Hello everyone! I just wanted to explain my absence of late. I have been trapped in the absurd land of “GotNoInternet”. Being accustomed to actually having internet, this has been upsetting.
This isn’t a result of our poor planning, nor is it a result of not being able to pay. It’s a result of other people’s lack of planning. The people who built the the house we are renting. The house that was just built this year.
When you build a house you should make it internet accessible. (Also, as a side note, it should be accessible for mail delivery, but more on that subject later.)
We moved to our new home. Our new home is literally new. We are the first people to ever live here. It’s set back a bit from the road behind another house and I had to teach my GPS where it is.
A few days before we moved, we called Ziply (Frontier) because we used their internet at our previous house, and overall were happy with the service. They informed us they didn’t have internet service in our new area yet.
As much as we didn’t want to move our services to the rather poorly regarded Comcast (Xfinity), we needed internet. All of us use internet every day, including one college student whose school is completely online at present.
Our roommate reluctantly called Comcast and was given a “case number” to refer to for our case, and assured they would contact him in the next few days for an appointment. Days ticked by with no call from them.
Since he was working, I decided to call Comcast to find out why there were no calls from them; I was informed they “have no record of any call to them”.
Can someone please tell me what the number we were given was about? Of course not! Someone took our order and failed to enter it. Or they lied completely. Asking did no good.
We then set up an actual appointment for them to come out. This was in early October, and they had nothing open until the 22nd when, they assured us, we would finally have internet. We waited patiently.
Finally the day arrived! The excitement in the air was palpable after using a hotspot for weeks anytime we needed internet. We greeted the arrival of the Comcast installer joyfully. And then, he said, “I can’t install for you because there are no lines to this house. We have to dig a trench and bury a line.”
After a good scream into a pillow, I started looking for something that would work for the meantime. I thought about Verizon. We get excellent cell reception here so I figured perhaps there was a way to purchase a more permanent hotspot. An unlimited data hotspot.
I contacted Verizon and sure enough, they had a device called a global modem, which we ordered on our unlimited data cell phone plan. It was set to arrive on Tuesday. Of this week. 10/27/2020 I believe.
On Tuesday FedEx delivered our modem. I gleefully unpacked the small receiver and when plugged in to a computer it was fast and fairly reliable. We did have trouble with it cutting out when moved so we decided it might be best to keep it plugged in to my desktop computer. After all, the desktop stays in one place.
Here begins another little diversion. I had received a newer graphics card for my desktop computer and I needed to install that. It turned out that it didn’t have the proper cables, so I had to find a place to get the cables. I called around and really couldn’t find cables until I contacted one particularly good shop in my area. I will highlight the shop because I was very impressed with the guy and his operation.
We brought the computer in and he rapidly found a cable to suit our needs. We came in later in the day when the shop was very busy, so he did a test that the computer could now get a picture on a monitor, which was the problem we had presented. When we we got home the computer wouldn’t boot up. I called him and we walked through a couple of potential fixes involving changing the boot order in the BIOS. None managed to find the boot disk so we decided to bring it in again the next day, but earlier, before it got too busy.
Fast forward to the next day, when we headed back into town. We brought the computer in and Josh got it working by creating a new path to the boot disk. We headed home and set it up, and yippee! It worked !
For two days we happily use our internet….
And on the second day I got a disturbing text message from Verizon. It stated that we were about to run out of high speed data. This made no sense to me at all. I didn’t understand how our unlimited data plan could be running out of data. I called Verizon.
Verizon told me that, yes, I still have unlimited data but now that we’ve run through the rather pitiful 15 gigs of high speed data, all of our subsequent data will be very slow. As in 600kbps. I asked if there was anything else I could do with my phone to provide us with what we needed, which was high speed Internet for three people. They told me what I actually needed was a jet pack, which I guess is freestanding and allows for up to five devices to be connected.
I packed up the Global Modem and headed out for the Verizon store in Cornelius, the next town over, happy to be heading for a solution to the problem.
The young man, Adam, who was working the counter, informed me that I would get 30 gigs of high-speed internet with the jet pack. He told me I would get four days before I got an automated message rather than two and that unfortunately, they did not have anything that would do what I needed.
Thank you, Adam, for knowing your stuff and telling me the truth. I appreciate that.
I came home disappointed and not sure what to do. We still had no reliable, fast Internet, and it really kind of felt like we were out of ideas.
I happened to see our neighbor out in his yard. Our driveway runs along the side of his yard because our house is behind his. He was digging, and the thought crossed my mind that, while it’s an off chance, maybe our landlord came to some sort of a deal with him in which he would dig the trench for the cable company to lay the line in. While I didn’t think it was likely, I thought I might as well ask because I’d never met this particular neighbor before and it usually is good to meet your neighbors.
It turns out he was planting some trees which is wonderful because I like trees. He also informed me that he has Ziply Internet. Yes, the house directly in front of us has Ziply! He showed me the line that goes right into the house directly from the pole by the end of the driveway. It is, in fact, not an underground cable, but instead is an above ground fiber optic cable from the pole to his house. So I decided it would probably be a good idea to call Ziply again.
I called Ziply and had a very extensive conversation with the sales representative, in which I told him about everything that we have been dealing with. Everything including the fact that we don’t have any cable or other line to provide service to our house. He cheerfully informed me that it is not needed because it is a different set of lines or infrastructure from that used by Comcast. He asked if we would like to have it installed and of course we said yes. They were able to get someone out today between one and five.
The installer arrived about three-ish, maybe a little later, and immediately said he had to go outside and look for a connection.
This was when we started to lose it. We already knew there was no connection. There’s no connection in the house and there’s no connection outside of the house.
We already knew that because we had that discussion with the Comcast guy. And after all the discussion I had with the sales representative about this issue, they should’ve known also that there was no connection inside or outside of our house.
The installer informed us that there’s already an order in for the other unit in our house, which is a side by side duplex. He said he would go around and draw a map or something, so he could put it in another order. At this point we were just done with this crap, but might as well let the guy go and put in the order because somehow we have to have Internet. He claimed that the order should be filled within a few days. I kind of doubt that given that it’s been more than a few days since we weren’t able to get service from Comcast. At this point we don’t believe anybody about anything.
So this is my sad story, although I promised you I would mention the mailbox thing, so here goes.
It would seem that when a house is built, it’s up to the builder to speak with the post office and have the post office OK where they’re going to put the mailbox. When I first heard that I thought it sounded rather silly, but in retrospect it makes sense. They have a route that goes through the neighborhood. That route has to be set to be as efficient as possible. Our house is set back behind another house, and apparently our route is a walking route. This would mean that the letter carrier would have to traipse back to our house and then back down the driveway again. It makes sense that they might want us to have our mailboxes, for example, at the end of our driveway.
I had no idea that this was a requirement, but then again I’m not the person building a house. If I was I would have looked into things that need to have taken care of when you build a house. If the builder had done their job correctly, there would already be Internet service and a properly placed mailbox at this house. Instead, we had to discover that our mail wasn’t being delivered because we were expecting a ballot and knew when it was mailed out. It occurred to me that perhaps we weren’t getting mail because the house was new and it wasn’t registered with the post office. That was close. They had our address but they didn’t have a proper mailbox to put our mail into. There are mailboxes on the front of the building but those were not put where are the post office wanted them located.
If I ever build a house, I will do better than this. That being said, I will continue the search for internet and I will win eventually. And I will be back ASAP.
Kate's Ramblings. 