Dear Suddenlink,Thank you for offering stellar internet service in my area. I have been a paying customer since you purchased the entire cox.net customer base in this area nearly a decade ago.I have lived at my current address for over a year, and the close proximity of your pole to my second-floor bedroom window offers me ample opportunity to photograph the magnificent array of connections you have:
In the center of the view (on the middle line) is your junction box, and three connections coming in to the bottom of it. Two of them belong to my neighbors, and one of them is mine. Together, we are happily enjoying your service!Earlier this year, I took another photo.(One of the side-effects of having a photographer live so close to a utility pole is that it becomes an easy test subject.)
Everything is still fine. The trees have gone dormant for the winter, but we paying customers are happily enjoying our Suddenlink television and high-speed internet service!Over the past few months, I realized that I was using far more of my internet connection than the television service, so on August 1, I called to disable my television package.On September 7, I went through my usual morning routine, part of which involves checking email and getting caught up on news around the world. The internet has not only replaced my television, but also the morning paper. At around noon, I returned to grab a quick lunch and partake of some internet media, but no! My cable modem couldn't find a connection!Maybe it was a city-wide outage, these things happen. So at 11:30 that morning, I called your tech support number. Not only was I not getting a signal, but your tech support personnel couldn't connect to me at all. If this was a problem with my modem, the person on the other end of the phone should have received a weak signal, but they had zero signal. They found this highly unusual. My house was now an island completely separate from the rest of the internet world. Maybe a squirrel chewed through the cable, maybe some lawn people came by with hedge trimmers and severed the cable (which happened to me at a previous location across town).I scheduled a technician to arrive that afternoon between 4:00pm and 6:00pm.I called again (at 1:30pm) to verify my appointment at 4:00pm.I left work at 5:00pm and called again at 5:15pm to see if the technician had arrived. Another problem -- I no longer had an appointment for 4-6pm today. My appointment had been mysteriously moved to Sept 14 -- A WEEK LATER. Nobody left any reason why it was changed.Thanks to my proximity to the pole, and my 200mm lens, I think I can help you diagnose the problem:
That loose cable is my internet connection dangling in the breeze, shooting internet packets out into the ether while my modem tries in vain to ping some device which will never answer.Is this such a complex solution that it takes you a week to figure it out? Are your techs so swamped that everybody in town is having to wait a week for new service?You know what? If you could send someone up that pole and plug that cable back in, and not have to make me wait an entire week for you to do it, I won't have to tell the whole world how you made me wait an entire week for you to plug a simple cable back in.Thank you,- Paying Customer.
UPDATE: Monday September 10 - Resolved!Around 9:30 this morning, I received an automated phone call that I had an appointment for between 1-5:00pm. I called to verify, and even asked in-person at the local office. Sure enough 1-5:00pm, it is.I head home for lunch at around noon, and lo and behold:
Somebody fixed it before the appointment time -- AND plugged me into a different port, just to make sure. Well, thank you mystery person!