Thursday, September 9, 2010

Down for a day

A whole day. My Internet. DOWN. This was a tragedy, seriously I'd like to see how you weather through it. I'm not talking about you traveling and hanging out on the beach all day no Internet. I'm talking regular at work then come home to no Internet. The kid had homework due that instructions were to be downloaded and printed out. I had to email her teacher (from my phone) admit my plight, and have her print it out for the kid and send it home. I mean GEEZ!

There is a method to the madness though. We had Time Warner Cable. The bundle of home phone (useless much?), cable, and Internet. They pissed us off. First off it was cheaper to get the bundle rather than just the 2 services we need (cable and Internet). Then it was insanely expensive regardless unless you got some sort of special. That ran out after 12 months. On month 13 you'd get a super sized bill and have a coronary, call TW cable, and beg them for some new deal. And swallow that one big ass month 13 bill. Every 13 months it reoccurs like some evil birthday. I don't want a special freaking deal, I want service that isn't astronomically priced! Apparently that's too much to ask. And I did ask. Every 13 months.

Then there's the service. There's nothing special about the phone, we only use it to receive telemarketing calls. The Internet was fine but nothing spectacular no matter how many times Manu went on about speed. The cable is what really pissed us off though. We only watch a few channels (like 5) and we have a DVR to record mommy and daddy's shows. For whatever reason (and I really don't give a shit what the reason was) the few channels we watched (including the kid's channels) were coming through pixelated. Completely unwatchable.

So let's do the math. We were paying close to $150 a month for a phone we don't use, Internet, and tv shows we can't watch. Seriously I can't believe we stayed with them for as long as we have. It's embarrassing to admit. Now mind you I didn't bother giving TW cable a chance to fix our issues with the cable. After evaluating what we were paying and what we needed I really could care less if they could fix the cable box since I payed so much for the 'special' and it only lasted 12 months.

One day last month AT&T Uverse called and asked if I wanted to switch. I half listened to the spiel and went with the cheaper one. Hey it couldn't be much worse than what I already had and it cost less. It took a little while, the phone was switched right quick though. The tv came in, we somehow ended up with Direct TV, whatever. It's totally watchable, clear, survives during storms, and easy to use. We're good.

The Internet. Yeah it was a bit more convoluted, took a few phone calls for us to figure out what we needed vs what we had. Finally got the box in though and my turn on time was scheduled for the next day. Now by this time I had cancelled only the phone and cable with TWC, my TW Internet was still going. Of course when AT&T took over my lines the day before activating me they kicked out TWC service. Hence my day without the nets. Once my go time passed I got on the phone with tech support though and was great. Hooked fast with no issues. The day between though, wow. My iphone had the battery almost sucked dry with doing Internet stuff on it.

Embarrassing, really....

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