High strung Induhvidual.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

Gotta rant.

The t-storm featuring black skies, 60 MPH wind driven rain and hailstones the size of marbles was... an interesting road challenge to say the least, but what really got my goat today was my first residential call.

This guy is convinced his 802.11G network we installed is suddenly not working properly after 3 months of perfectly normal operation and no changes. I checked, he hasn't monkeyed with it at all. He's also convinced the two 2.4 GHz cordless phone systems he has in his house can't POSSIBLY interfere with it, even tho they frequently mess with each other and cause dropped calls. I demonstrated that if you hit the channel button enough times, or even pick up the phone enough times, the wireless stations will start dropping off. He won't believe me. I warned him about this when we installed it, but he didn't want to pay extra for 802.11a. Tough shit, this isn't my problem.

He's saying his Internet connection will go out with no warning, no "wireless connection unavailable", and stay that way for hours. So I offer replace the base station, but he doesn't want an identical one. So we sell him a different one at our cost and take the old one. After the joy of having a firmware flash fail on the new one (Why the hell did Cisco sully their good name with Linksys???) I verify the wireless is operating perfectly, save for the occasional cordless phone interference.

He still won't blame the phones. By now, he is getting agitated. Did I mention this pot-bellied sasquatch hasn't the decency to put a shirt on while I'm there? Ecccch.

Then, lo and behold, the Internet goes poof. Wireless is up, but the router suddenly has a 192.168.100.11 WAN address. Ah-ha! I look over at the cable modem and sure enough, it's in the process of rebooting. Its status page tells me it can't get a good upstream. Come to think of it, I had to drive around a cableco truck on the way in here... And this problem just started last week. Cable modem comes up, Internet comes back.. no wait, there it goes... and the cable modem reboots. Lost the signal. Repeat ad nauseum. By now he's screaming at me that he's not going to pay for a new router and my time if he's still having this problem, yada yada yada OOK OOK OOK.

Now, when I was here last Friday I showed him how to check the wireless signal and the router status from his PC. I ask him if he could get to the status page while the Internet was out. He tells me he could. I explain to him that means the wireless is fine, but the cable is dropping out. So he screams at me some more about "how could my wireless be working for 3 months and then just not work? Why can't you fix it???"

I put in a call to the cableco and get a truck roll scheduled for Wednesday evening. And he bitches about that being inconvenient. After he's been bitching non-stop about how he can't get any work done with no Internet.

Comments

[c0c0c0.livejournal.com]

Working for a major cable ISP I get quite the opisite.

"It can't be my router - it works just fine"...

I feel your pain.

[k8mnstr.livejournal.com]

Ouch, that's rough. Although I have to deal with idiots I am damn glad I don't have to actually see them. I would be fired for either offending them or taken to jail for assaulting them. I definately wouldn't put up with fat ass telling me that it couldn't possibly be his phones although its proven that cordless phones interfere with WAN connections. I definately feel your pain

[cmdrproteus.livejournal.com]

Don't you see?! You can tell people that 802.11(b/g) and modern cordless phones run at the same frequency, meaning it's prone to interference from one another, but they'll be like NO IT WON'T! They're the type of people that would call bullshit on you if you said the sky is blue. Then again, you have some people who think all they need for internet access is a wireless card and NO access point/router. (Yes, I know it's possible for them to intercept signals from roaming APs, but thats not all that reliable)

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

This is precisely why I am wary of getting a wireless network hooked up in my apartment, as my only phone is a 2.4 Ghz cordless. Not that I get too many phone calls, but still. I think between that, and the various cellphones in my apartment and around me causing feedback in my speakers, I would go nuts.

But man. Don't get yourself a wireless network if you don't understand basic troubleshooting. Please.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

What's this thing you people call a cordless phone?

I haven't had a land-line phone for .....uh...well a long time.

I have a digital cell-phone and a cable modem. That's all the communications I need.