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Selenia
Gentoo Convert
Premium Member
join:2006-09-22
Fort Smith, AR

3 edits

Selenia to Eagles1221

Premium Member

to Eagles1221

Re: Frustrating and maddening=confident customer??

said by Eagles1221:

That's ironic I am a network engineer myself and I would rate Time Warner above most ISPs. I'd rank Comcrap and Verizon DSL at the bottom.

With DSL, especially Verizon DSL, you get rotten support and subpar speeds. My office building is 6000 feet from the CO, not a slick, the CO. They won't offer anything over 3Mbit DSL. I can get 5*50D3 and I have MetroE from Time Warner.

+1 I wholeheartedly agree on almost all points, including Verizon DSL. You notice my town in my profile, right? This town is lucky enough to only be served by Verizon DSL, who don't give a rats ass about us. Crap crap crap speeds getting ever slower. Sometimes below 600 kbps(yes, kilobits) on a 3 meg line(best available). Horrible support who do the runaround best. Connection down more than a cheap $2 whore. Best of all, they don't give a reacharound. Hell, sometimes you can't even reach them through their shoddy customer service phone system.

OK, to my point. Desperate to get away from them and get my old, decent(not perfect, but good) TWC service back. Found an old friend who lives across the lake and was willing to host a modem in my name at that address. The modem is then wirelessly backhauled via a couple K worth of antennas, masts, and APs across the lake to a large directional antenna at the edge of my property(link = about 2.5 miles, mostly over water), which then beams the connection to my main router in my house, which connects to the main network. A vpn over cellular allows diagnostic contact to all components, if wireless link should be lost(has yet to be). Also allows me to test connection from local to the modem to determine if TWC or the backhaul is the issue. It has always been TWC. As I said, they are not perfect, but they give a decent service that is generally a pleasant experience to use. I use their standard 15/1 package and have been very happy. Only real issue a had was a bad Ubee modem. I swapped it out for an Arris and all has been rock solid. See what I invested just to flee back to TWC from Verizon?

People should be happy to at least have that choice without having to have my knowledge about networks and wireless links lol. Sure, they can always be better, like broadband in this country, period. I learned to appreciate what I had from TWC, let alone the fiber at work and such. You end up learning a reliable service is every bit as important as a fast service, even for home use.

Edit: Oh and if something did go wrong with TWC, they spoke English and arranged to fix most things in the same day-couple of days. Worst wait I had for a fix was 5 days, aside of a congested node they eventually split. With Verizon, you were lucky to get someone who spoke mildly broken English and had to wait 3-6 weeks for them to come out and say your line is fine again. That is, despite your data refuting that. When it rains is the worst and we get soaking rains in the spring and fall, being on a sizable lake and all. That 2.5 mile link is across a narrow part. Just into Pittsfield, where TWC serves.
nephipower
join:2012-02-20
San Antonio, TX

nephipower

Member

Wow, great example!
Mele20
Premium Member
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI

Mele20 to Selenia

Premium Member

to Selenia
said by Selenia:

Edit: Oh and if something did go wrong with TWC, they spoke English and arranged to fix most things in the same day-couple of days. Worst wait I had for a fix was 5 days, aside of a congested node they eventually split. With Verizon, you were lucky to get someone who spoke mildly broken English and had to wait 3-6 weeks for them to come out and say your line is fine again. That is, despite your data refuting that. When it rains is the worst and we get soaking rains in the spring and fall, being on a sizable lake and all. That 2.5 mile link is across a narrow part. Just into Pittsfield, where TWC serves.

5 days maximum to get TWC to fix your problem? NO. There is a 4-6 weeks wait before anyone will even come out from TWC UNLESS your problem involves either TWC phone or TV reception. If the problem involves Internet you are considered a second class, or on neighbor islands in Hawaii, third class citizen even though you pay the same amount of money each month for INFERIOR LOWER SPEED SERVICE BECAUSE NORMAL SPEEDS ARE NOT YET AVAILABLE EXCEPT ON OAHU.

It used to be that TWC would come out within a few days, but not for the past year or so. Plus, what is worse is that even when you specify no phone call before they come out they will call you anyway and you will likely discover that a clueless sub-contractor is the one coming out and that person will do their best to NOT come out once they have you on the phone. Once upon a time, calling you before coming out was simply to make sure you were there. That is no longer the reason to call you first. The reason is to try and wiggle out of coming out even when you have waited over one month for the visit.

DocDrew
How can I help?
Premium Member
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
Ubee E31U2V1
Technicolor TC4400
Linksys EA6900

1 edit

DocDrew

Premium Member

What Selena said has also been true in SoCal for years. Frequently next day, sometimes 2-3 days out, at most 5 days out for an install or service call.

Very few of us live on an island in the middle of nowhere, so our service is quite a bit different than yours. You're the exception, not the common example in this case.