Rural Telephone and DSL

[Anonymous Poster]

Terry & Wanker, NY State operates an excellent agency that enforces standards and regulations on utilitys, and even offers an on line complaint capability, IF YOU ARE A UTILITY.
The dipssticks the state employs are the people who are too stupid to get a job at Sears. The only benefit to filing complaints is that it costs the utility $$$$$$ to answer them.
The sad fact is thei was a dam good company a few years back, one of the first in the area to be completely dial back in the 50s, and made progress ever since, till it was sold to Citizens. Citizens is a nationwide utility holding company, and all they know is how to mine every dollar out of any utility they buy. The only good thing about Citizens is that they are stupid enough to publish their tarrifs on the internet, thus enabling people who are fed up to cite where they are failing to meet their service requirement.
BTW, TVA was a followon to the Rural Electrification Administration, not the leader. REA still exists it has merely been renamed. Rural Carriers as defined under REA regulations get to gouge customers for "geographical" area, and are allowed to self certify every 10 years that they are still a rural exchange. Interestingly, there is no government audit or oversight of this certification. The FCC is so self entertaining with visions of LEO satellites and 2ghz -v- 5 ghz smr systems they have forgotten wireline completely. As far as cable and satellite go, I know personally one of the head FCC bureaucrats in that division, and his only job qualification is that he knew the right politician.
Looking to any government agency to do anything beyond cost the taxpayer money is just a pipe dream.

 

[manganos]

I agree with you. 8 minutes to wait for DT is outrageous. Call in and complain. You are paying for the service so get what you pay for.

 

[patrickg]

wroughtn_harv, You have my belated but heartfelt and sincerest condolences on having had your telephone service DEVOLVE to Valor Telecom. It is an antiquated, customer hostile, backward and &%#^* #$%*$*^(% company!!!

They truly S U C K!!

I have had my phone line cut 5 times in less than a year and know what it is like to be at their mercy for repairs. At least one of our local techs is a whiz but some are clueless and the bozos answering calls at the buisness office are )*(&$ )&%$ (^)(&^^& twits. I selected Sprint for interstate long distance and had a 3 way conference call with Valor included. Went through 3 operators to find one that both communicated well in English AND could grasp what the Sprint lady (really sharp) was explaining. Still Valor screwed me up, cancelling my intra-state calling plan with them so I got a $400 bill from Sprint (my ISP is long distance). Valor has few plans and only one of interest to me. For $20/month I can call the community where my ISP is located as many times for as long as I want. This adds $2o to my monthly internet connectivity, but Oh Well.

Read the fine print in your monthly statement and try to decide what the H-E-double-toothpicks it is that you are paying. I especially like the "modernization or whatever they call it, charge. What modernization?

Again, you have my sympathy,

Patrick

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Morning Patrick,

I've got Verizon.

Back in 96 I was helping a bud build his fence around his place. It was in the summer time and hotter than it needed to be. As we were getting after it he out of the kindness of his heart offered me a job. What was bad was at that particular time I suffered from a mental weak moment and accepted.

His company had just acquired the master contract over an area of GTE that had been like an island for umpteen years. And the way it was supposed to work was my bud's company took over all the contract work. But it was understood that all the old contract relationships would continue as was with bud's company in charge.

They needed someone who knew the business to come in and be a responsible managing employee for his company. It was supposedly the easiest job in Tejas. Bud wanted me for it for a variety of reasons. I'd like to think one of those was my integrity.

Within thirty days of being on the job the locals hated me like I was from the IRS. That's the company guys and their contractors. There were complaints about me all the way to GTE headquarters in San Angelo.

I'm not the sharpest tack in the box. But the very first thing I found was hundreds of thousands of feet of telco cable buried to substandard depth. For umpteen years the locals, contractors and company supervision, had buried the cable at twenty four inches and still billed at the GTE spec of thirty.

They wanted to hang me from the highest tree for exposing that. It's then that I learned one of the cold hard facts of life in the city even in the country. If you're gonna commit fraud do it on a grand scale and involve everyone. That way it'll be minimized cause the cure or justice appears to be terminal treatment.

The locals were put in their place and the rules were re explained to them. Especially about how all invoicing should go through me before being sent through channels. That didn't work. The first invoice that came through was blatant double billing.

Another great big stink as sparks flew high and low. It was only exaggerated as I started going back through old invoices routed around me and found triple billing.

The fraud was massive and obvious.

Bottom line? I was moved to another area closer to home because I was too emotionally involved. Threats to my personal safety have a tendency to get my back up. And yes, I got some pleasure in proving over and over that they might be deacons of their church and president of the local school board but they were crooks pure and simple.

I went back to working for myself. Four months in the real world and it once again proved I don't play well with others. It was refreshing to hear baptists in a meeting referring to me, an in your face atheist, of being like John the Baptist trying to save the world.

BTW that area is now under Valor. The main criminal in my mind because he is the one that manipulated the whole situation where work out there ran two to six times the general rates bottom line is one of their biggest contractors. And the front man for his company in dealing with Valor used to be the main man for GTE over the area in question. So you now have the foxes in the henhouse.

When I was fighting for my very life professionally I got into some jobs they'd done just before our company became involved. One in particular should have ran about five thousand dollars. But they'd charged a rate per foot that was twice that. I thought that was criminal. But when I got into the numbers I found they'd added on what was normally included to the point that it was over thirty thousand dollars!

What's really sad about this is the subscribers weren't getting what GTE or they were paying for. The service was substandard and GTE could very well show expenditures that anywhere else in the country would reflect improvement.

A little off topic but that exposure to fraud so blatant has made me suspicious of a lot of things. It might be why my ear is tuned to all this stuff with Cheney and Halliburton. It's like hearing last night a snippet about how that we're going to give aid to Afghanistan but we're not going to do it with funds but funding. We're going to be funding the construction of water control and roads etc. Guess who's the biggest contractor over there already building all the facilities for our troops? And who will surely be the funnel with the velco sides for all this funding for new construction? Yup, Halliburton through it's Brown and Root division.

I think the thing that blew my mind the most was in one of the meetings when the crooks were explaining how what they hadn't done was criminal. They were actually convinced that it was okay to double bill or even triple bill because they were doing good work and they needed to be paid for it. And the agreed upon rates weren't enough. That was of course with them doing proven substandard work. But that was good enough because that was the way it was done and had always been done.

 

[Scott_F]

I'd like to pose a question here since some of you guys seem to know a bit about telecom. We recently moved into a new house in a new subdivision that is about 3/4 mile from our old house (entrance to subdivision is about 1/4 mile from old house on the "main drag") At the old house, I regularly got about 52K modem connections and DSL was available, although I didn't subscribe. At the new place, I can only connect at 28.8 and DSL is not available. My new next door neighbor can only get 28.8 as well, haven't checked with other folks in the new neighborhood. Any ideas on what happened here? Did I cross some magical line for signal strength? I can understand the DSL non-availability, but the modem connection has got me a little ticked. Is there any way for a homeowner to check for noisy lines? Our supplier is Verizon - they've politely ignored my requests for help. Thanks for any suggestions.
Scott

 

[JoeR]

Go straight to the state public service commission. I have found all other routes will get you nothing... Yesterday, my phone company installed 3 load coils to improve my line quality. I asked about my neighbors phones, and the phone guys said, "they didn't complain so they did nothing for them." Yet, the entire neighborhood has the same problem! It's the squeeky wheel gets the oil syndrome. You just need to keep complaining!

Joe

 

[BXmark]

They installed a 3" thick fiberoptic cable stretching from Cincinnati to Indianapolis that runs right past our place. But of course, there is no way we can tie into it.

 

[Wingnut]

Use the same methods others have tried .... backhoe .... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[TerryinMD]

And... be prepared to pay for the repairs. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

3" thick.... hmmm about 244 strands to be spliced together.... plus backhoe and other guys hanging around.... plus the fine.... hmmmm.... take out a mortgage!!! /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Terry

 

[Wingnut]

Terry .... just refer to that other thread about insurance ..... /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif