It's frustrating that Verizon and friends can make grandiose statements in their advertising about "unlimited bandwidth", "faster wifi" ,"stream 5 things at a time", etc, etc. Or lie to customers, My mother just called Comcast to downgrade her service and the CS Rep said "WiFi won't work with our Economy Plus internet plan"
Yet when another entity does something as simple as showing an error message that casts them in a negative light, they are willing and able to threaten legal action.
They stretch the truth as far as they can, yet give not an inch when confronted with truths they don't like.
Remove government so we can add customers! But we need government so we can slap Nextflix when they say something we don't like!
I don't have a good answer how to fix it, it's just very plain to see, and frustrating.
What do they mean WiFi won't work? How is that anything other than a blatant lie?
Reminds me of the late 90's when my ISP told me I couldn't get cable Internet because I didn't have a 486. I lied and told them I did to have the modem sent to me to hook up myself. It's a computer network, once it's in my house I can expose it as I like.
I had a fun time with a Comcast installation tech a year or two ago:
Tech: "Looks like we're about done. Now I just need to
use your computer to activate the connection."
Me: <looks at my Debian laptop> "I don't have a computer,
I only use my internet for tablets and my roku"
Tech: <looks at my laptop> "I need to use your computer to
activate your connection..."
Me: "I don't have a computer, and of course you do not."
Tech: "Okay, just a second, I have to make a call..."
[one minute later]
Tech: "Okay, your connection is activated, you should be
good to go."
Me: "Thanks!"
If there was really a hard and fast requirement that they use a computer to activate the connection, they would bring a computer with them. They just want to install their shitware on your computer.
I mean, technically they are asking, except they phrase it in a way that tricks people into believing that it is required.
I feel comfortable lying to their techs about a computer that is in plain sight because they feel comfortable lying to my face that they must use my computer to complete the installation.
I just want to point out that Teksavvy have in my experience proven to be FANTASTIC at helping with linux internet-related problems.
I now refuse to subscribe to any ISP who does not offer Linux support, and will in fact check to make sure that Teksavvy (or an equivalent as described above) is available in an area before moving to it.
Full Disclosure, I am a Teksavvy customer but not a Teksavvy employee.
As a Sonic customer, I agree with you: small ISPs can be awesome.
However, over 90% of American homes have at most 2 ISP choices. At most! So we are in a small but happy minority.
I lay most of the blame here on the FCC and the FTC, who have totally failed to regulate in a way that maintains a healthy market.
But I also have some blame left over for all the people who signed up with major ISPs while the small ones went out of business. It has always cost me more money to go with a local ISP rather than whatever the megacorp's latest intro rate would be. Now everybody is shocked that Comcast, Verizon, et al are giving shitty service and being total dicks about it. But it turns out I can't go down to the corner and shout, "WELL DUH! WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?!? TO THEM YOU ARE THE VEAL!" because nobody likes hearing I told you so. That or they don't like crazy people shouting on the corner.
I'm honestly not sure what the Representative meant. This is just what my mother told me (non tech person, she could have misunderstood).
I left out the part where the rep told my mother she was already on the cheapest plan. Fortunately they had just mailed their yearly "price sheet" that listed Economy Plus Internet, with prices. Magically when my mother mentioned this by name, it became available.
My general sense is that these types of conversations happen daily at Comcast and such...I've heard too many similar stories over the years.
Yes, whenever I miss the payment on my TalkTalk bill, the whole local network goes down, not just Internet access. I've been meaning to get a cheapo router to remedy.
People just don't know that you can have wifi for free, especially when you've got adverts from O2 and such that 2gb 3G and " unlimited wifi".
I dunno if it's the same in the US but apparently it's some typically restricted resource that many providers in the UK are lifting the limits off.
>I dunno if it's the same in the US but apparently it's some typically restricted resource that many providers in the UK are lifting the limits off.
No, this isn't too typical. Most people have their own router offering WiFi in front of the cable modem. It wasn't until recently that cable companies started bundling wi-fi and NAT into the modem.
Really? I had Time Warner Cable providing a Netgear modem+router+802.11g AP combo box back in 2004, maybe 2003. (It was shit.) I think the only thing that's changed is that nowadays even non-technical users have more than one device that needs a connection, so attaching the modem directly to the PC by USB doesn't cut it.
I know it's not typically restricted, I've enjoyed "unlimited wifi" for over a decade! The thing that bothers me is some providers in the UK say they give away unlimited wifi as part of the package.
How would that be anything other than a blatant lie? Are they going to mail the customer a different model of modem? Do any current cableco-provided modems not have built-in wifi?
I know for my ISP the user names and passwords used by support are all freely available online. I needed a tech to come in because they couldn't troubleshoot my issue (magically fixed the next day) and he was flummoxed when he couldn't log in because his passwords didn't work.
Can't it be remotely disabled because it's not a part of the cheaper plan?
Similarly to how you only get the ability to tether your data with more expensive plans. It's a completely artificial client-side restriction that can be circumvented by rooting, etc. Not unlike DRM.
Or their comcast/xfinity hotspots, which is true.[1] Their lowest "Performance Starter" package does not have access to those hotspots, while the next higher "Performance" package does.
Similarly in college, when setting up TWC account after some friends and I moved into a house. I clearly remember them saying that our wifi would only work with 1 device if we didnt get the "Fastlane" or whatever package they where trying to up-sell at the time.
I just played it dumb and said it was just me. We had about 10+ wireless devices connected.
Nothing new about tech support not knowing what they're talking about. After all, it's written into the script that they're told to read for that question.
A few years ago I was setting up a new internet provider for my mother, so I called to get the info to get email: Support: "You're using Outlook, right?"
Me: "No, Thunderbird."
Support: "We only support Outlook, so I can't help you."
Me: "It's email, it won't matter if I use Thunderbird."
Support: "Our email does not work with anything other than Outlook."
Me: "Okay, I'll get rid of Thunderbird and use Outlook."
I entered the information into Thunderbird as he gave it to me and then hung up the phone.
I had one of their built in modem/router combos that provides internet and wifi, me and a room mate had a minecraft server set up on a box wired into the router, and we played locally, but for some reason every 20 minutes, our connections to the server, the internet, and eachother would just die.
leaving an active traceroute on a spare computer suggested that the router just stopped routing for a period of 20-30 seconds, every 20-30 minutes.
Angry and annoyed, I called in a tech from Shaw to look at and replace the hardware. Standard operating procedure here: "We will show up some time between 8am-1pm". Of course he showed up at 3pm, with no call that he was going to be late. I had to call them.
Unbelievably, he logged into the router (with no permissions given, so those routers are backdoored... goody) and actually identified that the router WAS resetting every 20 minutes or so. Yes, the problem was identified! The problem was that my internet plan was not sufficient enough to support online games, and that if I didn't get another better one, the problem couldn't be fixed. (For the record, I had a 30 mbps down, 3 mbps up, cable connection.)
Jaw agape, I tried to explain to him that A. The game server he was referring to was literally right next to his feet, and B. that even if it wasn't, game data is minuscule compared to video data, something I am a prolific consumer of with no obvious problem there. All that combined with the subtle hint that the router literally just told him it was resetting, the conclusion clearly was that the router is broken, and my internet is fine.
His response to that was:
...
that's a direct quote. I'm not paraphrasing.
He didn't want to say anything because I had the audacity to say something that went contrary to the marketing line, and the only option he had was to either say I was wrong, or accept it.
He wouldn't replace the router regardless.
So I told him to take his modem/router, put in my old modem, get it registered, and buzz off (though maybe not so colourfully).
When I talked to a Shaw customer representative about having a Tech show up late, lie to me, and not fix the problem without an upgrade, I got this response:
uh, ok?
That's a direct quote. I'm not paraphrasing.
Fun part though: that transgression was actually considered a transgression by Shaw's regulatory agency, So I reported it to them after I got piddly squat from customer service.
Yet when another entity does something as simple as showing an error message that casts them in a negative light, they are willing and able to threaten legal action.
They stretch the truth as far as they can, yet give not an inch when confronted with truths they don't like.
Remove government so we can add customers! But we need government so we can slap Nextflix when they say something we don't like!
I don't have a good answer how to fix it, it's just very plain to see, and frustrating.