Re:The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a rou...
by riskneutral on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:37PM
(#23034421)
You can just call them and ask to check signal strength etc on their end.
Re:The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a rou...
by lostapathy on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:52PM
(#23035314)
You can, as can most readers here. I've always had fantastic luck with it. If you are kind and sound competent on the phone, they are much more inclined to roll a truck to look at the issue. If you're likewise kind and prepared when the tech shows up, they are much more inclined to actually address the issue for real rather than pretending.
Knowing already where the wire comes into your house from the splitter is a big help too.
On the converse, people I know who aren't patient on the phone, or can't get to their modem when a tech shows up, or are just plain angry complaining about the service don't get anywhere.
When my neighborhood was built out, they apparently used "the wrong cable" and it seems to be at effective EOL. Everybody I know who is nice and somewhat technical has had no problem getting it replaced. The people who get on facebook and talk about how horrible Spectrum is continue to have problems.
Re:The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a rou...
by catalogia on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:41PM
(#23035203)
And every time you call them you have to spend half an hour of your limited time on this planet convincing them that yes, you did already try turning it off and on again...
Re:The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a rou...
by mgleason_3 on Friday May 01, 2020 @03:43AM
(#23039936)
Your internet doesn't work? Bummer, darn...
TW->Spectrum where I live seems to have a pretty common practice of simply taking the modem from customer 1 complaining about internet dropout/etc and giving it to customer 2 complaining about internet dropouts.
Besides the bad router hardware, in my experience with the cable companies, a large part of the problem has been signal issues going through old cables, splitters, etc. The one advantage to owning your own modem is you can select one that gives you good signal quality metrics and error reporting.
Which brings me to what I view as the fundamental issue here. The cable companies frankly don't give a crap about service quality. They _CAN_ monitor signal strength, dropped packets, signal loss, etc from their end. With that they could act proactively, like "Hey this customer's modem won't lock on 1/2 of our frequencies lets call them and send a tech to fix it".
But they don't, and really that tells me everything I need to know about those companies.