Most of us in this day and age spend a considerable amount of time online. Shopping, socializing, and researching to name a few activities. It has become a cornerstone of American society in many ways. With this fact being true, I find it curious how in a major city it can be so difficult for someone to get their service
installed. For example, this post took several days to finally get posted here. I actually wrote it several weeks ago, but was unable to post it because I have moved across country to the Chicago Suburbs and find myself fighting tooth and nail to get my Internet installed. Not only is there a limited selection of technologies to use, most of which are what would be considered first generation broadband technology. But when I finally decided upon a service, it has been a nightmare just to get it activated.

First they sent me the hardware for the install. I plugged it in and was greeted with a red connection light. This was no a big deal since I wasn’t scheduled to be activated until two days later. However when I called prior to the install and confirmed that they would be turning on the circuit before 8pm on the day of the
install and then at 10pm that day I tried to activate it and it still didn’t work I was a little annoyed. I called into their Install department and after a conversation that ran in circles a few times was told that for some reason my account was still in a pending state. Pending what? They didn’t know. They informed me
that I would have to speak with their provisioning department to find out. I asked of course to be transfered there. They were more than willing to do so and soon myself on a quiet line with a voice that popped on and said ‘Please Hold’ every few moments for the least two hours. It turns out that I had been placed into the Hold Zone. One that never answered. Eventually I got tired and hung up to get some sleep for that night. I called back the next night and after a little fighting was transfered to the Provisioning department again to wait on hold.

This process repeated for several days of me getting transfered to their provisioning department until I finally stop them from transferring me to the mysterious provisioning department and instead simply tear into the tech support individual. I know its not their direct fault, but I’m frustrated, I’ve been without Internet a week now since the original activation date, and they have been no help at all so far. Its during this call that I find out that first, the provisioning department is only open Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm. Which means all those times that I had been transfered and waited for hours. Oh yea, they were closed. Now I was coming close to being livid. These other agents had sent me to a department that was -closed-. And worse they had to know it was closed because apparently all their provisioning groups close at the same time. This agent however was nice enough to handle a call there for me after hearing how much time I’d spent on hold for a group that had already been closed at the time several times in a row.

So I hear back from the agent the next day and I’m informed that apparently they needed to actually send a technician out to activate my line (Contrary to what I had been told originally but a common practice to many broadband technologies) and unfortunately the department is only open Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. So I would have to take time from my brand new job to get it installed. So nice of them to help me set a good foot forward about my attendance with my new employers. I’ll be sure to thank them for it.

After all of this hassle I just accept the nearest date which is another week and a half away itself and informed my employers that I had to be out that day to get my Internet activated. Thankfully having Internet access at home is a big enough need in my position that it didn’t cause a huge uproar when I told them I had to take whole day off because the best time frame my provider would offer is ‘The Technician will arrive sometime between 8am and 5pm’. So nice that they could be so specific. Its nice to know that the service industry is evolving in that fashion. What? They used to actually give you a 3 or 4 hour window? Then what the hell happened?!?

That one is easy. Laziness and greed. Got to love how its made simple things a huge ordeal. As it stands I will post to let everyone know how the install goes.