[conspire] conspire Digest, Vol 145, Issue 1

bruce coston jane_ikari at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 1 22:15:43 PST 2015


>From a games theory perspective I'm sure Comcast trains to a Strategic Lack of Competence , or maybe just hires cheapest contractor firms . - Bruce
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Message: 3
 Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 21:48:29 -0700
 From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: [conspire] One service visit, three existing
 services
     demolished
 Message-ID: <20151101044829.GJ5099 at linuxmafia.com>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
 
 Quick:  What is the most hated company in
 America?  The answer depends
 on whom you ask, and when you ask it.  A few years ago,
 Goldman Sachs
 topped pretty much everyone's list, for example.
 
 Perennially down in the bottom 10, with special demerits for
 abysmal
 customer satisfaction, is Comcast Corporation.
 
 In some of the passages that follow, I'm going to
 self-censor to avoid
 saying unflattering things that I don't want to risk having
 to defend in
 court about specific identified companies and
 individuals.  However,
 you're free to use your imagination.
 
 
 My mother-in-law Cheryl, who lives with me and Deirdre, has
 long been
 frustrated by occasional slowness and perceived outages with
 the
 household aDSL.  Cheryl is fairly technical. 
 However, like most
 Americans, she is strongly drawn to a model of
 problem-solving I call
 'Complain to the nearest person.'  Even though I've
 ensured that she is
 briefed on how to distinguish packet-routing from DNS and
 browser
 problems, and possesses a network diagram and list of
 relevant IP
 addresses, when she perceives a problem accessing Internet
 services, she
 provides zero help and instead complains.  Invariably
 to me, and even
 after I point out she's impairing diagnosis rather than
 helping, that I
 am not a trouble-ticketing system, and that she is not my
 customer to
 begin with.  
 
 Our friend Duncan MacKinnon was visiting recently, and
 Cheryl complained
 to him.  Duncan desired to help, and so researched
 options for Cheryl to
 purchase her own Internet service independent from the
 household aDSL,
 and his recommendation was Comcast Business Internet,
 http://business.comcast.com/ .  Cheryl announced
 that she would be
 signing up for this service out of her own pocket, offered
 to let others
 in the household use it, and wanted to ensure that I as
 homeowner was OK
 with this.
 
 I thanked her for asking, reviewed very briefly the
 extremely bad
 experiences the household had with Comcast that lead to our
 cancelling
 cable television service in 2011[1], and gave her my honest
 assessment
 that {EXTREMELY DEROGATORY JUDGEMENT REDACTED} impels me to
 politely
 refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with that firm.
 
 I added that I had no objection to her having a business
 relationship
 with these  {EXTREMELY DEROGATORY JUDGEMENT REDACTED},
 but that it'd be
 a cold day in Dubai before I would.  So, she could
 arrange for them to
 do anything she wanted _entirely on her own_, and I had no
 objection as
 long as they didn't break anything.
 
 [pause]
 
 
 Friday, I woke up to hear what seemed likely to be the
 installer Cheryl
 had scheduled.  I opened my laptop clamshell.  No
 bandwidth at all --
 not just slow packet transmission.  I was reaching to
 my server and the
 outside LAN, but there was nothing moving across the aDSL
 bridge at all.
 And the pessimist in me thought:  What's the worst the
 installer would
 do, if he's a real screw-up?  Ah, right, he could
 somehow take down the
 whole AT&T landline, which carries both voice and our
 packets to Raw
 Bandwidth Communications's DSLAM in AT&T's local central
 office.
 
 I walked to the nearest landline telephone:  no dial
 tone.  I checked
 the other landline telephone:  no dial tone.  I
 walk into the living
 room, say 'Looks like the AT&T landline's totally
 dead'.  The installer
 standing nearby, one Timothy Almacer, installer for Comcast
 contractor 
 OC Communications, http://www.occom.com/, immediately went
 into full-on
 'I didn't do it' mode.
 
 I stressed to Almacer that I'm not his customer but I _am_
 the sole
 owner of this real estate, and that his firm was in trouble
 with me.
 
 I interrupted his I-didn't-do-it performance piece to get
 more details:
 It turned out that Almacer had decided to run entirely new
 coax from the
 telephone pole to the house.  It also turned out that
 Deirdre and Cheryl
 had no knowledge of this, or any other detail of what
 Almacer had done,
 because they had not supervised his work in any way. 
 Both of them were
 just passively sitting in their chairs.
 
 Almacer asserted that his firm had no culpability and that
 it was just a
 total coincidence that the AT&T line had worked
 continuously since at
 least the day we moved in, nine years ago, but broke the day
 he was
 pulling cable next to the AT&T line.  Almacer
 wanted me to walk out with
 him to the sidewalk so he could show me that the attachment
 points of
 his vs. the AT&T cable near the telephone pole were more
 than 10' apart.
 (I made no comment, because that fact is utterly irrelevant,
 and said
 merely that I was busy doing root-cause analysis.)
 
 Almacer said he'd spoken to his supervisor, whom he
 identified as 'Josh
 F', and gave me this person's telephone number,
 916-539-6630.  (He
 refused to give Josh F's full name.)  When I reached a
 break point in 
 triaging the problem, I called this person.  He again
 refused to give
 his full name, but reiterated Almacer's line that his firm
 had no
 responsibility for the downed landline.  He reiterated
 that it was a
 coincidence, and said 'This happens all the time.'  I
 said I did not
 accept this, and was calling seeking an alternative to suing
 his firm.
 He had nothing useful to add, so I ended the call.
 
 I went into the garage with a ladder and a landline
 telephone, found 
 and opened the AT&T demarcation point box, and
 identified where two
 landlines were connected on the customer side.  I
 temporarily unplugged
 both connections' customer-side RJ-11 jacks (so that nothing
 was
 connected on the customer side), and plugged the telephone 
 into one of the modular jacks.  No dial tone. 
 This proved that the 
 problem was on the AT&T side of the demarc point.
 
 It was now about 11am.  Deirdre used cellular data
 service to open a
 trouble ticket with AT&T, who promised a repair visit
 before 8pm.
 
 A second OC Communications pulled up, and the driver
 introduced himself
 as Josh F.  He repeated his offer to show me how far
 the two cable
 attachment points are from each other near the telephone
 pole.  I again
 made no comment:  The two cables converge as they cross
 through the
 trees and are very close at the garage entry point. 
 Obviously,
 something Almacer did was extremely likely to have taken out
 the AT&T
 landline, probably far away from the telephone pole.  I
 said to Mr. F
 that, if he wanted to do something useful, he could verify
 with his
 lineman buttset telephone (which has alligator clips) my
 test result at
 the AT&T demarc point.  He did so, and pronounce
 there to be no dial
 tone.
 
 Mr. F asked me if I wanted to cancel the installation. 
 I repeated that
 I was not the customer, just the real estate owner, and
 didn't give a
 tinker's damn about the installation, only about the
 breakage.  I
 referred him to Cheryl as the customer.  He repeated
 the question to
 her.  She said no.
 
 First Mr. F left, then Almacer, with me saying I in no way
 accepted the
 absurd claim that the AT&T breakage was totally
 coincidental, but that
 it would be imprudent of them to touch any AT&T
 property, so I saw
 nothing useful for them to do except get off my land.
 
 Just after Almacer went out my front door, I noticed that
 he'd left the
 aDSL bridge unit for Cheryl's connection in the middle of my
 living room
 underneath one of my chairs, with the AC power connection
 daisy-chained
 off a power strip and the power cable stretched across the
 living room.
 
 I opened the door and called to the departing Almacer,
 asking him to
 please put the unit somewhere competent like in the corner,
 not under a
 chair with a fire and trip hazard power cord across my
 living room
 floor.  He called back some excuse about the power
 strip being the only
 convenient access point to power, and suggested I fix
 it.  Rather than
 saying 'Don't you have _any_ pride of workmanship?', as the
 answer was
 obvious, I just turned back inside and moved the unit to the
 obvious
 place in the corner, with its own power feed.
 
 
 Around 3pm, an AT&T truck arrived.  This guy is
 good.  He already had
 remote diagnostic data from the central office, indicating a
 short
 circuit on the telco side.  I showed him to the demarc
 point, and he
 quickly verified no dial tone.  He traced the cable,
 found it to be
 damaged, and said he'd run all-new cable, which he
 did.  1/2 hour later,
 we had landline voice telephone and Raw Bandwidth
 Communications data
 back, solid.
 
 
 I spent the next several hours trimming trees all around the
 several
 overhead cables so that no foliage is near them.  That
 was a long day.
 
 
 Roll forward to today.  I turn on the TiVo.  I
 noticed yesterday evening
 that the TiVo was indicating "Searching for signal on:
 Antenna In.  See
 'Messages & Settings' / 'Troubleshooting' for info", but
 thought nothing
 of it.  I checked both of the TiVo's tuners:  Both
 were indicating no
 antenna signal.
 
 Back in August 2011, when we terminated with extreme
 prejudice the
 household Comcast account in order to go with over-the-air
 and Internet
 television instead, we paid the best antenna guy in Silicon
 Valley, AV
 Solutions Pro of Mountain View, to implement the best
 solution.  The
 proprietor studied the problem, then installed two outside
 antennas, one
 pointing at (IIRC) Mission Peak, Fremont, and the other at
 Sutro Tower
 in San Francisco.  Signals from both go from the roof
 to coax cable,
 then under the house to the office where the television and
 TiVo boxes
 are.
 
 I guess the breaking of that service at the time Comcast's
 subcontractor
 OC Communications visited was just coincidence. 
 Certainly, Timothy
 Almacer would not have, say, incompetently disconnected the
 antenna's
 coax cable to steal it for his aDSL run, right?  I
 mean, it would be
 cynical to even think that.
 
 
 So, I guess _three_ services spontaneously broke during the
 Comcast / OC
 Communications installation visit.  Totally
 coincidental.
 
 I'll bet it 'happens all the time.'
 
 
 We are likely at this point to avoid having any other
 Comcast or OC
 Communications personnel cross my property line.  I am
 likely to pay
 good money  to have AV Solutions Pro come back and
 repair the damage,
 and Deirdre has e-mailed him with that request.
 
 I wouldn't want OC Communications to visit, and, say, my
 house burn
 down.  I'm sure it'd be totally coincidental if that
 did, though, and
 it's possible that that happens all the time.
 
 {EXTREMELY DEROGATORY OPINION AND REFERENCES TO IMPROBABLE
 BIOLOGICAL
 ENGINEERING FEATS REDACTED}
 
 
 
 
 [1] http://deirdre.net/getting-rid-of-cable/
 http://deirdre.net/cable-the-final-insult/
 http://deirdre.net/cord-cutting-antenna-ho/
 http://deirdre.net/on-the-funding-of-television/
 http://deirdre.net/why-television-pricing-is-broken/
 
 
 
 
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Message: 4
 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2015 01:03:35 -0400
 From: Ruben Safir <ruben at mrbrklyn.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: Re: [conspire] One service visit, three existing
 services
     demolished
 Message-ID: <56359D27.3000301 at mrbrklyn.com>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
 
 On 11/01/2015 12:48 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
 > What is the most hated company in America?
 
 
 Microsoft, followed by Apple, and Facebook.  Honourable
 mention to the
 NY Yankees, Rite-aid, cvs/caremart, your health-issuance
 conglomerate
 which goes by whatever name it does this week.
 
 
 
 
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Message: 5
 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2015 00:03:42 -0700
 From: Tim Utschig <tim at tetro.net>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: Re: [conspire] One service visit, three existing
 services
     demolished
 Message-ID: <20151101070342.GA23669 at tetro.net>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
 
 On Sun, Nov 01, 2015 at 01:03:35AM -0400, Ruben Safir
 wrote:
 > On 11/01/2015 12:48 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
 > > What is the most hated company in America?
 > 
 > Microsoft, followed by Apple, and Facebook. 
 Honourable mention to the
 > NY Yankees, Rite-aid, cvs/caremart, your
 health-issuance conglomerate
 > which goes by whatever name it does this week.
 
 
 2015: #1: Comcast
   http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/07/23/customer-service-hall-of-shame/print/
 
 2014: #2: Comcast
   http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/07/18/customer-service-hall-of-shame-3/print/
 
 
 Makes me feel bad for switching from Raw Bandwidth to
 Comcast
 Business just for more bandwidth.  Two
 Netflix/Youtube/etc. users
 in the house at the same time on a 3 Mbps DSL link made it
 too
 difficult to work from home.  Still, no excuse.  I
 did a bad
 thing and I should feel bad.
 
 AT&T sales people dropped by several times over the past
 couple
 years.  They each claimed fiber* was recently installed
 in our
 neighborhood.  Each time I asked how much bandwidth
 they were
 offering.  All but the latest time they said 17 Mbps.
 
 The most recent time a nice, straight-talking AT&T sales
 person
 came by and told me I could get 45 Mbps** for less than what
 I'm
 paying for Comcast Business.  They'd also allow 30 days
 to
 try it and cancel without breaking the contract.
 
 I'm not sure how I feel about AT&T, but I'm sure I feel
 better
 about it than Comcast.  Ideally I'd pay Raw Bandwidth
 for layer-3
 service over AT&T-managed layer-1/2.  Hopefully
 that will
 be a reality someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
 
 * Fiber to Somehwere in the Neighborhood.  Some type of
 DSL for
   the last mile, presumably.
 
 ** Coincidentally, 45 Mbps fiber to the home is what we
 were
    promised (and paid for) in the '90s:
      http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
 
 -- 
 Tim Utschig <tim at tetro.net>
 408-644-3861 (mobile)
 
 
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Message: 6
 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2015 01:03:11 -0800
 From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: Re: [conspire] One service visit, three existing
 services
     demolished
 Message-ID: <20151101090311.GA9959 at linuxmafia.com>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
 
 It gets worse:  I figured out exactly what happened to
 the television signal.
 Picture here:  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CStmJH1UsAAa6Qo.jpg
 
 
 Let me share a small epiphany I had, that helped me reach a
 new
 pinnacle of extreme annoyance:
 
   Comcast's subcontractor deliberately sabotaged the
 antenna gear we 
   installed in 2011 for the sole purpose of firing
 Comcast.
 
 Seriously.  During one installer visit, three services
 were sabotaged in
 total (landline telephone, existing aDSL, and antenna
 television feed),
 and the third of those was the one we _paid for to get rid
 of Comcast_.
 
 Think about that one, for a minute.
 
 
 As mentioned upthread, in 2011 we paid excellent local
 company AV
 Solutions Pro $400 to install two cutting-edge rooftop TV
 antennas, so
 we could dispense with Comcast cable television
 service.  The two feeds
 of 75 ohm RG-6 coax cable join and traverse the roofedge to
 the far side
 of the garage, then go through the water meter box to inside
 the garage,
 and cross the garage ceiling to the crawlspace door. 
 There, inside the
 crawlspace, AV Solutions Pro joined the antenna feed to an
 existing
 underfloor coax cable network running to three indoor
 terminations, in
 the living room, the office (where we have the TiVos and
 large TV
 monitor, and the master bedroom.
 
 Now, imagine yourself a subcontractor installer for a firm
 like Comcast.  
 You visit a house, and decide to run new coax cable from the
 overhead
 telephone pole to the garage.  The customer (Cheryl)
 said she wants the 
 aDSL bridge unit inside the living room.  You see
 existing TV antenna
 feed from the roof through the garage to the living room,
 and note that
 it reaches the living room.  Score!  Do you...?
 
 1.  Ask the customer what to do, or
 2.  Run cable ~40 feet to the living room, _or_
 3.  Cut the antenna cable just outside the water meter
 box, and then 
     steal & repurpose all inbound cable just
 to avoid having to run
     40' of coax.
 
 Guess which one he did?  That's right, he could see
 plain as day that he
 was slicing and disabling the whole antenna system, and just
 did so
 without permission or discussion.
 
 If you would never presume to grab an entire house cable
 network 
 without asking 'Is this avalable?' first,
 congratulation:  You
 disqualified from being a Comcast subcontractor on grounds
 of excessive
 business ethics.
 
 
 This covert theft of the entire network of underfloor coax
 has left me
 in a quandary:
 
 There is zero point in wasting the entire underfloor coax
 network 
 on one aDSL feed to the living room.  To create that
 feed, the bozo
 robbed us of ability to have television signal in _any_ of
 the three
 previously supplied locations.  I believe two solutions
 are possible:
 
   1.  'Put it back, fool.'  Reconnect the
 antennas to the existing 
   cross-garage cable and subsequent underfloor cable
 network.   Then, 
   after that remedial re-creation of our 2011
 we're-firing-Comcast setup, 
   separately run a _new_ cable run from the garage to
 the living room.  
   This should probably be around the garage and patio
 roof-edge to the
   living room and through the outside wall, a run of
 about 40 feet,
   which is what the bozo _should_ have done on Friday.
 
   2.  Concede Comcast's theft, and instead run all
 new cable from the
   garage room to the crawlspace, under the floor to (at
 least) the office.  
   This is much, much more work than option #1, and with
 less satisfactory
   results.  (Without runing a -lot- of underfloor
 cable, we end up with
   television signal at only one indoor location.)
 
 So, I expect it'll be option #1 -- which amounts to 'pay
 someone
 competent to un-do the Comcast's subcontractor's sabotage,
 reconnect the
 antenna feed competently, and then independently do the
 fresh cable run
 to the living room that Comcast's idiots should have done'.
 
 It burns me that these sabateurs are getting _paid_, and now
 we get to
 pay to undo the damage they did.
 
 
 I've considered requiring OC Communications to come back and
 do it right
 at their expense.  The problem with that is that I
 would rather not
 trust them to do anything more challenging than, say,
 picking belly
 button lint -- and am presently disinclined to let them
 cross my
 property line until some time after the heat death of the
 universe.
 
 
 Some longer-term lessons:
 
 1.  Modern houses are complex systems, and any visiting
 contractor needs
 to be closely supervised.  'Closely supervised' means a
 local insists 
 on hearing in details what work will be done, understands
 it, is
 competent to judge whether this is what is wanted, and then
 watches 
 the contractor like a hawk.
 
 2.  Cheryl did none of that; she punted.  She also
 understood roughly 
 nothing about the existing house cabling.  She was
 surprised when 
 Deirdre explained to her today about cabling from the
 antenna to the
 TiVos:  She never really thought about how the
 television signal
 arrived.  She knew nothing about what was being done
 and how; she knew
 only that magic Comcast packets arrived at her computer.
 
 3.  I expect that your typical Comcast installer has
 all the competence
 and due diligence of a drunken frat boy.
 
 I'd advise not letting one set foot on your property, ever.
 
 
 
 
 ------------------------------
 
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 End of conspire Digest, Vol 145, Issue 1
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