Qwest Fail

Waited nearly all day for Qwest to come and hook up the phone/dsl line. They finally showed up around 2:30 and hooked up the phones in about 15 minutes. On the way out the dude goes, "okay you're all set, the bottom jack is good to go." Shit. "Um, dude, the bottom jack is a LAN line, not a phone line, bro." (Dumb ass). "Oh my," he says, "that is a little loose, give me a minute and I'll fix it to the top jack." Yeah. Good idea, buddy.

So he does that and pulls away narrowly averting a stupid mistake that would have cost me countless hours of headaches on the phone with tech support. I seriously doubt that in their little techy manuals they've got there at Qwest you're going to find a chapter on poor suckers who have had their LAN jacks hooked up to phone lines. Jesus.

And now I've got a DSL line! But no modem. Qwest, in their infinite wisdom and customer service expertise, has decided not to have the installer carry a few modems along to give to the customer all at once. No. That would make far too much sense. The big business geniuses at Qwest have decided it better for UPS to deliver the modem separately, and hopefully on the same day. Grrr.

To the veritable singing of angels, up drives the UPS truck with my modem before too long. Excited, I tear open the box and find my shiny new $90 modem/router (more than I've paid for any of the other four modems and/or routers I already own, all in perfect working order but not 'compatible' with Qwest's *NEW* all-in-one wireless modem -- don't get me started -- I don't have the energy for a tangent rant) and the glossy instructions. The first thing it says is "DO NOT PLUG IN MODEM BEFORE SPECIFIED START TIME: SEE ENCLOSED LETTER FOR TIME AND DATE."

Rummaging through the box I find the letter that says that I must wait until 5pm before plugging in the modem. The letter might as well have said, "Now that you've waited a week for your Qwest appointment, and nearly all day for the installation, and then even longer for the UPS delivery, now that your DSL line is installed and your modem IS HERE you must now only wait ANOTHER TWO HOURS to access your precious high speed Internet!" My God. Get me the suicide prevention hotline: NOW!

Naturally I wait the two hours. Can't say patiently, but I waited. Then I plugged in the modem. Lights on, taken to ridiculous website for registration and all kinds of BS, another user name, yet more friggin' passwords, another login bookmark, fucking hell. A page is stuck, open up Live Chat and ask the bots how to avoid all this shit and just get to surfing. They casually inform me that I am already surfing. Just close the window and go, they say. Sweet. Glad I followed the Set Up For Dummies instructions, not like I know how to join a friggin' wireless network... done.

The first thing I do, of course, because I like to torture myself, is go to speedtest.net and see what kind of throughput I've got here. A big 1.27 megs the results say. Wow: Dial-up on drugs!

Damn, Qwest.