DSL & Verizon

If you wanted to know, my Lamb Biryani showed up about 1 hr and 15 mins after I ordered it. Which I guess wasn't too bad from the www.orderit.ca folks. However the lamb itself was a little chewy, perhaps India Hut was not the best place for biryani.

Anyway, its been a couple of days since my last post. Mainly due to the fact that I was in Canada for a couple days and super busy with work. But before I left on my trip my DSL connection went out and I am still without DSL at home. My DSL modem(s) loose sync after a few minutes.

To fix the situation, Trini-wife called Verizon to get the process started. and it is a process let me tell you. First she spent a couple minutes going thru the automated prompts 'Windows', 'Agent' and 'Connection Problem' like she was talking to an ESL speaker. Finally she got thru to 'Kati' who sounded very much like 'Khyati'. Not that we have anything against out sourcing of the tech support. We just wish the tech support in India was better than in the US. Kati had my wife go thru all the power off modem, computer, recable, reboot, configure IE, recheck cables, before concluding that the problem MUST be that we had Opera and IE installed on the same computer. Never mind they've been working together just fine for the last 2 years. Thanks for calling Verizon.

So I called last night and got thru to 'Matt' who I think was really a Matt. Anyway I explained the situation to him and he had me try some cabling to a different jack and finally ran a diagnostic on his end that showed the DSL link was losing sync. He said that a Verizon guy would be by the next day to take a look at the phone lines in my area and setup a time to visit our home. He did come around noon, took a look at things poked around, thought a wet connection was to blame, rewired it and reset the phone line. The main office would then turn on our phone again later in the day and he would call back. Both Matt and Dave the local Verizon guy had great customer relationship skills AND more importantly sounded like they'd seen this before.

Well Dave never called back, our phone line came back on, but the DSL sync is still out of sync. Called Verizon again and got Sushil, who sounded like a Sushil and was able to determine that the Verizon guy will be back out to see me tonight. 2 hours after talking to Sushil, we get an automated call that says our DSL line was looked at and the problem was resolved. A hopeful check of the DSL light shows that was wishful thinking on Verizon's part.

So here we are without a fast Internet connection (I'm using dial-up.... they still have that). Its amazing how much you take for granted a fast internet connection, the minute its gone you feel cut off and unable to interact with the rest of the world. I'm used to this on vacation, just not when I'm trying to send a document to my boss thats due today. Such are life's little frustrations.