Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Having had broadband for a while...

Author:Lixian B. Chiu
Posted:3/4/1999; 9:21:49 AM
Topic:Snappy!
Msg #:3547 (In response to 3488)
Prev/Next:3546 / 3548

>If you think modems are bad, just go from a fast connection to a >28.8 connection that doesn't even >connect at that half the time due to poor line quality. >(There's a line problem, and USWest can't seem to >find it)

I live in NYC, and my phone line constantly "JAM" with other people's phone line. I said, "JAM" because so far I have heard people saying Indian, Korean, Mandarin, English, Spanish ... then one day, when I was talking to friend, I heard someon saying Cantonese, my native language. It happens that this guy hear us also (which is not always the case), and he shouted extremely impolitely, "who are you? you're crazy!" and then hung up, w/o even saying a goodbye to his buddy.

Several calls to Bell Atlantic does give you any resolution. First, you need to wait online for more than 30 minutes in most cases. Second, when you finally get to a human, he/she always blamed on you using cordless phone. While I use cordless phone, but my modem has a cable hooked directly into a phone-jack, but I can hear other parties talking while I am trying to dial out using my modem, so I am pretty sure that it's not the problem of our cordless phone.

At some point, I finally got them to do a check up, they quickly got back to me saying that it's looking fine on their side (w/o explaining what "fine" and "side" meant), and said if they came and checked our location, we will have to pay for the check-up (unless they find that it's their fault.) I finally give up on that because I am afraid that no matter what they find out, it will end up be "my" fault.

What I still don't understand is, every month, besides the usage charge, there are several other charges, including maintenance charges. I wonder what does that maintenance charge provides me when I couldn't even get a free check-up of my phone line.

The moral? You should never trust your telco.

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