FastAccess Isn't Either One
This weekend my DSL account started having problems holding a connection. It isn't that uncommon for the connection to drop once a week or so, but it was dropping every 15 minutes. I was watching a movie online from Netflix which was grainy anyway because I have the slowest speed of DSL, but then it would just freeze. Sometimes the connection would come back on its own and sometimes I would go and unplug the modem so it would restart (the modem would re-initiate on its own, so really it was the same process either way).
I hoped it would go way, but it didn't so when it was causing me problems tonight I called tech support (888-321-2375) and got a computerized solution system that detected I had a connection problem. It walked me through a series of steps and at the end asked me if I could see the internet page it had directed me to. I could at that particular minute in time, so it congratulated me on fixing the connection and hung up.
I called again and made up stuff so that I would get a real person. I hoped I didn't get anyone from Mumbai since they are probably all stressed out about this weekend's terrorist attacks. I think I got an American though.
Sure enough, they walked me through their standard steps and I had internet. I explained that it would go down in a few minutes. And he said that he wouldn't be able to tell anything as long as the connection was good. On cue, the connection went back down. He had me go in and make sure my password was correct, which was a waste of time. I said, isn't there a way to test the line? He said yes, but it would only show something if my connection was down. He wound up running the test while my modem lights were red instead of green and discovered some line interference (I figured it had to be the line or the modem). So he said he would contact line maintenance and asked me to hold. This phone call has now lasted one hour and fourteen minutes (shouldn't count against my Verizon minutes since it is toll free) and I haven't heard from the guy for the last 40 minutes, but he asked me to stay on the line. I really have other things to do so I think I'm going to have to hang up or at least go to the grocery store.
| Permalink
| 
Comments (3)
It has been raining. When I was having frequent problems, the tech guy asked if it seemed to be at times when in rained. It so happened it was. I traced it back to wet wires in a leaky phone box (POTS) outside. Rebuilt and resealed and problems went away. I also added a separate DSL splitter box outside doing away w/ needs for the mini filters. That improved performance because it eliminated reflection. Something like that.
Posted by Jeb | December 1, 2008 10:57 PM
Shouldn't be any problems with reflection since I plug directly into the POTS and the rest of the household telephone system is disconnected. I can check and see if it is wet in there. I've been on the internet now for about 30 minutes without a problem, so I'm hoping that they were able to fix it remotely. While I was at Publix (getting my 1-cent pizza; thanks Mom!) I lost the phone call where I was on hold. It had to be over 90 minutes.
Posted by UT | December 1, 2008 11:17 PM
Last night's phone call resulted in nothing. Today I was back to having problems and being unable to hold a connection for more than a few minutes. I called again to check the status of last night's call and to see if they were going to send someone out and when. Instead I got a different person who wanted to walk me through the same steps. I said I just needed to know what was going on. He still made me try some stuff, but eventually agreed to contact a line engineer. I was only on hold a few minutes at a time this time and pretty soon they said they had it fixed. They said there was some setting on my line that was supposed to give me faster speeds than DSL Lite, but it was causing interference instead. So by lowering the speed they were able to make the connection more reliable. So far it seems to work.
Posted by UT | December 2, 2008 9:10 PM