We have dial-up internet service at home and it's getting to be just too much. A couple of years ago we looked into RoadRunner, but we don't have cable at our house and were told it would cost over $5,000 just to run the cable lines to our house. Now I want fast internet, but that's a big chunk of change. Then we looked into DSL and it wasn't in our area. We decided to just stick it out for awhile. Then we thought we'd check around again recently. So we looked into satellite but we have too many trees between us and the nearest tower so that wouldn't work-even though when the leaves are off the trees you can see the tower from our house. Then we checked DSL again, and indeed, it is available for us now. It was as though the heavens were shining down on us.
I ordered DSL and waited for the hardware to arrive. Arrive it did, and then I waited until the turn on date, and I even waited until the next day as suggested. I followed all the directions and waited for it to find the signal. It didn't. I followed the troubleshooting and it still didn't work. On a fluke I decided to just check the phone to make sure we had a dial tone. No dial tone.
I called customer service and followed their instructions to make sure that it wasn't something inside the house, and it wasn't. They said by the end of the following day they would send someone out. The next morning the service tech called (at 8:30 on a Saturday morning) and said he was on his way and he'd do some testing on the way. I checked the phone a few minutes later and we had a dial tone again, so I called him back to save him the trip. He said that on his way he had found a broken line and fixed it and that I still needed to sign the paperwork.
Now, does that seem fishy to anyone else? They were supposed to turn on DSL service and then we have no service at the exact same time? Interesting.
However since we had a dial tone again, I went through all of the steps to set up the DSL again. No dice again. Did the troubleshooting again, still nothing. I called in again. The lady put me on hold and looked up my account, when she came back she said something about canceling and that she needed to transfer me. The next guy starting into a speil about how since the order was cancelled, I could go ahead and request service etc. and I stopped him right there and said, "I did request service, and I did not cancel service so who, how, and why was it cancelled?" He said that somehow with the dial tone issue the request got cancelled automatically in the system and that he could put in a new request. So that's what we did. However it would take at least four days. Seriously?
Today is turn on day. I'm excited.
Then Tim called me.
The service tech called him and said that while we do have DSL in our area, because of how our phone line comes into our house (from the back off a different street) as opposed to coming up our driveway, the distance is too far and the signal is not strong. It wouldn't be hardly any better than dial up. For real?
We live within the city limits. Tim's parents have DSL and they live pretty far out and even their close towns are crossroad towns, how is it they can get DSL, but we can't?
Now I have to send all the hardware back. And we still have dial up.
Any other ideas?
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