1 edit | reply to jimbopalmer
Re: I have been bought by Windjammer Cable Well, here's my early experience:
On the morning of January 12 I sat down to my computer at 7AM to find no connectivity. The notice they previously sent me said that beginning that day there would be "brief" outages between 1AM and 6AM. I figured they were running late restoring me from one of my "brief" outages. By 3PM when I still had no internet I was getting upset so I called them. What a joke! I got some guy with a very heavy aribic accent. Nothing against folks from that part of the world but I could NOT understand the dude. What's more, he seemed unable to understand me since it took me 5 minutes just to establish that I was talking about INTERNET not TV (i use DirecTV) or digital phone (I use Vonage - WHEN I HAVE A FREAKIN' CONNECTION to the WWW!). He then wanted me to do all the modem/ router restart thing which I'd done 27 times already. I pretty much got pissed and hung up on him. Shame on me!
At 10PM I was still down so I took a deep breath and tried again. This time I got a gal with a decidedly russion accent who I could understand marginally better. I allowed her to walk me through modem/router/computer reset number 86 or so. Amazingly enough, 86 reboots was not the magic number so she FINALLY transferred me to an english speaking tech. He found my modem (SB 5100)from his end just fine and refreshed it. Nothing. He had me run the normal battery of tests from my end (IP config, pinging the modem, etc). He told me that my modem seemed to be working fine but he couldn't figure out why I wasn't connecting (on any of my 3 computers with 3 different OSes or my Vonage box) so he would have to "roll a truck" for me the next day.
Next day came and went (my wife cancelled plans so she could be here all day).
I called again. Had another 20 minute conversation with another russian gal who transferred me to another tech who repeated the above process ending in the "roll a truck" deal again.
On the 14th, I drove the 20 miles to my local cable office to verify that they had gotten the "roll a truck" request since I hadn't gotten a phone call or anything by mid-morning. They verified that they had a trouble report in the system. At about 11AM (it's now day 3 by my count) a kid finally pulled into my driveway. He very professionally went through all the process of testing and got the same results as the two fellas on the phone. He hooked up an SB5101 modem that he had and configured it in the system. Now I have connectivity again but he never could get my modem (which I own as opposed to leasing....hmmm) to work. He suggested that I call back after the change-over is complete to try again to configure my own modem because "weird things" (technical term beyond my understanding) have been happening.
NOTE: All of the above conversations took place on my cell phone because, as mentioned I had no phone since my Vonage box couldn't connect. I get about 1.5 bars here so between the spotty connection and the barely english speakers I had to talk to, it was quite the stressful experience.
THE GOOD:
I've been running non-stop since the kid got me running. My connection speeds have changed though. I was getting about 12000/ 900 last week. Now I'm getting around 7000/ 1800. I upload home videos to a personal website fairly frequently so I am happy with the increased upstream and 7000 down is plenty for my needs 99% of the time. Some folks probably don't care about upstream though so I'm not sure how others will feel about this.
Sorry for such a long winded post but it was a long winded damn experience!
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Always walk a mile in someone's shoes before criticizing them. That way when the criticizing begins you are a mile away and have their shoes. |
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| Yay!-NOT! We're with Windjammer cable now. This has been the most awful experience I've ever had in cable internet. Windjammer Cable has horrible connectivity, and the service technicians say there is more of the crappy service to come. I've considered changing to dial-up, just to avoid the hassle.
I live with people who are relentless gamers. About 3 weeks ago, before the changeover was into full effect, the internet started dropping mercilessly. This has continued for 3 weeks. We were assured that this would end Monday, but after I've called 6 times to get through to anyone alive about why it still wasn't fixed, I was told that the problem would indeed not be fixed for an indefinite amount of time.
Apparently every time they buy out an area they change the people of that area over to their cable services, and have to reset everything in their system. Why they don't put the new people on an unfilled server is beyond me. This might at least help the people who have been in there a while. We're talking 6+ disconnections a day, and some last for hours. All the while I have to listen to very grumpy gamers. I'm searching for a new internet provider. Anything will beat this service. |
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 Smith6612Premium,MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
kudos:21 | Look around for a DSL provider. I'm sure there's someone around who will be willing to give you DSL if you're in range. |
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| reply to cdcguard
Update:
Ok, these guys suck! After the kid got me "working" the other day I had about 2-3 decent days. Since then I've been getting dropped a dozen or more times per day. I lost connectivity for 12 hours last night to this morning. My speeds have been continuously dropping....I'm lucky to get 2Mbps on my downstream now (3 different computers, 3 different Operating systems, 2 different browsers...). If I didn't hate my local phone company so badly I would have already switched back to ADSL. I may anyway if this doesn't change soon!
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Always walk a mile in someone's shoes before criticizing them. That way when the criticizing begins you are a mile away and have their shoes. |
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2 edits | said by cdcguard:Update: Ok, these guys suck! After the kid got me "working" the other day I had about 2-3 decent days. Since then I've been getting dropped a dozen or more times per day. I lost connectivity for 12 hours last night to this morning. My speeds have been continuously dropping....I'm lucky to get 2Mbps on my downstream now (3 different computers, 3 different Operating systems, 2 different browsers...). If I didn't hate my local phone company so badly I would have already switched back to ADSL. I may anyway if this doesn't change soon! Unfortunately, this is a company made from whole cloth just to buy these assets. Since the main shareholder is a private equity group, don't expect them to care about quality service. I suspect they plan to hold on the the assets for the shortest period of time possible and then sell for profit (in the current market, they may have to hold on to these assets a bit longer, if the economy were stronger, I'd say they plan to hold on to them no more than 12 months, but it may take longer now that we're in the midst of a credit squeeze). If you're unhappy, don't wait too long for them to improve. If anything, the performance will continue to drop as they move more RR markets onto their new system, so you're likely to see a tailspin in terms of speed and quality of service. If you have DSL, you may want to bite the bullet now, no matter how much you dislike your local phone company. |
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| Yeah, I hear you. The problem is that I'm a California state employee. The freakin' governator is about to cut my pay 658 bucks per month and DSL would actually cost me about 10 bucks per month more by the time I add a land-line back, etc. Maybe I should just learn to live without the WWW!
I'm gettin' pretty agitated!
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Always walk a mile in someone's shoes before criticizing them. That way when the criticizing begins you are a mile away and have their shoes. |
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K PattersonPremium,MVM
join:2006-03-12
Columbus, OH
kudos:1 | Judging by your logon name, you have more than a few issues in your life at present.
Let's hope your cable and all things get better. |
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| Not sure what my log in name has to do with anything but, thanks. |
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| reply to cdcguard
Hey cdcguard, I think your name is fine since my hubby is one too, lol. What a twirp! Anyways, I am having the same problems, and I live in the same area as you. Myself, and everyone else I know who also has cable will be cancelling. Also, I don't know if you have yet, but check your next billing statement because Windjammer has upped our prices, my bill was $40 more for the same service, so I have been on the phone yelling at them all day. This is ridiculous. They said that they will be prorating for every full day that the internet doesn't work, but I told them that I expect them to cover everyday since they took over because at some point everyday it hasn't worked. I wonder if there is anything that can be done legally, cause it already was awful having only one option for cable, and now that this is our only option, I don't know what to do. |
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