I have never dealt with a competent person from any telco, I'm pretty sure it's idiots all the way down (or up).
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 08:34 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 00:28 |
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Segmentation Fault posted:I have never dealt with a competent person from any telco, I'm pretty sure it's idiots all the way down (or up). One of my Comcast Business installers was incredibly competent when he came to wire up my apartment. Knew what he was doing, was friendly, and cut one of the dead "drill a hole in the wall" cables that a previous tenant had left. Another Comcast Business installer in another (commercial/artist loft) building managed to run wiring from a central panel within the building to our unit, including drilling holes in the wall and leaving cable at the demarc, and then left without even hooking it to a meter. Second tech showed up the next day (this was a 2-person 2-day job for some reason) and discovered that while the building was wired internally by them for cable, they hadn't actually lit the building, which could have been verified by the first tech if that tech gave even half a poo poo. That second story is the only time I've literally invoiced Comcast for my time and effort, and they loving paid up.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 11:02 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Huh. The way I had heard it, they got physical access to one POS machine and went from there. The article is almost certainly right, though. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/09/inside-target-corp-days-after-2013-breach/ quote:In one instance, they were able to communicate directly with cash registers in checkout lanes after compromising a deli meat scale located in a different store. Emphasis theirs. Truth always ends up stranger than fiction
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 12:31 |
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Friend of mine went from doing infosec to running a restaurant a few years ago and he's still looking for a point of sale system that isn't either a complete piece of poo poo, a massive security hole or both.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 13:41 |
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We had a wise + competent rep for our ISP. He died during a heart attack two months ago. His boss is filling in for him on the admin side of things and says his office is still raw -- everyone knew and loved him because he knew what the heck he was doing and made time to tutor others.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 14:25 |
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I get back to my desk from making a coffee and the phone is going, "Hello, IT support?" "Where the bloody hell were you? Making a coffee?" I can tell from the tone and anger it's my boss! "Yes, actually making an actual coffee." "Well, tell the new guy to answer his loving phone will you!" "He was also making a coffee with me." "Doesn't take two of you..." grumbles into something I just ignore. he continues, "This other guy needs you to turn his laptop on for him as he's out the office." "Yes, I've already done that, I was letting it boot while I made a coffee and was going to reply when I got back to my desk. Anything else you'd like me to already be doing?" "No, that's fine." I'm slipping. I'm letting passive aggressive bullshit comments drop out and letting pointless bullshit get to me. Hard to keep up the pretense some days.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 17:48 |
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Segmentation Fault posted:I have never dealt with a competent person from any telco, I'm pretty sure it's idiots all the way down (or up). We recently installed a comcast business MAN and I was blown the gently caress away by how good these guys were. They did a site survey, sketched our building in a CAD program, took 50 pictures and did a complete mockup on the pictures of where they were running the fiber. The fact that it was Comcast just made it all the more surreal. Definitely the exception, not the rule however. We're trying to get a simple MPLS link installed in Rochester NY, the circuit was originally ordered in July... delivery date was Dec/1 from the LEC. They emailed us at 4:30 yesterday saying basically "Yeah, didn't get this done, will try to finish it in the next 3 weeks, k?"
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 17:59 |
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Yay, ISP chat. I've been posting a bit about in the small shop admin thread, but every interaction I've had with CenturyLink has left me convinced they are being run by a retarded alpha version of Skynet. The people themselves, when you get to talk to them, are helpful enough; but fuckin' Hell the underlying systems and business practices are absolute poo poo. It has taken me a solid -week- of hassling them on the phone to get an additional ADSL line order confirmed; a week of the order silently being cancelled, specs changing, fees appearing\disappearing. I cannot get my head around how they seem so blase` to all the weird things their system throws up at them either; isn't anyone slightly worried about orders disappearing for a business client? The tech side of things is terrible as well (we currently have a line running from the exchange to our demarc -across the ground- that's been needing to be buried for 2 weeks), but being from Australia originally I'm already a bit desensitised to horrible DSL tech. The weirdest issue I had the other week though I'd love to know the reason behind. We have two ADSL lines coming in, and a T1. Both ADSL lines run from the same exchange, both CenturyLink. T1 is through another provider, but it runs on CenturyLink's lines. Most web traffic is over the primary ADSL line, VoIP traffic of the T1, some other application specific data over secondary ADSL with some simple load balancing of spill over traffic from the primary when needed. On our internal network, we suddenly couldn't reach our externally hosted website. Test showed a whole bunch of long time outs and inconsistent packet loss when trying to reach the IP range of it, but all other traffic was fine. Out of curiousity, I got the switch to start routing all website traffic over the T1... and it worked! Then for funsies, changed the route to the secondary ADSL... and that was fine as well! Switched back to primary... borked. I can't figure out how it could be technical; I imagine both ADSL lines at least are hitting the same routing hardware at there end. Deliberate throttling maybe? CenturyLink support of course had no useful answers.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 18:01 |
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Segmentation Fault posted:I have never dealt with a competent person from any telco, I'm pretty sure it's idiots all the way down (or up). I used to work at TWC, and we had competent, knowledgeable, and courteous people in our department (Tier 3 support). Good loving luck getting to us though.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 18:04 |
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Come work in Montana and you guys will learn to love the telcos your dealing with now. Im talking stuff like you sign a 5 year multi million dollar contract and they take over a year to implement and then fail to deliver what was promised. Oh that new MPLS core we were waiting on for 6 months isn't for our traffic? No I dont want my MPLS traffic routed to Colorado and back.... no half a t-1 of throughput, 120 ping between sites is not acceptable. On the up side they hosed up when we canceled the contract and sent us 120k... If it was me I would have cashed that check just for the hell they put us through. Luckly we found a small outfit that was great... until they got bought out. I hate ISPs.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 18:58 |
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Zakutambah posted:...isn't anyone slightly worried about orders disappearing for a business client? They really aren't. Customer service is one of the many reasons my company will no longer do business with them in any manner at all. Even so far as to tell customers we can't guarantee our product uptime if it's connected to a Century Link line. On more than one occasion, they've taken one of our static IPs and assigned it to another customer without any warning or notification. All the time swearing that the old IP is still correct in their system, even though it clearly was't. Every time it takes us physically disconnecting the line to show we were still getting ICMP Echo Responses from said IP. Which would be impossible if someone else wasn't using it. gently caress Century Link and their lovely service.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 19:15 |
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tehfeer posted:Come work in Montana and you guys will learn to love the telcos your dealing with now. Im talking stuff like you sign a 5 year multi million dollar contract and they take over a year to implement and then fail to deliver what was promised. Oh that new MPLS core we were waiting on for 6 months isn't for our traffic? No I dont want my MPLS traffic routed to Colorado and back.... no half a t-1 of throughput, 120 ping between sites is not acceptable. On the up side they hosed up when we canceled the contract and sent us 120k... If it was me I would have cashed that check just for the hell they put us through. Luckly we found a small outfit that was great... until they got bought out. I hate ISPs. The client i'm assigned to deals with Verizon exclusively now. I was not part of planning/implementation (we don't handle network for the client), but they definitely delivered what was promised and in a reasonable time frame (roughly 2500 remote sites, that I know of, to handle so not the largest client ever but no small task).
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 19:19 |
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If you're in the UK and you haven't been enlightened by working with Exponential-e then I feel sorry for you.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 19:34 |
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flosofl posted:gently caress Century Link and their lovely service. Seriously. We're a little stuck with them on a month-to-month basis for the next few months until we've sorted out officespace, but after that I am pushing for a nice fibre connection from anyone else but them. And again, when I included that sentiment to one of the supervisors I was dealing with, they really didn't seemed fussed. A business customer informing you that they have no confidence in their service, and that with no confidence in their service (meaning I can't have confidence in mine) that they wouldn't even be considered as our ISP for a new buildout... and they just seem 'whatever'. I cannot fathom how you stay in business with such an attitude.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 20:13 |
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Just had a member of upper management come in and scream that the webcam they had wasn't working. They plugged the usb cable into an iPhone charger and plugged it in the wall.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 20:56 |
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Kashuno posted:Just had a member of upper management come in and scream that the webcam they had wasn't working. They plugged the usb cable into an iPhone charger and plugged it in the wall. Awwww yeah
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:06 |
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Kashuno posted:Just had a member of upper management come in and scream that the webcam they had wasn't working. They plugged the usb cable into an iPhone charger and plugged it in the wall. If he's screaming, that's when you stand by his door for the entire web conference 'just to be sure the webcam doesn't break again'. Stand there and stare and make him feel the shame and guilt.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:14 |
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Judge Schnoopy posted:make him feel the shame and guilt. Rub his nose in it
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:16 |
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I think ridding oneself of all concept of shame is part of becoming upper management. Never mind guilt.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:21 |
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Ask him every day for the next month if he's remembered to charge his web cam.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:45 |
"The webcam worked when the IT guy was standing here all call, so from here on out an IT staff member is to stand by the desk during all webcam-involved conference calls. No sitting, because we don't know if it'll break again since it worked while standing"
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:49 |
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MJP posted:"The webcam worked when the IT guy was standing here all call, so from here on out an IT staff member is to stand by the desk during all webcam-involved conference calls. No sitting, because we don't know if it'll break again since it worked while standing" I'm okay with this as long as I can use my phone to do research at the same time.
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 21:59 |
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pixaal posted:use my phone to do research A ticket comes in: "During web conference, a faint deep voice could be heard saying "Sodalicious" repeatedly. Please advise."
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# ? Dec 2, 2015 22:14 |
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DigitalMocking posted:We recently installed a comcast business MAN and I was blown the gently caress away by how good these guys were. They did a site survey, sketched our building in a CAD program, took 50 pictures and did a complete mockup on the pictures of where they were running the fiber. The important thing to remember with all large ISPs is that quality of service is highly locality dependent. Especially in cable-based ISPs, the actual company is a patchwork of thousands of origin cable systems, and a good deal of them still operate differently then others in the overarching company. If say Comcast bought out a really good cable system, you're likely to still get good service in that territory. If they bought a really lovely one, then your Comcast service in that area is likely to continue to suck.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 01:23 |
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fishmech posted:The important thing to remember with all large ISPs is that quality of service is highly locality dependent. Especially in cable-based ISPs, the actual company is a patchwork of thousands of origin cable systems, and a good deal of them still operate differently then others in the overarching company. If say Comcast bought out a really good cable system, you're likely to still get good service in that territory. If they bought a really lovely one, then your Comcast service in that area is likely to continue to suck. This is the case even with smaller ISPs. I loving love Cablevision, but I've had them on Long Island/Brooklyn. A friend has them in NJ and says it's garbage.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 01:29 |
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Inspector_666 posted:This is the case even with smaller ISPs. I loving love Cablevision, but I've had them on Long Island/Brooklyn. A friend has them in NJ and says it's garbage. Yeah I live on LI and have Cablevision also. Haven't really had an issue with them in the ~15 years I've had cable internet through them. On the other hand, I know a few people who have Verizon FIOS internet with nothing but trouble. Funny too, because they just laid down the infrastructure for that 10 years ago, so it's pretty new.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 01:32 |
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:Yeah I live on LI and have Cablevision also. Haven't really had an issue with them in the ~15 years I've had cable internet through them. I've never had an issue that wasn't also accompanied by a natural disaster, and even more importantly for me, their techs are knowledgeable and empowered enough to actually resolve issues quickly and on the first try.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 01:33 |
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fishmech posted:The important thing to remember with all large ISPs is that quality of service is highly locality dependent. Especially in cable-based ISPs, the actual company is a patchwork of thousands of origin cable systems, and a good deal of them still operate differently then others in the overarching company. If say Comcast bought out a really good cable system, you're likely to still get good service in that territory. If they bought a really lovely one, then your Comcast service in that area is likely to continue to suck. It's even dependent down on a RF node level too, so customers a block away from each other can have vastly different experiences depending on where or what the problem is. Plus there's not much you can do about some things, like other people downloading something on their phones and placing it directly on top of their modem mid download. Granted your ISP should be smart enough not to use LTE frequencies for data for exactly that scenario but still, it serves as an example of how easy it is for a single customer to ruin everything.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 02:40 |
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Goddamnit your avatar Renegret
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 02:42 |
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 03:00 |
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Inspector_666 posted:This is the case even with smaller ISPs. I loving love Cablevision, but I've had them on Long Island/Brooklyn. A friend has them in NJ and says it's garbage. They're the 5th biggest cable company in the country, that's not exactly small!
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 04:02 |
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fishmech posted:They're the 5th biggest cable company in the country, that's not exactly small! Geographically small, that is. And yeah, that's relative too.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 04:13 |
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fishmech posted:They're the 5th biggest cable company in the country, that's not exactly small! it is when comcast/twc have bought everyone else.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 05:22 |
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Almost all municipality admin staff is off to handle today's EU election. I've handled all my tickets, and my documentation is in order. I'm bored enough to take pictures of my office, and now you get to suffer too!
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 14:59 |
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fishmech posted:They're the 5th biggest cable company in the country, that's not exactly small! What are there, like 7 total?
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 15:10 |
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I used to live in a town with a public Telco and they were universally loved by all. Great services and speed at a great price. I dont understand at all the amount of fear and loathing people have about public utilities. Then you read stories about Telcos lobbying to make municipal internet illegal, it's really disheartening. I hope at some point the barrier to entry gets low and more municipal services could start up.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 15:18 |
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A ticket came in ... Or no, wait, it didn't. It was facebook messenger, it was 8.30 PM and it was from a collegue' about his mothers laptop that gave some kind of warning. gently caress off, I'm not a work.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 15:26 |
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lodewijk posted:A ticket came in ... "I charge triple my hourly rate for consulting work"
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 15:37 |
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RFC2324 posted:it is when comcast/twc have bought everyone else. They haven't. You put them together and it's only 30% of cable users. Erwin posted:What are there, like 7 total? There are 20 with over a million potential cable internet customers (due to area covered, but some of them will be using DSL instead like fools), 9 with over 5 million, and 5 with over 10 million.
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 15:40 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 00:28 |
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I used to live in a town with a public Telco and they were universally loved by all. Great services and speed at a great price. I dont understand at all the amount of fear and loathing people have about public utilities. Then you read stories about Telcos lobbying to make municipal internet illegal, it's really disheartening. I hope at some point the barrier to entry gets low and more municipal services could start up. This has been one of those culture shock things for me with moving to the US... the overwhelming distaste for the government to own/run anything, and that almost cult-ish belief a private company will always run it better. I mean, I'm pretty all for open market, healthy competition when it gets right down to it for most things; but there's just so much infrastructure that really only makes sense being publicly owned. The most thing for though has been despite all that, wrapping my head around state owned liquor stores. We won't let a public office with a vested interest in quality of service to keep state wide infrastructure in working order, obviously some multinational can do that better... but dammit, government knows what is best for you when it comes to alcohol. ((I'm in Utah, I'm aware this is not a nation wide thing))
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# ? Dec 3, 2015 16:17 |