings on all my equipment. I will replug the modem at the wall, but anything behind that is not their concern and I get tired of being asked to change settings on my equipment.
After the 15 minute wait (and supposedly defaulting all the custom configurations on a pile of routers), he comes back to tell me it is a known maintenance.
Wait…not just a known maintenance. A TWENTY-FOUR hour maintenance for planned upgrades.
I don’t need Internet to check Facebook or play FarmVille. I need this for my work and for my schoolwork. Internet is a utility and no longer a convenience. If my phone or electricity was planned to be out for a full day, one would expect notification of some kind.
I guess this is the argument for LTE and the like. Currently I’m typing this on my iPad in an area with pretty terrible 3G service.
Simply can’t wait to move to an area with fiber availability.