Category: TeleComm

Today, September 16, 2020, I tried to called 911 on my Yahoo Mobile phone and service.

The call never rang, never connected. All I got was “Calling…”. See image below. (Other calls from exact same location always go through, even with the low signal strength.)

When I had time after the emergency event, I got onto chat with Yahoo Mobile support. Not surprisingly with first-line support people, I encountered a not-too-bright support person who asked me if I tried troubleshooting when it happened. Hell no. I used a different phone on different carrier. I didn’t have time to troubleshoot. What a moranic question.

The stupidity of front-line support people never ceases to amaze me. And I’m still waiting for support beyond the front-line person to come up with an answer.

Yahoo Mobile said they would call at 9am ET the next day, Sep 17, 2020. Did not happen. Got into chat again early on Sep 17, 2020. The rep said within an hour. Did not happen. So far, Yahoo Mobile is not very reliable.

A few days later noticed that my phone was not connecting to a cell site in a metropolitan area. (Actually, the same place as the failed 911 call.) Took 12 minutes to find and connect to a cell site. Got into Yahoo Mobile chat for support and apparently the reps there think taking 12 minutes to connect to a site — even if you have to call 911 — is not big deal.

CenturyLink recently provided me with a new modem for my 1gig fiber Internet service. The new modem is a Zyxel C3000Z.

Within 24 hours, I’ve found three problems.

Problem #1: Dynamic DNS client does not work.

What got me investigating this was my inability to connect via WAN to my audio server. I logged into my DynDNS.com account and it had the old IP#. I logged into the C3000Z and  it shows that last update at the time I logged into the modem. So, I put in a bogus password for the DynDNS account and clicked apply. Sure enough, the modem reported a successful report. Did the programmers deliberately set the dynamic dns feature to fradulently report success as a ruse to cut corners rather than success be determined by successful login?

Problem #2: Administrator Password Language and Contradiction

The English speaking world continues to be degraded by bad English and contradictory statements. When I went to change the administrator’s password I got the error message below. First, bad English. “a[n] upper”. In the second sentence the password must be at least 8 characters long. In the last sentence the password must be no more than 4 characters. Also, in the last sentence “is allow[ed].”  What a great way to confuse customers: bad English and contradictory statements.

Problem #3: Show Password option

In the section to set the administrator’s password there is an option to show the password by unchecking the box before “Hide Password.” When this box is unchecked the password is NOT revealed. Instead, the Confirm Password field disappears.

When supporting products for otherwise great services do not work right, an enormous amount of time is lost by the customer trying to figure things out, making phone calls, and getting replacements. All this lost time because of defective products detracts from the value.

I helped an attorney set up VoIP phone service in Seattle and Pacific Beach. As a part of this setup, I recommended CenturyLink DSL in Pacific Beach because of the lag time on satellite internet connections.

The customer decided to upgrade from DSL to bonded DSL (which is essentially two DSL lines working as one for more bandwidth).

The attorney scheduled an appointment for Oct 9, 2027 to upgrade his DSL service to bonded DSL. The appointment was set up by a support person in Wisconsin. CenturyLink did not show up for the appointment. There was no notice that CL would not show up. The attorney (on staff at a separate employer) lost basically a day of paid work waiting for CL.

The attorney’s attempts to move things along have produced nothing, eg:

— Emails to the original person in Wisconsin. That person responded twice by email saying he was too busy and now no emails or phone calls from this support person.

— Two phone messages left for the local technician. No response.

— I suggested he try calling a contact I had in Salt Lake City. That contact told the attorney that he (support person) was not in the legacy department but would try to get someone to get in touch with the attorney. Despite all this, the attorney has not gotten any response from anyone.

I have real qualms bringing customers to a company when customers are treated this way

Ignoring a customer like this is pathetic, to the say the least. This kind of treatment reinforces the underlying perception that if corporations have your money, there is no problem, whether or not there is support or service. For a time I thought CenturyLink was getting their act together, in part because of the new fiber service, which I have and like — 1 gig synchronous.  However, treating a customer like they are treating the attorney is simply appalling and rivals the worst support I have had with Comcast.

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Update: 2017-10-27

According to CenturyLink, the appointment for bonded DSL was removed upstream from the local technician’s appointments. Apparently VDSL is being rolled out to replace DSL and bonded DSL. (When? CenturyLink doesn’t know.) Unfortunately, NO ONE in CenturyLink ever thought to let the customer know what was going on, allowing him to waste time waiting for a no-show appointment and communicating with CenturyLink without response. (The response came from someone other than the customer writing a lot of emails to CenturyLink.) One might think a communications company would know how to communicate. Guess not.