It might have been April Fools Day, but I’m not foolin’ when I say I’ve had some excellent customer service since I’ve been in Cape. We finally decided to switch our Internet provider from AT&T to Charter. That’s not a knock on AT&T’s Erin, who did a good job explaining her company’s offerings and being candid about her personal experience with ISPs in the area.
The result was Al showing up at the house within minutes of his installation window, just like Lisa Smith said he would.
Above and beyond
I told Al that I wanted the modem and wireless router to be in Mother’s bedroom where it would hook up to a large UPS and plug into a power strip on the floor so that when I got the inevitable Internet trouble call, I could just say, “Step on the big red button until everything blinks out; wait about a minute, then step on it again.”
It was a little complicated because the path was hidden by acoustic tile in the basement ceiling. I had blazed that trail before, so I warned Al that “this is going to either be real easy or real hard.”
It was easy
Al brought the expertise and equipment to fish the wire and get the internal wiring hooked up in no time. After that, it was a trip up to the aerial cable to connect us to the world, and getting the equipment in the bedroom plugged in.
He WAS impressed with the cool Wifi Analyzer ap on my Droid that does all sorts of signal analysis. Minutes after he saw it, he was downloading it.
It’s nice to have a guy on the job who is knowledgeable, professional and personable. I never thought I’d be saying good things about a cable company.
For what it’s worth, both AT&T and Charter were in the ballpark of delivering the bandwidth they promised: about 6 Mbps down and 512K up for AT&T, and 65 down and 4.3 up for Charter. For roughly the same monthly price, I’m willing to gamble to get the higher speeds.