Having had problems with my communication service up on Townhill since I arrived here beginning May, today exactly two weeks ago, I have had several conversations or mild encounters with FairPoint and AT&T to try to resolve the issues.
First, of course, there was the required change of phone number. Lulu's old number could not be kept for legal and or administrative reasons. I never really pursued finding conclusive answers to this. But when I came into the house, there was a dial tone and upstairs the lights on the modem were blinking and I started to move in expecting that main communication lines to the world were all up and running.
Next day I set up the AT&T Microcell in order to get the cellphone signal up here and that's where the problems started. The Microcell did not boot up and I called AT&T and was advised - after their trouble shooting - that FairPoint had to 'open up ports 4500 and 500' before AT&T could do anything. The reply from FairPoint, when contacted, was that AT&T had to do something (send a signal to the Microcell) before FairPoint could do anything. And that's where this issue was left. The Microcell is disconnected and my cell phone reports either 'No Service' or shows five empty circles for anextremely weak signal, or one bullet, which is enough to report missed calls and voice mail messages, but not strong enough to listen to those messages nor to make calls.
In the meantime, the internet connection broke down and when I called FairPoint Tech Service they directed me through several tests and then guided me in reconfiguring the modem from my computer. I was glad to have my Mac here, because the machine had to be hard-wired into the modem to do this reconfiguring. This done, everything worked beautifully through the weekend, but on Monday morning I realized that the landline maintained by FairPoint was not working: no dilatone on my house phone. I drove to town where I can reach AT&T signal and made my calls and on the way I saw the FP line crew working on a pole and figured that there was my problem and they were about solve it. But night came and no dial tone and Tuesday started to dawn and there was still no dial tone. I called FP customer service and was redirected to Repair Service and they listened to my woes and promised to trace the problem and I would have service back not later than by 6:00PM. Just about 1-1/2 hours later, FP called me on my home phone and reported they had found the problem: a device in their central office had broken down and they had replaced it and I 'should be OK'. And I am, thank you. However, connected with this or not I do not know, Monday my internet service started to act up. It will simply shut down and while I first waited for it to reset itself as it has often done before, this time it stayed down until I reset it manually and then it stays up for a while and goes down again. Yesterday (Tuesday) I reset the thing three or four or five times. Last night it was on and this morning at about six it was down and I reset it, did my stuff on the web, went to other things, came back to the web and it was down. I reset it again and started a 'live chat' with Cynthia of the Internet Service at FP and after explaining all details of my many observations to her she recommended to call another number at FP to have this resolved. I got to talk to yet another expert and repeated basically everything I had explained to Cynthia and at last he wanted to know what the LEDs on the modem were doing and, that having been reported to him, he said 'so it is working right now? you need to call me back when it is not working. I cannot trace the problem while it is up and OK'.
Having this helpful injunction, I am sure this system will never go down again.
Unfortunately, this composition area of the Blogger offers no access to the emoticons we get lost everywhere else to save us words. If I could get to them now, I'd know of several faces that would aptly express my mood right now.
The story continues along that line until Friday the FairPoint truck came into my driveway and John O'Brian descended from the cab and offered to take care of the problem. He did! He explained after the job was done that the phone and internet signals had been coming in on the same line and he split them. How he did this I do not know. There are the same number of lines (one) coming into the house and the modem is linked to the same phone box as before. But what matters, all lights on the modem were doing their thing and there was a phone dial tone. He gave me his private cell phone number and told me to call him directly if anything happened. And the system staid up and was stabile all through yesterday, Tuesday.
Yesterday, Julie called. Julie is the customer service representative who had take 'my case' in hand ever since I got a hold of customer service way in the beginning of this story. She told me she had seen my bill and noticed that there was a charge for connecting a new service and she had caused to have that taken off and that now there were only the subscription charge and a few customary surcharges on that bill and "Is everything going alright with the systems?" I gushed my appreciation that John had taken care of it at last and that everything was up and staple and "thank you so much".
That was four o'clock yesterday afternoon. At five o'clock the internet was down. I tried resetting the modem and it did not work. I called customer service and got an Anthony or somebody who did not want to listen to my problems but had a long-distance service for me that I absolutely must have and when I declined he wanted to sell me a faster internet connection and I growled into the phone "why would I want to have a faster service if even the slow one does not work?" He eventually referred me to tech service and gave me a number different than the one I had and and the line was answered by a girl who sounded totally puzzled when I explained my problem to her: the number I had called belonged to a credit union . . .
I called the Tech Service number I had from my previous encounters and was told by a recording that all agents were busy and . . . you know the spiel. They play background music while they have you on wait. The only disk they have is from Moulin Rouge, the scene where the Can-Can girls moon the visitors with their bloomers still properly up. By the time this tale ends I have heard this tune probably a hundred times and I do not wish to hear it again! I was on the phone for half an hour and at last hung up and went down stairs for a midnight snack and then down for the night.
This morning, before starting to yell my frustration into the phone, I reset the modem. It worked! The system is up and running. I have my fingers crossed . . .
Some short time, it felt like minutes later, the network was down again and then up, and down, sometimes after a manual reset and sometimes all by itself and this frustrating routine continued until just now, some five weeks later than the start of this tale.
There were many calls to Tech Service and to Customer Support. Over these weeks, I must have talked to about every expert on the FairPoint payroll. Sometimes we exercised some voo-doo ceremonies on the keyboard and once my computer was linked to the desk of a technician who then performed his own exercises and released my computer with words of hope that all would be alright now. It never was and my ways of expressing myself took on a different tone as time went on.
Two days ago someone must have heard the tension in my voice and promised action. Two or three technicians were put to work today, Saturday 6/6/15 and, playing their own hunch, they tested my phone line foot by foot. They broke the connection down by route 100 and tested towards to house and down to the station in Jacksonville and in all found three places where the insulation around 'my wires' had deteriorated and allowed signals to be lost either by contact with the ground or into the lines of other subscribers. I sure do hope that the coding of my computer signals functioned so that my bank statements - to mention just one sensitive subject - did not flash legibly on unintended screens.
That work was completed around 1:00 PM today. The lead technician called to tell me his tale and expressed his hope that they had at last taken care of the problem. Some of the areas with poor or no insulation must have been in the wires hanging from the phone. The wind getting them to swing may have caused the intermittent loss of service and temporary reconnection of the line. Since the line men finished their work, there is calm in my network. I hope it stays that way.
The only problem pending is the cell phone signal. About that one - later.
First, of course, there was the required change of phone number. Lulu's old number could not be kept for legal and or administrative reasons. I never really pursued finding conclusive answers to this. But when I came into the house, there was a dial tone and upstairs the lights on the modem were blinking and I started to move in expecting that main communication lines to the world were all up and running.
Next day I set up the AT&T Microcell in order to get the cellphone signal up here and that's where the problems started. The Microcell did not boot up and I called AT&T and was advised - after their trouble shooting - that FairPoint had to 'open up ports 4500 and 500' before AT&T could do anything. The reply from FairPoint, when contacted, was that AT&T had to do something (send a signal to the Microcell) before FairPoint could do anything. And that's where this issue was left. The Microcell is disconnected and my cell phone reports either 'No Service' or shows five empty circles for anextremely weak signal, or one bullet, which is enough to report missed calls and voice mail messages, but not strong enough to listen to those messages nor to make calls.
In the meantime, the internet connection broke down and when I called FairPoint Tech Service they directed me through several tests and then guided me in reconfiguring the modem from my computer. I was glad to have my Mac here, because the machine had to be hard-wired into the modem to do this reconfiguring. This done, everything worked beautifully through the weekend, but on Monday morning I realized that the landline maintained by FairPoint was not working: no dilatone on my house phone. I drove to town where I can reach AT&T signal and made my calls and on the way I saw the FP line crew working on a pole and figured that there was my problem and they were about solve it. But night came and no dial tone and Tuesday started to dawn and there was still no dial tone. I called FP customer service and was redirected to Repair Service and they listened to my woes and promised to trace the problem and I would have service back not later than by 6:00PM. Just about 1-1/2 hours later, FP called me on my home phone and reported they had found the problem: a device in their central office had broken down and they had replaced it and I 'should be OK'. And I am, thank you. However, connected with this or not I do not know, Monday my internet service started to act up. It will simply shut down and while I first waited for it to reset itself as it has often done before, this time it stayed down until I reset it manually and then it stays up for a while and goes down again. Yesterday (Tuesday) I reset the thing three or four or five times. Last night it was on and this morning at about six it was down and I reset it, did my stuff on the web, went to other things, came back to the web and it was down. I reset it again and started a 'live chat' with Cynthia of the Internet Service at FP and after explaining all details of my many observations to her she recommended to call another number at FP to have this resolved. I got to talk to yet another expert and repeated basically everything I had explained to Cynthia and at last he wanted to know what the LEDs on the modem were doing and, that having been reported to him, he said 'so it is working right now? you need to call me back when it is not working. I cannot trace the problem while it is up and OK'.
Having this helpful injunction, I am sure this system will never go down again.
Unfortunately, this composition area of the Blogger offers no access to the emoticons we get lost everywhere else to save us words. If I could get to them now, I'd know of several faces that would aptly express my mood right now.
The story continues along that line until Friday the FairPoint truck came into my driveway and John O'Brian descended from the cab and offered to take care of the problem. He did! He explained after the job was done that the phone and internet signals had been coming in on the same line and he split them. How he did this I do not know. There are the same number of lines (one) coming into the house and the modem is linked to the same phone box as before. But what matters, all lights on the modem were doing their thing and there was a phone dial tone. He gave me his private cell phone number and told me to call him directly if anything happened. And the system staid up and was stabile all through yesterday, Tuesday.
Yesterday, Julie called. Julie is the customer service representative who had take 'my case' in hand ever since I got a hold of customer service way in the beginning of this story. She told me she had seen my bill and noticed that there was a charge for connecting a new service and she had caused to have that taken off and that now there were only the subscription charge and a few customary surcharges on that bill and "Is everything going alright with the systems?" I gushed my appreciation that John had taken care of it at last and that everything was up and staple and "thank you so much".
That was four o'clock yesterday afternoon. At five o'clock the internet was down. I tried resetting the modem and it did not work. I called customer service and got an Anthony or somebody who did not want to listen to my problems but had a long-distance service for me that I absolutely must have and when I declined he wanted to sell me a faster internet connection and I growled into the phone "why would I want to have a faster service if even the slow one does not work?" He eventually referred me to tech service and gave me a number different than the one I had and and the line was answered by a girl who sounded totally puzzled when I explained my problem to her: the number I had called belonged to a credit union . . .
I called the Tech Service number I had from my previous encounters and was told by a recording that all agents were busy and . . . you know the spiel. They play background music while they have you on wait. The only disk they have is from Moulin Rouge, the scene where the Can-Can girls moon the visitors with their bloomers still properly up. By the time this tale ends I have heard this tune probably a hundred times and I do not wish to hear it again! I was on the phone for half an hour and at last hung up and went down stairs for a midnight snack and then down for the night.
This morning, before starting to yell my frustration into the phone, I reset the modem. It worked! The system is up and running. I have my fingers crossed . . .
Some short time, it felt like minutes later, the network was down again and then up, and down, sometimes after a manual reset and sometimes all by itself and this frustrating routine continued until just now, some five weeks later than the start of this tale.
There were many calls to Tech Service and to Customer Support. Over these weeks, I must have talked to about every expert on the FairPoint payroll. Sometimes we exercised some voo-doo ceremonies on the keyboard and once my computer was linked to the desk of a technician who then performed his own exercises and released my computer with words of hope that all would be alright now. It never was and my ways of expressing myself took on a different tone as time went on.
Two days ago someone must have heard the tension in my voice and promised action. Two or three technicians were put to work today, Saturday 6/6/15 and, playing their own hunch, they tested my phone line foot by foot. They broke the connection down by route 100 and tested towards to house and down to the station in Jacksonville and in all found three places where the insulation around 'my wires' had deteriorated and allowed signals to be lost either by contact with the ground or into the lines of other subscribers. I sure do hope that the coding of my computer signals functioned so that my bank statements - to mention just one sensitive subject - did not flash legibly on unintended screens.
That work was completed around 1:00 PM today. The lead technician called to tell me his tale and expressed his hope that they had at last taken care of the problem. Some of the areas with poor or no insulation must have been in the wires hanging from the phone. The wind getting them to swing may have caused the intermittent loss of service and temporary reconnection of the line. Since the line men finished their work, there is calm in my network. I hope it stays that way.
The only problem pending is the cell phone signal. About that one - later.
Wow! It made my blood pressure rise just reading of that experience. I have had similar run-ins concerning our home telephone line. In the end, there were countless hours wasted explaining and re-explaining to numerous people, always knowing in the back of your mind that this new person will re-try all the old things that have already been tried before finally offering (you hope!) some new idea that might work. Ugh! Here's hoping you truly are up and running this time!
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