ISP - Inbred, Stupid People (Part 1)

The Internet: a wondrous place for children and grown-ups alike (not necessarily in the same chat room); a place where information flows freely and unrestricted; a place where everything you read is true; a perfect technology uniting all of the cultures of the world... When it works.

As we all know, there are many ways to access the Internet. Some are slow or crappy like dial-up or AOL. On the other hand, some are fast and amazing like cable or DSL. Cable and DSL boast speeds of up to 40 times those of dial-up while only two or three times the price. Amazing, no? Well, we don't have a phone line so cable it was.

In The City, you have two choices for cable Internet access; Comcast or RCN. RCN was kind enough to offer their Internet access bundled with cable television so we decided to go with them.

Problem #1: The install technician didn't really speak English. While this was tolerable, it was a bit of an annoyance. He installed the cable for us, hooked up the cable box and cable modem and got us up and running in no more than an hour. Not too shabby.

All went well for a couple of weeks until RCN was doing some upgrades in the area. Unfortunately, these "upgrades" took out Internet access for most of the neighborhood for a couple of days. So begins problem #2.

After countless calls to their service center, we finally figured out that the upgrades were complete and we should be back online. Well we weren't. Turns out, people in Pennsylvania don't really know what's going on in The City. So they scheduled a technician to come take a look at our problem.

A different tech came out a couple of days later and replaced our cable modem. Since he spoke English, I decided to strike up a conversation. Apparently, he hates his job with a passion. His advice: Don't ever work for RCN. The new modem seemed to work so he took off. Lo and behold, the minute he got out of the building, the cable modem reset itself. It continued to do so for days. After several hours on the phone with those fine Pennsylvania folks, they decided to send out another technician to adjust the signal strength to our apartment. They scheduled and appointment and that was that.

Long story short, the tech never showed up. In fact, he called me at almost 6:00pm (his appointment was from 2-5pm) apologizing for not making his appointment.

Several days later, our internet service seemed to be stable so we assumed the technician had come to the building and adjusted the signal strength at the main cable box for the building.

See Part 2 - The bill.