I’m finally back on the Internet at home! That’s cause for celebration isn’t it? I think so! My goodness that was one long affair. As it turns out, I ended up switching to Time Warner Road Runner Cable Modem service after all. Yes.. I was using DSL up until now. What happened you might ask?

Well as you might have read in my previous posting a few weeks back, I had a nightmare of an installation process with Speakeasy, Covad, and Verizon. Things just kept getting worse I tell you. After days of calling Speakeasy and having them call up Covad and Verizon, Verizon finally admitted that they made a mistake. All I wanted was a shared DSL account (which means I’d have voice + data on the same line), yet for some odd reason, Verizon here in California decided to install a dedicated line to my home. That’s where the problems really began. Verizon blamed Covad. Covad blamed Verizon and no one would simply go back to the CO and rectify things. So here I was waiting every single day for the trouble ticket to get updated by 5pm. Of course by the time I saw the update at 5pm, there wasn’t much I could do since both Covad and Verizon would be off of work. Great. I can’t recall how many trouble tickets were issued by Covad over the course of four weeks but there were plenty!

The last straw was probably two Fridays ago. I had called Speakeasy and they promised me that Covad and Verizon would take care of things by the following Monday. Well Monday came around and nada. I called up Speakeasy and they called Covad and Covad basically said the same thing again – that Verizon had already installed a dedicated line and that it needed to be removed and a shared line needed to be installed. Uhhh.. YEAH!! That’s what I’ve been complaining about all these days!!

So I then wrote a somewhat angry update note on my trouble ticket with Speakeasy basically saying “can’t someone simply call up Verizon and/or Covad management and escalate this to management?” If not.. I was going to bolt. Sorry. I like Speakeasy but after this one month wait.. I was simply sick of it all.

So Tuesday comes around and Covad updates the ticket and says will schedule a new FOB date with Verizon. WTH! Doesn’t someone at Speakeasy or Covad know that they’ve got a royally pissed off customer on their hands? Apparently not! So finally, on Wed morning.. I called up Speakeasy and asked the lady I was talking to if they could escalate this install since I had been waiting for so long. Her short answer was – “I’m sorry – we’re waiting for a date from Verizon. Once we get the date, then we can escalate it to a closer date.”

I asked the fateful question - “This basically means it won’t get done today will it?”

She answered “No.”

Well that’s it. I’m canceling the install! I had threatened this course of action so I had to follow through with it.

Thus, on Wednesday, I canceled Speakeasy and then called up Time Warner Cable since they service my home cable service. I’ll be honest – I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of installing cable modem service in my home. Truth is – I like the 6 mbps DEDICATED service I was getting from Speakeasy.. but how much of that service was I actually using? Probably not enough of it to fully make use of the money I was paying to Speakeasy.

I ordered on Wednesday afternoon, and Time Warner was out to my home by Thursday morning at 9am. I had Internet service by 12pm that day and I’ve been moving right along ever since. I can’t say that I get the fastest throughputs here at home.. but darn it.. at least I have some resemblance of high speed Internet now.

Oh yes.. Best Buy ended up purchasing Speakeasy on Wednesday. I’m not sure I wanted to be a customer of Best Buy anyhow.

Do you have any DSL installation nightmare stories? I’d love to hear them!

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