Internet Access Bullshit

Yesterday afternoon, our Internet access stopped working. We had access through Adelphia, which recently got bought out by Time Warner. Apparently, Time Warner decided that all old Adelphia customers would have to switch over to its RoadRunner service, as of yesterday. So they just disconnected everyone's Adelphia service and are "migrating" them to RoadRunner. Migrating is kind of a misnomer since they actually stopped service to the Adelphia customers and are forcing everyone to sign up with new RoadRunner accounts. Of course, not only did they provide no warning whatsoever that this was going to happen, but they also seem to have no extra customer support staff working to deal with the presumably THOUSANDS of people who suddenly find themselves without Internet access and who must call and order new RoadRunner service by phone. It can't be done online and of course, is not easy to do by phone either. My dad was on the phone with various reps for at least 6 hours yesterday and an additional 2 hours today. And still he hasn't been able to talk to anyone who can help us get our Internet access back up and running. Only after a few hours of being on hold and switching to different reps, did he finally find out about the "migration." One would think that a simple note on the accounts of all "migrating" customers would be easy to add so that at least the simplest customer service rep could explain what was happening. Nope. He kept getting bumped up to Level Two and Level Three support. How assinine. Oh yeah and to complete the migration, we are supposed to call our "local" service reps, none of which are even local calls! We are in Cleveland and the "local" options are either Akron, Canton, or Youngstown. None of those are free, local calls. It's bad enough that one has to be on hold for hours, let alone to have to pay to be on hold.

So thankfully my dad never suspended his dial-up service so here I am stuck doing homework via dial-up. It took nearly 20 minutes just to log in to my online classroom. I dread the thought of having to upload the paper that is due tonight. At least I have the bare minimum access to actually conduct research for the assignment, though. I honestly don't know how people deal with dial-up service and even though last year I was using it, too, I also had the option to go up to campus to access high-speed access whenever I needed to send a resume via email or upload an assignment. Checking email, posting on a blog or looking at an occasional Web page is fine but there is no way I'm going to be sending out resumes today. Or tomorrow, or until we can get our service back.

The other aggravating thing is that Time Warner is our only option for high-speed access. One would think the fact that since we live in a pretty wealthy suburb of a fairly large city in one of the world's wealthiest nations would make it possible for us to get DSL, at least, but nope. We live too far from a switching station or whatever nonsense they have been telling my dad for years. If we had another option, we'd have signed up with them in a heartbeat.