OptimumOnline → Wow have people lost perspective in our modern world!

I see so many whining babies here crying about how their service is out.....folks you do know this is a once a century storm and with it came the damage of that magnitude. Do you think a internet fairy pops out of the PC monitor and waves a wand to fix things in an instant?

Like the other posters mentioned....stop bitching and start helping to clean up...be patient, neighborly, and civil to others around you that are in the same boat.

I sometimes wonder what it will take to snap people out of their selfish self centered world they live in. If we don't we are doomed.

im not a whiner and im not complaining.
i didnt whine when i was without power for 6 days and im not whining that i dont have optimum either.
i have a generator and 3g for internet but i really need the high speed internet for work as its difficult to do what i am employed to do on 3g internet.
so its a bit disconcerting when your neighbor has it but you dont because the wire is disconnected from the tap.

And only a year after the last "once a century storm".

I have to agree with you. A few years back whenever power went out, cable would remain on (as long as a line wasn't actually cut). Last year was the first time that we actually lost service during an outage. It started as about an hour after the power went out, cable service would drop. Then a half hour, then eventually as soon as power went out the cable went out. If the power even flickers, the cable service "resets" (ie the modem has to resync, the tv's briefly lose signal, etc…). I have batteries connected to all my devices that use the service so there's no power interruption during the quick "blips". We also run a generator for the longer outages.

Last year a tech told us that the batteries in the box on the pole had just died and they would send a truck with a generator out to charge it up. That never happened.

We were without power from Monday evening to Sunday evening. The cable went out with the power and came back up with the power. Just like all our power outages over the last year.

My neighbor, with fios, has not lost service once in the same year. This past outage, and yes you can say conspiracy theory here, it seems like Cablevision would rather just give people a credit then provide service during an outage. With their service outage page that seems know if you have service or not, its odd they make you call to get credit. Why not just give everyone who didn't have service a credit? I guess because some won't call so they won't have to give everyone a credit?

Regardless of whether there's a problem that is out of Cablevisions control or not, the fact is… I had no service and my neighbor did. I called Verizon and after 30 years of service with Cablevision I'll be making the switch to Fios. Cheaper (for at least 2 years), and 75/35 should be nice. I couldn't even get in touch with any one at Cablevision during the outage. Either busy signals or no one would ever pick up after the message "assuring me" that cable service would be returned as soon as power was.

Call this bitching if you want, but I'd rather have the service I'm paying for then get a credit after a long outage. When my neighbor has service and I don't, then I'll use what he uses.

And yet I've known people who have had FIOS out for more than two weeks after lat years storm when many other people had their Cablevision service back in in hours. There's so many factors in a major storm.

There are plenty of people with FIOS down as I type.
My brother has FIOS and is down all week, same for my father in law.
I check the status for them and verizons website and 800 number is telling customers they are commited to restoring service by tommorrow night.

I can't imagine it's cheaper to pay people to take customer calls requesting credit than to apply credit either en masse to all accounts, or all affected accounts. However, since a majority of people are going to call requesting credit regardless of whether it is automatically given, I guess it's the option they felt best to take.

Agreed. I can only go based on my observations in my area. We used to have cable during long outages, but not any more. I can't completely say whether or not there was a physical problem (cut line, etc..) or not but for my area the fact for the last year has been that the cable service goes up and down with the power, and fios service persists throughout. I spoke to a few others in my area who switched in the past year and they have nothing but good things to say. Since I telecommute for an internet based company its more convenient for me to have service then not, so thats a heavy factor in my decision.

Of course, I could get the new service installed next week and then it will go out for the first time in the area… that would follow my usual luck

Some background in engineering - and real world experience combined: Cable suffers from power outages... But if the cable is cut you rarely need to 'worry' on a per customer base (unless you have an above ground drop)... On Fibre if it get's cut you got to make sure your strand is fixed properly... Over time the customer effort to get an outage fixed on cable is lower compared to FIOS (including time of calling in the outage, needing to stay home etc...)