Pages

You can now find me writing here...

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Where are the Luddites? Sign me up.

For something like six weeks, our cable company has been informing us that our modem is on the list of those that will no longer be supported. I checked out their claim the very first time my internet was shut down (we get the internet and phone through our cable modem, but not cable...) Anyway, according to their chart, my modem would continue to work, it just wasn't one they would continue to support. As long as I didn't try to stop my service and start again, I should have been fine.

The troublesome part about their method of alerting us to this matter is that they would shut down access to the internet... which also meant our phone would go out until we'd rebooted the modem. Not a big deal unless you weren't near the modem and needed to call home to leave a message or something. Twice it happened while I was on vacation, so hubby's calls were being forwarded to my cell phone on the other side of Kansas. It was annoying to say the least.

The day came and went that the cable company upgrades were supposed to be complete. I figured we were out of the woods. Then, today, I jumped on the computer and was once again greeted with a warning that my cable modem would no longer work -- effective tomorrow. I went to their website and what do you know, the status of my modem had been changed. Not only would I be unable to start service with this modem, I would not be able to have service at all. So off to the office supply store I went in search of a "preferred" cable modem that my cable company would be happy with.

Brought it home. Installed it. Tested the internet and my phone. Everything was working well.

Two hours later hubby tried to get online and he was greeted with a message saying our modem was not going to be supported as of tomorrow. We rebooted, and rebooted again. After a long and frustrating call with the cable provider help line (our cell phone only gets reception if we stand out on the porch) we decided that the problem lies in our wireless router. This router, which is where our phone is hooked up, is apparently NOT compatible with our new cable modem.

Of course, this took about three solid hours of various customer "help" lines to determine. I'm still not entirely convinced. Perhaps it's just an evil ploy by our cable company to get us to try out their phone service rather than the digital service we currently subscribe to.

Grrr....

I'll let you know when it is safe to call again. For now, please leave a message and we'll check our voicemail via the computer.... maybe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grrrr! Is right! What a hassle! Imagine what an all-day service call would cost for a "professional" to come to the house! It drives me crazy that our time isn't considered valuable to these companies. Good luck!

LoryKC said...

The more technology "advances," the less convinced I am that it actually helps us!
Good luck!
(We have everything through the cable company for the first time here, too--works great most of the time. However, I forgot that when we have an electrical storm and the cable goes out--that we'd lose phone svc, too!)