OK, ready for a funny story?

This is about my latest contact with Windstream Communications, our telephone and Internet provider.

“10:59 a.m. 24th call, called broadband tech support, speeds still 1.5mbps or lower, paying for 6mbps since May 11, put on hold. Tech answered 11:10, said it wasn’t put over to 6mbps yet, and he didn’t know why the other techs didn’t do it. After a couple of minutes, he said to do a speedtest, and it was over 6mbps! He said if I had any more problems call static ip dept., put in phone number, and not as a residential customer.

25th call, Called to try to get a refund on the slow speeds and the 175 outages we’ve had since I started keeping track on April 4. Got transferred, explained I wanted a refund, she said I was sent to wrong office, transferred again. Told the rep. I wanted a refund for all of the outages and slow speeds, put on hold. He came back on and wanted to know if we would like to combine our telephone, internet and cable TV. I laughed and asked if he was out of his freaking mind. I think he was a bit offended, even after I explained the 175 outages, and no way did I want my television service through a company with that record. He issued a credit of $64.

Internet went down again last night (thanks, Windstream Communications), for the 175th time since I started keeping track in April. They last anywhere from a few minutes to 17 hours. I just love to listen to their recorded messages when I’m on hold (last night I was on hold for over a half hour), talking about Windstream being able to meet your business solutions and their ‘blazing fast high speed internet.’

Ha!!

My neighbor’s son, Jim, is biking to Alaska to raise money for cancer research. His blog is http://pedalingforpennies.info/. He has good reason to want to beat cancer, since his dad died from it. Wally was such a nice guy. He got a snowthrower attachment for his Kubota tractor, and would blow out our driveway with it. Just a sweetheart!

Jim is leaving Friday, and today a Kare 11 TV news reporter came out to interview him and his mom. I recorded it and posted it on youtube.

I also posted a video of Suka and I exercising on the exercise bike.

I’ve really been enjoying the Baltimore Orioles,

 and I had a Scarlet Tanager! They are such striking birds.

Another complaint about Windstream Communications,
Internet still down, 6:50 a.m. Called, their message still says it will be back up by May 17, 5:02 a.m. Got transferred to someone else. He tried to get through to their engineers and was unable, so he said he would call back when he was able to get some information from them.

Called at 7:30, this guy said that there were repair guys working in the area, and it should be done within the hour.

Called 8:40, tried broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4, voice message says it’s for dsl technicians and please don’t give it to customers :) put on hold for a ‘network analyst.’ She asked what state I was in and put me on hold. 8:54 got disconnected. Called again. While I was on hold (9:03) Internet came back on.

I seriously doubt it will do any good, but I’ve written up letters to both of our senators, our governor and the attorney general. I’m not the only one having to deal with this poor excuse of a communications company.

Oh, and I ran their speedtest this morning, 1.5mbps. A far cry from the 6mbps that we’re paying for.

Lovely Windstream is at it again. I called last week because our speeds were dropping down to below 1mbps (we’re paying for 3mbps), and they said they were installing new equipment and it would be all done by the end of the week. I switched over to their 6mbps package, hoping that after their new equipment was installed, we would maybe be able to get 3mbps. Well, the internet went down at 3:50 this afternoon. I’ve called several times, and at first they said they had an outage in our area, and they were working on it, and it would be 24-48 hours. I was a little bit pissy, I admit.

I’ve called several more times, and now they’ve got it down to a voice recording that it will be back up by 5 a.m. tomorrow.

I HATE Windstream. I wish they had never bought our phone company, with their ‘blazing fast internet speed.’

When you have a business, you’re always looking for an effective way to advertise. ArtisanCraftPage.com is like posting your business card on the local cafe/coffee shop’s bulletin board. It’s $100, BUT that’s for 4 years of advertising. When you go to it, you see a little icon, but when you mouse over it, it expands into the ad, and clicking on it takes you to the website of the advertiser. The good part of it is that with all of the linking, it brings it up in the search engines.

Tom has a nice post about it and how it works.