On Memorial Day I broke my ankle. I was on sabbatical, working at a research laboratory in Burlington, which I could reach only by driving. I could not drive with my leg in a cast, so it was decided that I would work from home, using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get through my employer's firewall. For this I needed access to the Internet from home.
I chose AT&T Broadband as my Internet Service Provider (ISP) because one of my PhD students had been happy with their service in Marblehead. Given the choice between buying my own cable modem or renting one from AT&T Broadband, I elected to rent because I was in no condition to go shopping. The sales representative with whom I spoke sent email to my university account on 13 June confirming the email address and security code I had selected, and telling me the password I had been assigned.
On Tuesday, 19 June, the technician arrived to install the cable modem. The box containing the new cable modem had been soaked, but the modem was sealed within plastic and was ok. The box that contained the AT&T Road Runner Virtual Technician software and Activation Guide had also been soaked, but the guide and CD-ROM were readable after I used a towel to remove several droplets of water. The technician had me sign a customer agreement and an Additional Work Authorization Form, but after I had signed them I noticed that the customer name and account number were wrong. The technician had given me the forms for another installation that he was to perform that morning, so he just crossed out the other name on the Additional Work Authorization Form and wrote mine in. I didn't have the presence of mind to dispute that at the time, but I don't believe my Road Runner Virtual Installation involved any additional work that needed to be authorized or paid for. He did have me sign the correct work order, although I noticed that the home phone number on the work order was incorrect. At first I thought the phone number might have been the other customer's, but then I realized that it had been my unpublished phone number from several years ago. (I had gotten a new unpublished number after Bell Atlantic published the old one in their white pages.)
Within two hours of the technician's departure, I was able to access the World-Wide Web (WWW) and use telnet. By the next day I was using VPN as well, and the day after that I was able to set up my home computer as an ftp server for brief periods so I could transfer large files to my other machines in Burlington and Boston. My AT&T Broadband email account did not work, however, because the AT&T Road Runner Virtual Technician setup wizard had set up my user name to be my full name instead of the account's user name. After that was fixed, I could send email ok, but attempts to receive email directed to that account resulted in an authorization failure, as though my password were incorrect.
Calls to the technical support line resulted in a busy signal. Sometime the next day a call rang through to the automated answering system, which put me on hold to wait for a human. When a human finally spoke to me, he asked for my name and telephone number, which I gave him. After a few minutes he observed that he couldn't find my account, so I mentioned that it had been activated only a few days ago. He put me on hold to wait for a technical support person. When the technical support person finally answered, he asked for my name and phone number, and then observed that he couldn't find my account. I told him it had been activated only a few days ago. When I told him my email password appeared to be incorrect, he said he would have to pass me on to tier two technical support. I asked what was the difference between tier one and tier two. From what he said I learned that only tier two has a clue. He put me on hold to wait for a tier two technical support person. When she finally answered, she asked me for my name and phone number. She repeated the phone number slowly as she typed it in, and I realized that she was using it as an index to my account. When she said she couldn't find my account, I told her that the work order had an incorrect telephone number on it, and told it to her. She was then able to bring up my account using the wrong phone number. She said she'd correct my telephone number in the account information, but she apparently never did, because AT&T Broadband still can't find my account when I give them the correct phone number.
She was a very good technical support person. She asked me to describe the problem I was having, and confirmed for herself the behavior that I had described. She was unable to bring up the password information for my account, though. She said that was odd, and put me on hold. In a few minutes she came back and said that the database containing the password information had locked up and that the machine on which it was running was expected to crash imminently. She had been told that the database was unlikely to be available for at least an hour, so I would have to call back later. She gave me a more direct telephone number that I could call to avoid the busy signals.
This entire call had taken about an hour and forty-five minutes. I called again that evening. When a human answered I asked for a transfer to tier two technical support. The technical support person who finally answered wasn't as good as the other one. She brought up my account information and was able to bring up my password information, but she refused to tell me my password without first walking me through the entire setup procedure. The first step of that procedure was to launch Microsoft Outlook Express. I told her that I wasn't using Outlook Express, and it wasn't even installed on my machine. She said she only knew how to use Outlook Express, because that was the only email program that AT&T Broadband supports. She still wouldn't just tell me my password. I told her to go ahead and walk me through the setup procedure. She waited for me to say "ok" after each step. Toward the end of that procedure she told me to type my password. I asked her what it was. She told me. It bore no resemblance to the password that I had been sent by email. She wanted to finish walking me through the rest of the setup procedure for Outlook Express, but I thanked her and said that was all I needed to know. This call took about an hour.
When I told a friend about this, she remembered that she had gone through the very same process after AT&T Broadband had given her an incorrect password when her cable modem was installed about a year ago.
My cable modem access worked very well for about a week and a half, until a major electrical storm on Saturday evening, 30 June. I was away during that storm, but when I returned later that evening I saw that electrical power had been knocked out at least twice and that the cable television signal was still out. The cable signal returned later that evening. The next day, Sunday the first of July, I checked the cable modem and saw that all four of its front-panel diagnostic lights were lit solidly, a condition that was not covered within the modem's documentation. Recycling power as prescribed in the documentation had no effect, and the modem did not generate the audio tone that it was supposed to generate when power was first applied. In short, the modem was defunct.
Since the modem was rented from AT&T Broadband, replacing it was their responsibility. Their telephone number was busy for most of Monday and Tuesday, so I finally gave up and called the tech support number that the good tech support person had given me. When I finally reached a technical support person, it was again a good one. She made me disconnect the modem's power supply, wait a few minutes (on hold, of course), and then reconnect. Her diagnostics then confirmed that the modem wasn't responding, and would have to be replaced. She transferred me to someone who would make an appointment for a service visit. The next available appointment was for Thursday morning, sometime between eight o'clock and noon. This call took about an hour and half, most of it on hold.
Thursday morning came and went, and no technician showed up. When I finally got something other than a busy signal from AT&T Broadband's advertised support number, I got a message saying something like "If you are calling for technical support, please hang up and call" a different number, which was not repeated. I had to call the advertised number a second time to get the number right, but that took a long time because of all the busy signals. When I did get through to technical support, the support person insisted on repeating the tests that had already been made. (I think he said that the database that contained the record of my previous call to technical support was down and could not be accessed, but I may be confusing this with a different call. I know that two separate databases were down on two of the calls that I made, though.) He then forwarded me to make another appointment, this time for Friday afternoon sometime between three and five o'clock. This call took an hour and fifteen minutes.
Friday afternoon came and went, and no technician showed up. I called the new technical support number. When I finally got through to a technical support person, she was very sympathetic about the two missed appointments, and offered me a $40 discount off my bill. I thanked her. (I was paying for the cable service out of my own pocket. On the other hand, every hour that I had spent on hold had cost my employer more than that $40.) We made a third appointment for Saturday evening sometime between six and nine o'clock. This call took about an hour.
Saturday evening came and went, and no technician showed up. While waiting, I listened to Prairie Home Companion, which included a skit describing Garrison Keillor's fictionalized phone call to his ISP after his computer system lost access to the Internet. Had the skit been truth instead of fiction, each phone call would have lasted an hour or more, and the skit would have had to be serialized across a month of shows. Apart from timing, that skit was a perfect summary of the whole experience.
Its high point came when mild-mannered Garrison Keillor finally lost it and declared: I have a life apart from my computer. I do not exist to serve my computer. My computer exists to serve me.
William D Clinger
8 July 2001