Death By a 1000 (DSL) Cuts In San Francisco

I was all set to write all sorts of really great articles for my new site. But EarthLink had other plans. So rather than write about the upcoming big debate tonight between Steve Westly and Phil Angelides, or about any one of the many articles I’ve written, I’m instead devoting today’s missive to telling the world that Earthlink sucks.
There are other colorful metaphors I could use, but why get wordy?
For almost three weeks now I’ve had no Internet service at home. And, as I’m now working two jobs, one an all day on site consulting gig, and keeping up with my other clients after hours, this has been more than an annoyance. It’s costing me real money, in the form of lost income because I can’t make the deadlines I normally can when I work at night.
Even more infuriating has been the true incompetence of Earthlink customer service, primarily based in Outer Godknowswhereistan, who can barely keep up with a conversation in English, much less talk or do anything about the actual problem. And of course, they don’t wanna give you your money back for screwing up. But they do know about looking at modem lights!
It seems I’m not the only one with this mysterious outage, and I’ve been trolling Google and finding plenty of horror stories. What amazes me is that these morons are now going to be in charge of San Francisco’s WiFi experiment with Google. Talk about doing the “crane” of stupidity.
Yes, I know there are “alternatives.” All of which are not much better, since the companies are all so big, they don’t give a tinker’s cuss about any one customer, or providing any reliable service. They don’t have to. One person quitting and going to Yet Another Crappy Telco means nothing to them, or the competition, and they know it.
Whatever. I’m sure today when the Genius from SBC/ATT/Earthlink/Comcast/Whatever.com will do something. I certainly hope so. At this point I don’t really have much “consumer choice” no matter what happens.
Will someone please explain how large, bureaucratic, slow, and incompetent organizations such as these are better than their ilk in a socialist system? Or at least how they differ? Or how I as the customer benefit from dealing with these morons?
Thanks!
UPDATE:The incompetence of these people is stunning. The SBC guy came out and verified that nothing was wrong with the acutal phone lines (Earthlink sent him out here, not at my request) so it’s clearly an Earthlink issue, not a user issue.
But they insist on calling me back with more BS about “modem lights” and of course most of the time it’s someone on another continent who has no idea what they’re doing. And of course, half the time they mysteriously drop the call as I’m being transferred from Godknowswhereistan to the US reps (who really aren’t any brighter, but at least I can understand what they’re saying).
I’m doing what I should have done when I moved in, and am getting Comcast’s internet service. Sure it’s a monopoly here in town, and sure, they’re not that much better, but at least it works. Almost 4 weeks and they still can’t get it up and running. They sure do have a lot of excuses though. I wish I had a job where I could offer up BS and excuses and still get paid!
You’d think their slow, 384/128 DSL with cheap-ass modem would be easy to maintain, but I guess not. And these geniuses are supposedly going to run the City’s Free WiFi? Why even bother? We should go straight to the rock throwing and effigy burning now, and save us all the wait. Besides, the flagmakers can make up some “earthlink” flags we can burn
Next time someone asks me to take a “stress test” downtown I’m telling them I don’t need a “test.” Earthlink ensures I’m stressed!

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