Zoomtown and Fuse.net DSL suck
Cincinnati Bell sucks. Their billing service is substandard as I’ve previously noted. Their DSL model is the most funkitified thing I’ve met. Finally their technical ISP acumen is pathetic.
Okay now some detail.
The billing service I’ve already covered, but I’ll add one more item on, their whole web design focus is far to centered on catering to Microsoft Internet Explorer users. I actually had to call the customer service rep to reset my password, a majority of the call consisted of interrogating me if there was a copy of Internet Explorer somewhere on my computer. (I’ve deleted the Mac version, its even crappier than the windows version.) After I arguing with the rep for a while conceded and started to load up Windows 98 on VirtualPC. Around the same time he finally gave up on me and just asked me for the information over the phone and logged in as me and did what I needed to do. (Something tech reps are not supposed to do, but oh well.)
Oh and another thing about the Microsoft Centricness. I’m not against Microsoft software, I just find it much harder to get it to work properly and efficiently. Cincinnati Bell’s billing system is hosted on Microsoft web and database servers. I have no problem with this, if it works.. I despise that well it, doesn’t work. Anytime I have to load my bill up online I need to load it twice, the first request being a collection of Microsoft Server errors, the second being the actual bill.
Okay onto the real reason that got me onto this subject. My DSL is down, it has been down for three hours. To top this off there is no tech support rep to get a hold of to fix and or consult about the problem, and their network status page happily proclaims that everything is working fine.
Imbeciles.
(I have to go review George Bush’s tax return again and make sure he doesn’t own Cincinnati Bell, because the hallmark of his management skills are quite evident at Cincinnati Bell.)
So I might be happier if I was able to get a hold of someone, but they’re closed from Midnight to 7 AM. This relates into my feelings about The 8 AM Regime, if a company wants to keep my business they should offer 24 hour service. Thats only fair to those of us who are up and doing work at 3 AM in the morning.
To top it off this is a monopoly service. Unlike other DSL markets where you can get your service from another company with Cincinnati Bell you’re stuck into buying the connectivity from them, dealing with their crappy model where you by the DSL service from them, and then buy the connectivity from someone else. Its the dial up model all over again. (Which incidentally is better than the DSL/Cable model because there is built in redundancy, with DSL/Cable you’re stuck with an unregulated monopoly, at least when you had dialup the telephone line was a regulated monopoly that had a legally required uptime of 99.999% now you have unregulated crap with an unregulated uptime. I want DSL to start putting in service level agreements at the residential price points.)
So instead of being able to purchase DSL from Speakeasy (I had the best service from them, albeit most expensive service, but I had a rarer line type.) and letting them handle the tech support and buffer me from the crap of the telephone company I now have to deal directly with the crap of the telephone company with no additional service and the headache’s of their imbecile service and crappy substandard equipment.
Unfortunately cable isn’t an option, and even if it were I’m not sure they’d be much better. This area is ripe for some competition, perhaps fixed wireless?