I have to type fast. Real fast. Actually, as I’m typing, I’m wondering if I will be connected long enough to publish this on the site, or will it sit in “draft mode” until the next “hey, we’re online again!” moment?
We live in a “Bright House”. Bright House is our cable/internet provider in the Tampa Bay area. Roadrunner is the actual cable source. Roadrunner is broadband and fast…when it’s ON. It requires a cable modem which connects to a junction box along with the TV cable, er, cables. This cable goes outside where a surface-mounted green box sits. The cable then connects to a mainline. The mainline travels for several miles, through several homes, shopping centers, a child’s aquarium, to an even bigger line that travels to a small island in the northeast…Amity Island borders the Atlantic Ocean. This larger line was used to kill a shark in the movie “Jaws”.
Well, somewhere in this path of communication, there’s a problem. This is according to the “helpful” support person at our local Bright House office.
What’s happening is, at random times, lasting from several minutes to several hours, days, our internet connection goes down (offline). Regular TV cable is not affected (yet) since it doesn’t require such a high amount of data traffic. Roadrunner (internet) is very particular to line interference - whether caused by a line breakage, radio interference, or a large shark exploding while biting down on the cable. (you have to see the movie)
But that’s not the bad part. Try calling Bright House. Good luck getting a human. I’ll wait.
Still waiting.
Not yet? I’ll continue while you keep speaking to voice prompts and not getting a live human. After a lengthy series of voice commands, you (may) finally get a live human being. Yes, it is possible, but you must be patient. Customer service, if you can call it that, seems to go through the same script everytime.
“Is your modem on?”
“You think?”
“Are the lights blinking?”
“Some are, some aren’t. I already thought I hinted that the modem is ON.”
Anyway, during the next call, you simply want to find out if HBO is airing the Soprano’s.
“Is your modem on?”
“Never mind, I’ll look at the dang guide!”
Some time ago, we reported the inability to access the internet. Bright House could not see our modem from there end. I could have told them that - I couldn’t get to the Bright House site either. They will send someone out - 4-days later. We run businesses on the internet as well as a very valuable, humorous, and insightful website which are you reading this from.
What’s funny about this is that, while our internet is offline, Bright House support sends us an Email….like we would even GET it.
“For an extra fee per month (I forget what it was), you can upgrade to our business class and someone will be out within 24-hours.”
“No thank you, it isn’t worth THAT much.”
“Ok, is your modem on?”
ARRGGHH! The Bright House guru came over and checked the line. He seemed to know his job and was friendly. After checking the inside, he checked the junction box and the green alien box in front of the house. There was some insulation stripped from the coax cable which leads to the house. A few minutes later…fixed! We’re back online, after 4-days of hit-or-miss — mostly miss!
We were online for a couple days until our access went down again. Another call. Another customer service representative. The short version? There appears to be interference in this neighborhood which is causing our outage. We were not told this before. Is anyone checking on this interference? The response was similar to “this is Bright House. We’re not working on interference issues.” Then the light went on, “however, I see that you have another service call scheduled for the 18th to fix a splitter.” A what? We were never told this. Another 4-days without access. Much to our surprise, our modem came to life 2-days ago. Maybe they fixed us while we were sleeping?
Today is the 18th of June. At approximately 6:20PM, a plain van shows up and another guru is at the door to fix the problem. Severe thunderstorms are in the area. He goes to work. He immediately found a problem left by the previous guru. A coax connector. This guy was just upgraded to genius. With that fixed, he moved to the box in the back of the house and found another potential problem. Adding strength to his genius title. He then verified our cable box diagnostics were good, and checked the internet. Without boring you with THAT detail, he was upgraded to super-genius. We’re back online…living in a Bright House.
I understand that things will go wrong. Wires and connectors corrode or just plain wear out eventually. But, Bright House’s phone support lack of interest in our issues is appalling. Of course, when you really have no other choices for cable or internet access, you can afford to be uninterested in your customers. By the way, before you jump on the DirecTV or Dish bandwagon, I’ve been there. It’s raining heavily now and my cable TV is still clear. With DirecTV, when a cloud was overhead, or a jet flew between me and outer space, the picture went out “lost satellite signal”. Bright House is seeing one other competitor in their market - DSL and Verizon’s fiber optic service (FiOS).
I haven’t looked into Verizon’s FiOS offering yet, but if I hear “is your modem on?” again, you can bet my next call will be to Verizon!