Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

Seriously! I was! I had a nice little, amusing post for you and then Sympatico blew it. Sympatico is my internet provider. Normally I’m quite happy with them but this week I’ve been so steamed I can’t sit still for long.

I have no connection at home. None… bereft … I’m am without. Now how sad is that?

Very.

I have been internetless for over a day now with no relief in site until tomorrow afternoon. When I called to find out what was going on, I was told it may take 66 hours for the technicians to clear up the problem. 66 hours!?! Keep in mind these are business hours, not 24 hours. We are talking about sometime next week for resolution. I kept  hearing the same line over and over about how valuable a customer I am, yada yada yada. When I asked why it will take so long, I was told my patience is important, I am valuable… you get the picture. I lost all patience after being down for 10 hours and said as much.

Now, I was very nice to the poor sod on the other end of the line. But I did lose my temper with the endless repetion of “valuable customer” crap. I finally said “If I’m so bloody important, why will I have to wait so long?” I also said 66 hours is unacceptable and there is a lot of competition out there in the city.  66 hours is going to cost me a lot of $$$. I have customers who need some paper work, ebay customers who need invoices, questions to answer, an on-line store I’m getting off the ground… a lot of time is being wasted here.

Funny how quickly companies can reassess their priorities when you mention competition. I received a call from Sympatico about an hour after hanging up. “We’ll be out there with a new modem on Saturday” They suspect it is a bad modem – I kind of thought the same thing. They’ll also check the lines leading into the building to ensure that isn’t the problem. I have customers in the building with Sympatico and they are all running fine. So the problem is either a connection directly to my apartment, or my modem. I had a similar problem about 1 year ago and it was the modem then.

Granted the repair isn’t as fast as I would like, but Sympatico had major problems city wide yesterday and were left scrambling to fix it, so some patience is required.  In the meantime, I’ll camp out at Aroma Cafe and drink their cappaccinos and eat their sandwiches. Monday I’m going after Sympatico for a refund on the down time. No way am I going to pay for the time I couldn’t connect.

Now that I know someone is taking the problem seriously, I feel better.

May your Internet connection always be on. Live long and Blog!

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