We’re getting closer to fixing our internet connectivity problems. We had to place a couple of calls to Charter Communications, which provides our cable internet service. Seems the wonkiness of last week was due to their system not communicating properly with our modem. Got that fixed using my computer, but then we tried the other laptops and found they still couldn’t connect to the internet, even though we were using an ethernet cable and connecting them directly to the modem.
Another call to Charter helped us figure out that problem. I think that when we disconnect one of the laptops from the ethernet and hook up another one, we lose the IP address the first laptop was using and then we have to repair the connection for the next laptop. Now that we have that process down, I have to reconfigure our router, so that we can all use the internet at the same time, rather than taking turns with the ethernet cord.
The two guys at Charter who walked me through my issues were polite and patient, but I did find the end of these calls to be humorous. Both of them tried to pitch me on getting Charter for our phone service. Charter has been hard selling this for months now, maybe even a year. The company wants all of our communications dollars, by golly, and it wants them now. We’ve received countless pieces in the mail, endless emails, and even people from Charter at our door trying to sell us on the phone service. Our little internet problem over the past week is one of the reasons why we won’t switch. If Charter’s service goes out, we’re screwed. We won’t have any way to call the company to get things fixed. (That’s why the pitch at the end of the tech call was funny.)
Another reason we won’t switch is that we have a rockin’ cool long distance carrier – Credo, formerly known as Working Assets Long Distance. It’s a socially responsible phone company that brings us two political issues every month with our phone bill, so we can see what’s going on in Congress. Credo allows us to make free calls to our legislators, or we can pay a minimal cost for Citizen Letters on the featured issues. We are also able to round up our phone bill – to the nearest dollar, or whatever amount we choose – and those donations go to a list of worthy social justice nonprofit organizations each year.
We like Credo so much that we’ve had the service for over ten years, which is an eternity in the world of phone service.
7 comments
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April 6, 2008 at 3:15 pm
erin g
wow, people still use land lines and pay for long distance? maybe THAT’s what defines a Gen-Xer!
Credo sounds like a cool company! Kudos to them.
April 6, 2008 at 4:30 pm
woowooteacup
Pathetic, isn’t it? We have a pay-as-you-go cell phone, which we use when we’re on the go, but we like the reliability of the land line, along with the fact that our service comes through a great company. If Credo was crap, we’d have long ago switched, but it isn’t, so we haven’t.
April 6, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Caroline
Charter may deliberately have caused your cable internet system to malfunction, just so you would have to call them, providing them the opportunity to persuade you in person to subscribe to their telephone service.
Think about THAT!!!
April 7, 2008 at 8:52 am
woowooteacup
Ah-ha, Caroline! A conspiracy theory of the highest order!
April 7, 2008 at 3:39 pm
erin g
I hear people say that a lot – they find the land line more reliable. Here, the phone company uses that logic to get people to switch back to their service from the internet and cell phones. They’re all “what are you going to do if the power’s out?” Ummm… use the cell phone BATTERY, maybe? I find my cell phone much more relaible, cheap, and less complicated than any long distance land line options I have ever had. It’s interesting to see a real person cite reliability as a pro for the land line, though…. maybe I don’t have those issues since I live in an urban area. Hmmm.
April 7, 2008 at 5:21 pm
woowooteacup
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Erin. We are in a town that is considered rural, so it took longer for us to get cell phone service. We still don’t have as many carrier options as those in urban areas. That’s also why we don’t have the same reliability. Not as many towers out here to give us blanket coverage. Way up north – near the Canadian border – cell phone service is really spotty. And, because we already have land lines, cell phone carriers aren’t going to rush into a low population market because of all the expense. In places that never had land lines (rural African countries, South America), it’s much easier to put up cell phone towers and give people the phone service they’ve never had.
April 8, 2008 at 4:25 pm
erin g
That reminds me of when we lived in Clemson, SC. We never had good cell service except on football game days, when the town population tripled. sprint brough in a special tower for that, and then we could call our families. ahh, the memories.