General Music Chat

Hey, it's RANT TIME ! yay!

Part of it is simple stupidity, and the rest is apathy. apparently when you put them together, you get something that is so mentally defying, so amazingly frustrating, and so laughably pathetic, that I feel we need a new word just for this.. I dunno what to call it. Words seem to do it no justice.

All I can provide is examples.. of the dumbfuckedness that I deal with.

I'm an IT guy. We have a company on VOIP phone systems, as well as rely on internet for sales and emails, marketing, etc.

So we need a good fast connection. Well, Comcast, since you are the only real player in the monopoly, I guess we will use you. And everything was fine. At least for a while.

Lightning strikes.

Actually it really did. Somewhere out on the pole/line, last summer we got hit with a surge that fried my APC, the cable modem, a few IP phones, and the VOIP controller (next in line after the cablemodem). We had it all replaced, but the connection was never quite the same. It used to be solid, steady. Now it's semi-broken, we can have a minute or 5 of solid 100mbps down and 20mbps up. Then ping times will climb up to 300, 600, 800, connection timeout, then bang .. 800, 600, 300, back to normal. We see probably 1 in 25 packets either crushed by latency or dropped all together.

Well.. if the other 24 packets are blasting through at 8ms .. then your average is 96% perfect.

The problem is that other 4% happens enough that it affects well over 75% of all our calls. They get either choppy or just drop. Sometimes you dial a number and nothing ever happens.

I've had them out here no less than EIGHT times since last summer. They plug their little diagnostic tool into the cable and it passes the quality test every time. Simply because it uses the law of averages. So every time I call them to complain it goes like this:

*Call in, talk to tech support.
*Rep looks at modem, sees packet loss, agrees to schedule tech to come onsite to diagnose
*Tech comes onsite, hooks up tri-corder, gets a pass, and says there's nothing he can do.
*Show tech persistent ping with pack loss
*tech agrees it's not right, but their system only allows him to escalate it when it fails the tricorder readings- it would give him an escalation key code.
* tech says I have to talk to his supervisor, gives me name and numver
* call, get voicemail, leave message, and then never ever hear back
* goto 10 (tech humor!)

So there's an obvious problem, but everyone is programmed to just follow the stupid tricorder. Can nobody think for themselves and do anything?

Same with my electric bill. My meter is broken, records 6000Kwh monthly usage when I know I only use 1000-1200. Call them, they send out tech, who hooks diagnostic tool up, tool shows meter working properly. Tech even agrees that it's not possible to use 5-7KWh per month in a dwelling as small as mine with the appliances I have, yet falls into a stupor at the paradox that I'm being billed. Tech still swears that the meter can't be wrong. Of course they outright refuse to replace a meter that they deem "functioning properly"..

There's 1000 other examples, but the point is that people are beyond stupid. beyond hope, their stupidity is enciting fear and panic.. they are retarded terrorists, in a way.

Troubleshooting and process of elimination are nearly lost arts. I had a similar issue with cable modem. Too hot of a signal caused connection dropouts daily. After 5 service calls they finally just added 50' of extra cable and problem solved.

Your electric meter is probably right and you have a bigger problem. Failed wiring insulation and voltage leaking to ground or someone is tapping your electric service without your knowledge. This is a serious problem that needs to be fixed by the property owner, not Edison. It's potentially a "burn your house down with you in it" problem.

had it checked out- even the heater and HW heater, AC unit, appliances, and inspected the neighbors unit to make sure they aint leeching.. cant find any culprit, the meter is sometimes hot to the touch, something they claim isn't possible, and of course it wasn't the day they came out...

My contention is that even when a problem is obvious, like the cablemodem, they are ruled by a screen and common sense is out the window.

Trouble shooting isn't really a lost art ~ the problem is that qualified trouble shooters are $$ - so the really qualified are higher up in the escalation chain. They create an X-Step manual for the lesser $ employees to go through before escalation in order to save costs.

I'm still not sold on VOIP for call-center focused companies - hardwire is easier to fix and diagnose - it's either on-or-off. there's no packet-loss/lag issues to diagnose between endpoints, and there are fewer nodes in-between.

Bummer deal. Ever have a 6 hour conversation with M$ Tech Support? Now there's a joy!

That's happenning everywhere. My take on it is that these comapnies over sell / over book their services, and their primary goal is to reap extraordinary profits such as exec bonuses, and such. The art of troubleshooting is not so difficult. Expecting the trouble shooting to be performed for next to nothing compensation, is...

Comcast, Time warner...whoever... They are all hogs and their QOS is sub par.

I get it all the time. I call quickbooks tech support, get habib from india, who claims his name is "george".. yah right. He's reading off a script. I explain the problem, I hear him typing in keywords. He then tells me he has the solution, and proceeds to spit out a solution that has absolutely zero to do with my issue. Great. Wouldn't be so sad if we didn't pay so much for our annual support and maintenance fees.

Seems like it just keeps getting worse and worse as each year passes.

Kramer,I didn't quite understand the jargon you used in the IT explanation,cause I don't understand it.I do however kinda understand your meter malfunctioning not in a technical way but in the way your frustrated.You are right there is no common sense used here.If the meters hot and the usage is high out if the norm,then by golly there is something wrong.Isn't there some kinda appeal board that you can report to.How appealing the bill.Well good luck buddy,I hope it all works out for you.

Kramer

A lady that was working for me was getting a huge power bill every month and had a small place - much smaller than mine yet my bill was significantly cheaper. She'd done the things you've done to get it sorted out.

I went straight to the Public Utilities Commission (GA - might be called something else where you are) and they lit a hot fire under the power company. All was made good and the power company guy called me and said I could call him personally if she had any more problems.

Yeah...so why hadn't he helped her in the first play eh?

Talbot

Hey Kramer I don’t know exactly which end of the IT stuff you are doing, so I may be stating the obvious. My apologies if that’s the case.

It’s just a thought, but since a few pieces of gear were replaced I would check the patch cables and runs. The reason I would go after the cables is that of course the components are obvious, but there are many reasons why a tech will skip replacing the cords. Just saying it would be real tempting to use the already terminated CAT 5 cable that came with some router which is about 12 times as noisy, rather then replace original CAT 6, or CAT 5e cable.

Silence suppression or voice activated detection can lower the bandwidth requirement by almost 50% and of course compression would further help with bandwidth issues. The problem could be options selected on the equipment during the initial installation before the strike and not selected after it’s replacement. You would definitely notice a difference in performance if that’s the case, although the voice quality difference could go unnoticed.

As I said this could all have been done and obvious, but it’s an off chance for it to eliminate a bit of everyday frustration for yourself. I hope you find a solution.

Hey Kramer I don’t know exactly which end of the IT stuff you are doing, so I may be stating the obvious. My apologies if that’s the case.

It’s just a thought, but since a few pieces of gear were replaced I would check the patch cables and runs. The reason I would go after the cables is that of course the components are obvious, but there are many reasons why a tech will skip replacing the cords. Just saying it would be real tempting to use the already terminated CAT 5 cable that came with some router which is about 12 times as noisy, rather then replace original CAT 6, or CAT 5e cable.

Silence suppression or voice activated detection can lower the bandwidth requirement by almost 50% and of course compression would further help with bandwidth issues. The problem could be options selected on the equipment during the initial installation before the strike and not selected after it’s replacement. You would definitely notice a difference in performance if that’s the case, although the voice quality difference could go unnoticed.

As I said this could all have been done and obvious, but it’s an off chance for it to eliminate a bit of everyday frustration for yourself. I hope you find a solution.

Its getting to the point now, where we need a degree, just to subscribe to those services..

If people are asked a question which is "off script"...they get confused...don't know what to do...and so...revert back to the script.

There is no common sense...only common scripts!

Hey Kramer I don’t know exactly which end of the IT stuff you are doing, so I may be stating the obvious. My apologies if that’s the case.

It’s just a thought, but since a few pieces of gear were replaced I would check the patch cables and runs. The reason I would go after the cables is that of course the components are obvious, but there are many reasons why a tech will skip replacing the cords. Just saying it would be real tempting to use the already terminated CAT 5 cable that came with some router which is about 12 times as noisy, rather then replace original CAT 6, or CAT 5e cable.

Silence suppression or voice activated detection can lower the bandwidth requirement by almost 50% and of course compression would further help with bandwidth issues. The problem could be options selected on the equipment during the initial installation before the strike and not selected after it’s replacement. You would definitely notice a difference in performance if that’s the case, although the voice quality difference could go unnoticed.

As I said this could all have been done and obvious, but it’s an off chance for it to eliminate a bit of everyday frustration for yourself. I hope you find a solution.

with the cablemodem, I unhooked the whole netowrk and put a laptop straight into the modem - problem still exists, so all the netwroking stuff becomes moot. I spent half of yesterday on the phone asking for managers and it all ended with them scheduling another tech to come out today.. the circle continues

If people are asked a question which is "off script"...they get confused...don't know what to do...and so...revert back to the script.

There is no common sense...only common scripts!

Even the scripts are BS ... I have grown to hate the IT world...

...Very good Kramer. I believe that many of us have felt your pain, agony, frustration and disbelief many times ... and it is getting worse and worse. What you describe this nontroubleshooting process can be applied and is to many other areas of our lives. Medical, mechanical, mail, transport, etc. etc. and it is a very scary thing and your statements are very apt on the overall and general level.

Degeneration ...

generation by generation

Disbelief translates into no belief

Trouble shooting evolves into "Trouble" and "shooting" or tazing

Script turns into denial

They all are only "following orders"