Lots of Big Changes Coming
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 6:58PM There have been quite a few changes in my life recently. I moved, left my job and am getting ready for a long camping / fishing trip down the coast of Baja. Much more information to come, but here's my first little piece of new knowledge that needs to be shared.
If you just want the point of the story without the fluff, jump to the last line of the posting.
We recently installed AT&T DSL in the house and its been every you've come to expect from a telephone, cable, cellular or other large service provider. The experience took a total of 11 phone calls, well over 3 hours worth of time. At first the phone service wasn't on, so 3 days for a tech to show up. They wired up the connection and now I had a dial tone. This should have solved it, I mistakenly think, and plug-in the DSL modem. The modem connects, but the Ethernet port on it is bad, and therefore I can't plug a computer into my new DSL connection. Great....
AT&T does an advanced exchange by mail, 5 days later I get the new modem, plug it in, and yes, I've got a connection. After about 24 hours of use and dozens of bandwidth tests, I conclusively determine my bandwidth sucks.
During the previous modem exchange process AT&T provides me with this number: 866-274-4357. Apparently if I enter answer 1, 1, 1, and then a 4 I will get to the people responsible for exchanging the modem. After listening to the prompts I guess this number is for a larger DSL solutions provider group. They ask which ISP are you from, what region are you and never reffer to a product name. Option 1, 1 and then 3 gets you to a prompt called "DSL Maintenance."
After I tell the guy who answers the phone that "my new modem service is giving about 256 down and maybe 100+ up" he responds with "Oh, I think I know what it is, hold on and let me check something."
The tech then gets back on the phone, tells me there was a throttle on my upstream router, and that he removed it.
Moral of the story:
a. Call took 4 minutes.
b. The guy who answered the phone was somewhere in this country, knew what a router was and didn't have a script or prompt to read from.
c. He had direct access to the upstream router, and could run commands on it.
d. He actually knew the network (I'm still impressed he new what a router was).
e. I'm happy and know where to call if I have a problem, 866-274-4357.
Seriously, if you need real technical support for your AT&T DSL service, call this number: 866-274-4357.
I'm sure AT&T will ultimately find this posting and send me an email to remove it. In the mean time, dial away.
Reader Comments (1)
Enjoy your holiday Casey and relax! I am sure that your feature plans requires you to be at full power ;)
Daniel.