The Importance of Reliability
This may come across as a bit of a rant and I can’t say it isn’t. Over the last few weeks I have been having a horrible time with our internet connection. It got me thinking about how important it is to have a reliable service. In order to protect myself from the companies involved no specific names are being used. The last thing I need is to get sued.
So here is the story…
Just over a year ago I switched our internet service from cable to DSL in order to save some money each month. The DSL provider had a great deal for the first couple of months and then it would go up from there. This is typical of both DSL and Cable providers. I knew this going in and wasn’t all that concerned about it. Even at the full cost, the DSL was still going to be cheaper than the Cable by about 15-20 bucks a month. That’s considerable when you look at the long term savings. It seemed a smart move at the time.
The first 10 months of DSL went by fairly smoothly. We only had a few minor issues with the modem needing to be restarted because of bad storms. This was a minor annoyance. I could deal with that. I even learned after the first tech call how to do everything myself and it only took a few minutes so it wasn’t a big deal.
It went down hill after that. The resetting became more and more frequent. I found I was doing it at least once a week, instead of once a month when we had storms. Again, this was nothing more than an annoyance. I think the reason for that was because as soon as I reset it, it went back to being up and stayed up. Then it got worse. About 6 weeks ago, we started having no internet for 15-20 minutes at a time, even after resetting the modem. Then it started dropping more frequently and for longer periods of time. This is when the frustration started.
I called tech support and they ran a test on the line. They found nothing wrong with it. It went back to working for a few days and then started dropping the connection again. So I called again. They tested the line and found nothing wrong with it again. The odd thing is every time I called the connection would be fine for a period of time and then go back to not working. Was it something the techs were doing? Sure seemed that way. After a week or so of calling everyday, I finally ended up calling the phone service provider (same company) because our phone started humming. They found a problem. They told us the line was crossed and that was the cause of both the internet and phone issues. They sent someone out the next day and they fixed the issue on the pole outside the house. Everything seemed to be back to normal or so we thought. About two days later the same issues started to happen. I called tech support several times and they never seemed to have any resolution for us. Finally one of the techs tested the line and told us the modem was working too hard. What the heck does that mean?! At that point it was decided it had to be our modem. This is where it gets even more frustrating.
Now that it’s been determined it’s the modem, they try to convince me to order a new one from them because our existing one was past warranty. Um..NO! I was very skeptical of it being the modem because it would work horrible during the day but then an hour or so after getting home the service would be great. At that point we were putting more stress on the modem because two of us were using the net. So I had and still have a hard time believing it’s the modem. After several weeks of wanting to take a hammer to the modem, I finally decided I had enough.
I called the DSL provider and told them I was leaving them to go back to Cable. I was given a credit for the month of service they had notes on. I should have gotten more than that back but I just wanted out at that point. The year service contract was over and therefore there was no penalty to terminate the service. Not that I would have paid to do so either way. So I set up to have Cable brought back in and DSL disconnected. I was fed up!
The part that really bothered me was the fact that I had tried to upload a quote to our business site for a client and it took me 2 hours to finally get it there. 2 hours for a 100k jpg!! I shouldn’t spend that kind of time just trying to upload something so the client could see it. I even had to fight with the connection just to get an email off to the client. The whole thing was ridiculous. This was no way to conduct business. Clients aren’t going to wait just because we have connection issues. It’s not their problem.
The moral of this story…
CHEAPER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER! This is especially true when it comes to being able to service your clients. You are expected to provide your services in a timely manner and if you are having issues due to a bad internet connection; you have a problem. Reliability is important and that’s why I am switching us back to Cable. Our clients shouldn’t have to deal with it and neither should we.
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