More Rants

Like I've said, I'm not the only one upset with Cablevision. Here are a couple of other rants (post your own in the comments)... http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/brief-cablevision-rant.html, http://www.thymewise.net/blog/allislost/000989.html

More People, Same Problem

I'm at lunch today. I have a GoTo Meeting that I can't attend because of my cable problems. I'm in a horrible mood and it shows. The waiter inquires as to my troubles. Cable I tell him, it's killing me. He seems excited in response. He has found someone to comiserate with. He too is having problems, his Internet keeps dropping, pages stop loading in midstream. I welcome him to the club and resolve to start a blog. I am not alone, but I am convinced that alone I can't get anyone to fix or even acknowledge the real problem. I am an ant in a massive bureaucratic support system maze that deliberately has no exits. The only way out is for thousands of ants to break down the walls. This is a horrible metaphor but what the heck - I'm exasperated - publishing this blog has been a perilous adventure. Sometimes the posts go through, other times I'm stuck in packet-losing limbo. Share your stories, please. Join the cause, call Cablevision, post a comment here, spread the word, maybe a Dolan will notice.

Yesterday, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away...

Up until yesterday, I was convinced we were making progess...we had at least gotten Optimum to admit that it was not an internal problem. In the realm of cable support, that's a big deal. The perils of false hope were revealed late yesterday morning. We discover a note on the door from a Cablevision senior technical support person. They were at the house at 10:10 AM and checked the pole. It's definitely not an external problem but an internal issue reads the note. The guy also writes that he tried to come in the house but no one was home. It is all rather astonishing. At 10:10 AM, and actually all morning I was home and awake - and I wasn't alone, my mom and sister were around too. The duplicity really doesn't bother me too much. I've come to expect that. I'm more upset about the diagnosis - it can't be internal, that's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but if it's not external, it must be some Poltergeist like ghost in the machine that it causing issues for not just me but for a whole host of Cablevision customers. I'm distraught and wishing it were easier for me to get DSL in my neighborhood.

Out Goes TV

Saturday morning (day of the appointment)- bit jet lagged from my West Coast trip and I sleep late. My dad greets the cable guy at around 8:30 AM. The cable guy pokes around the house, turns on a few TVs - they work fine. He's mystified. TV works, modem doesn't....strange must be the switch he concludes. So repeating the same exercise I had done two weeks prior he heads the basement and plugs the modem into the main line. His results are no different than mine - packet loss persists. Unplugs the modem, re-hooks up the line, and writes up his report...we weren't lying it must not be the house, probably the box outside the house. He says he'll prioritize our problem and that a senior technical support person will come to look outside in the next few days. He leaves. We go to eat breakfast and watch some SportsCenter, TV is out. We had one problem, technical support comes, now we have two. At least they're trying. We rush to call cable. It's early on a Saturday, the volume of complaints must be light, we get a representative rather quickly who promises to send the closest team. The same guy who came to check the modem returns. He's in a pissy mood, was from the get-go but it's exacerabated now. He goes downstairs to the mainline. My dad follows. He clearly observes the guy switch the lines - that is he accidentally plugged the TV line into the cable port and vice versa. Walks upstairs and checks the TVs, it's working again. We ask him what the problem was, "the wire was loose," he replies. As he is walking out my dad tells the guy that it would've just been better to admit the simple and honest mistake of switching the wires rather than lying about it, but my dad doesn't push the matter - we need this man to file a report prioritizing our problem and any further questioning may jeopardize that. Later we call cable back to confirm that our problem was prioritized. It was and a senior support person will be out to the check the outside pole/box in a few days - support finally admits, it's not an internal problem - it's been 5 weeks since the problem started, 3 1/2 weeks since we started complaining - but at least we've made some progess - Cablevision doesn't think it's our fault.

We're Not Alone

My cousins live across the street and we use them to confirm our technical issues. If we're down and their up, it's almost always our fault. We call over there. "Have you had any cable modem problems?" we ask. "Yeah, it's awful, always dropping," they reply. "Have you complained?" "Nah, not worth the time and effort." I'm furious, I admire their wisdom but fault them as unwitting accomplices. If their having problems too, that means that at the very least the node on our street is a cause for concern.

It's late August, my friends are leaving for college. I head over to a friend's house two towns away. He too is experiencing the same problem. He too has horror stories about support. Later that same week we have friends over from one town over in the opposite direction. More tales of woe. I relay all this information to Optimum technical support. They are astonished and skeptical. Not really any complaints about this (cause of people like my cousins). No broader network problems they insist.

New Modem Same Problem

After plugging in and wiring my new modem, I was hopeful. Customer support assured me that the old modem was almost certainly the focal point of my packet-loss problem. Immediately after plugging my new modem in, my Internet zipped along. Even my SlingBox was working well. I was ecstatic and I was premature. Later that night, the page-dropping, Internet dying affliction of packet-loss returned. Work is busy, don't have time to be on hold with cable till the end of the week, problem persists and eventually we get on the phone with tech support. This time it has to be my switch/splitter - not the home networking equipment but rather the splitter located in my basement that takes the main cable line and splits it - one branch for television, the other for the modem. I have a bit of technical savvy so I'm skeptical but I test out their theory by plugging my the modem directly into the main line...new wire, same problem. But technical support insists, it must be a problem on my end. My complaint is apparently unique and their is no broader network issues. Despite my protestations to the contrary, a technical support person must come to the house to evaluate the veracity of my claim that I've plugged the modem to the main line and it still isn't working. They can't send a support person out for another week and I'm heading to California during that time. We make an appointment for Saturday morning the day after I return.

The Beginning

When I first noticed this packet loss problem, I thought it was either my home network or my PC (we have multiple PCs in the house). We run both a Linksys wireline and wireless network through the house and I figured that a router was malfunctioning or that my computer was afflicted with some awful Spyware or virus. I was wrong on both counts. I discovered that it wasn't my computer after checking out some of the other machines in the house - all had the same problem. I then totally backtracked or "re-engineered" my home network to try and find trouble spots - none found. Just to make sure I hooked my modem directly into the PC next to it and a laptop - in both instances the problem persisted. I called Cablevision and after at least a half-hour on hold (from now on I keep records to the second of how long I am on hold) a technical support person did concur that I was having packet loss and concluded that the problem was most likely my modem. I had a black Terayon modem that was about a year and half old. All the status lights checked out but technical support thought that was the most likely culprit. I took a trip to the local Optimum store and got a new Terayon modem. No help!

History and Inspiration

I am a Cablevision Optimum Online customer on Long Island who just can't take it anymore. For the past month and half, my cable modem just hasn't worked right. The modem seems to just drop out randomly. Pages stop loading in midstream, AIM quits unexpectedly, etc. My probelm is essentially "packet loss" - data gets sent over the Internet in little packets and along the way from website to my computer these packets are getting "lost," meaning dropped, leading to problems loading sites and staying online. In the past six weeks, I've spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to fix this problem myself and work with the Optimum support teams to solve these issues. I've gotten nowhere. My story is both depressing and tragically comical. I've also learned that I am not alone. Despite Cablevision's unwillingness to admit any broader network problem, I've spoken to friends and associates all over Long Island who are having similar issues with their Optimum service. Inspired by Jeff Jarvis' documentation of his Dell suport woes - article here or visit BuzzMachine - I've decided to start this blog and share my experience with Cablevision. I hope this blog becomes a place where other stressed out Optimum customers can come to share their sob stories and laugh a little bit at the "customer service" provided by their local cable monopoly --- and maybe, just maybe if we get some traction somebody at Cablevision headquarters in Bethpage will take notice.