QWest, as the local telecommunications monopoly, has given me so much grief over such a long time, it is hard for me to remember a time when QWest didn't suck. But today, QWest actually delivered something I spent months begging them to deliver, but was refused. And it clearly shows that QWest sucks more than they ever sucked before.
If you have followed my blog in recent months, you know that I moved my office, and when I arrived at the new location, I discovered that QWest DSL was not available. It never even occurred to me to check availability before moving, since DSL is deployed throughout this entire city.. except in THIS neighborhood.
I did a lot of research, pushing my complaints up through middle levels of QWest management, and was consistently told that DSL would not be available, they COULD provide it, but would NOT provide it. Reports from QWest's DSL technicians indicated there was a new DSLAM installed a mere 8 blocks from my home, but QWest would not connect any users to it. The service was available, DSL techs were ready to install it, but management would not permit anyone to purchase the service and connect to the new DSLAM. The last manager I spoke to at QWest was almost psychotically rude, she took special pains to be as abusive as possible to me, despite my attempts to be as polite as possible (after all, I was begging them for service).
So today, this morning at 9AM, as I was just getting up and making coffee, a bit fuzzy after a late night of work, I get a phone call. Oh joy, it's a QWest telemarketer asking if they can look at my account and see if they can find any way to "serve me better." I bite my tongue to suppress the urge to blurt out all the DSL backstory, and tell the guy, "Look, I never use this land line, I use my cell phone for all my calling, I'm thinking of disconnecting it entirely. The only thing you could do for me is to hook me up with DSL." The guy says he'll check availability, I told him don't bother, I just spent 4 months trying to get DSL and QWest always told me no. He looks it up in his computer, surprise surprise, DSL is available in my location! I refused to believe it, so I went to my computer, looked it up on their website, yes it is available!
Now instead of being happy I can get DSL again, I am absolutely infuriated. It proved that QWest could have hooked me up 4 months ago, but they refused for no reason whatsoever. I'm probably going to move out of here within 2 or 3 months, so I will only be using this service for a short time, when I could have been using it all along.
Now that I am scheduled for DSL installation on December 5, I will be able to restore BlogTV service. I needed DSL with high upstream bandwidth and 2 static IPs, in order to deliver video from my QuickTime Streaming Server. This was impossible with my current cable modem connection. But it is not worth it to restore service if I'm just going to move in a couple of months and go through this all over again. It is time for me to move this blog and the QTSS server to a professional hosting service.
If there is one thing I learned doing years of customer service, the worst thing you can ever do is screw your customers in a way that makes your them look bad in front of THEIR customers. And that is exactly what QWest has done to me. They refused to deliver DSL when they could have, causing my archives of video stories to stop working. Years of my work were taken down, making me look bad. I recently noticed a couple of articles about video blogging cited my website, even after the video server went down. But when readers clicked on the links to my videos, they got nothing but an error message, I looked like an idiot, and the article writers looked like an idiot too, for citing a dead link. This is the sort of thing that makes me totally dispirited about publishing ANYTHING.
But no more. I am now determined to be totally free from QWest and their incompetence. I will be using QWest for my home connectivity, but only for the short term. I am determined to move this blog to a bulletproof hosting service NOT through QWest. And I am determined to resume writing and posting videos as often as possible once the transition is complete. I have several long videos recorded and ready to post, as soon as I can get the video server up and online. But it's going to take a bit longer, if I'm going to do this right. So bear with me, this transition may be a little rough, but this blog will be better than ever. I promise.
If you have followed my blog in recent months, you know that I moved my office, and when I arrived at the new location, I discovered that QWest DSL was not available. It never even occurred to me to check availability before moving, since DSL is deployed throughout this entire city.. except in THIS neighborhood.
I did a lot of research, pushing my complaints up through middle levels of QWest management, and was consistently told that DSL would not be available, they COULD provide it, but would NOT provide it. Reports from QWest's DSL technicians indicated there was a new DSLAM installed a mere 8 blocks from my home, but QWest would not connect any users to it. The service was available, DSL techs were ready to install it, but management would not permit anyone to purchase the service and connect to the new DSLAM. The last manager I spoke to at QWest was almost psychotically rude, she took special pains to be as abusive as possible to me, despite my attempts to be as polite as possible (after all, I was begging them for service).
So today, this morning at 9AM, as I was just getting up and making coffee, a bit fuzzy after a late night of work, I get a phone call. Oh joy, it's a QWest telemarketer asking if they can look at my account and see if they can find any way to "serve me better." I bite my tongue to suppress the urge to blurt out all the DSL backstory, and tell the guy, "Look, I never use this land line, I use my cell phone for all my calling, I'm thinking of disconnecting it entirely. The only thing you could do for me is to hook me up with DSL." The guy says he'll check availability, I told him don't bother, I just spent 4 months trying to get DSL and QWest always told me no. He looks it up in his computer, surprise surprise, DSL is available in my location! I refused to believe it, so I went to my computer, looked it up on their website, yes it is available!
Now instead of being happy I can get DSL again, I am absolutely infuriated. It proved that QWest could have hooked me up 4 months ago, but they refused for no reason whatsoever. I'm probably going to move out of here within 2 or 3 months, so I will only be using this service for a short time, when I could have been using it all along.
Now that I am scheduled for DSL installation on December 5, I will be able to restore BlogTV service. I needed DSL with high upstream bandwidth and 2 static IPs, in order to deliver video from my QuickTime Streaming Server. This was impossible with my current cable modem connection. But it is not worth it to restore service if I'm just going to move in a couple of months and go through this all over again. It is time for me to move this blog and the QTSS server to a professional hosting service.
If there is one thing I learned doing years of customer service, the worst thing you can ever do is screw your customers in a way that makes your them look bad in front of THEIR customers. And that is exactly what QWest has done to me. They refused to deliver DSL when they could have, causing my archives of video stories to stop working. Years of my work were taken down, making me look bad. I recently noticed a couple of articles about video blogging cited my website, even after the video server went down. But when readers clicked on the links to my videos, they got nothing but an error message, I looked like an idiot, and the article writers looked like an idiot too, for citing a dead link. This is the sort of thing that makes me totally dispirited about publishing ANYTHING.
But no more. I am now determined to be totally free from QWest and their incompetence. I will be using QWest for my home connectivity, but only for the short term. I am determined to move this blog to a bulletproof hosting service NOT through QWest. And I am determined to resume writing and posting videos as often as possible once the transition is complete. I have several long videos recorded and ready to post, as soon as I can get the video server up and online. But it's going to take a bit longer, if I'm going to do this right. So bear with me, this transition may be a little rough, but this blog will be better than ever. I promise.
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