I moved into this house in 2003. I hadn’t gotten DSL installed yet so I had dialup. Shitty, static-y dialup at a whopping 28.8k. The phone line was crap. Static all the time. I called AT&T over and over. They would come out, do some voodoo and it would clear up for all of three days. I eventually gave up.

Then the DSL started being shitty. I called again (over and over), they had shitty customer support and I gave up.

Finally, when I upgraded to U-verse, it all went to hell and I called. Support had gotten MILES better. They sent a tech, he replaced the gateway, connection goes down that night. Fuck. I call again, they send a tech who claims “someone ran a new line for you already.” he’s an idiot who was looking at the cat6 WE laid a year ago. He replaces the jack. connection goes down again a day later. They send ANOTHER tech. He runs a brand new line from the box to the jack, no breaks. He also used the second pair of wires to run the phone because the OTHER tech that was sent with him saw that my main phone line was spliced at least 4 times with different types of line each time. Which is why my main line is now dead and the secondary line now works. Whatever. All is well for a few weeks when, guess what? Connection goes down AGAIN. I call and get another 2nd tier tech.

Now, each time I’ve called, I would tell them what happened, how long it’s been down and that–this is important–whenever I pick up the phone to call tech support, I can hear my DSL connecting and the connection come back and the static disappear. Yes. When the connection is down, my phone gets horrible static. WHen I make a call, the connection returns and the line clears up. They all ignored me. This tech? Listened. Said flat out “that’s not a coincidence.” Dispatched a tech then made sure the tech stayed on the phone with him so that he could monitor the line reads. Turns out that the last guy who ran the new line crimped the cable hard AND the grounding strap wasn’t…grounding. So. It’s all fixed. I’ve been static free and connection up for a month.

And it only took 7 years.

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