I tried to be patient, but by now you can probably guess what happened next. Yes, I called to see if the new modem had shipped yet; and yes, I called Vanessa directly.
Sure, she knows Ryan, they work together most of the week, and no, the modem hasn't shipped yet. Argh.
Then she said "I'm so sorry, I'd have met you at the door to hand you a new one if I'd known you needed it, but we don't have any at the moment, because a big shipment just went out yesterday."
May I just pause for a moment here to say WTF?!?!!
I said I'd hold while she looked and she came right back to say "no, there's nothing here, and let me look.." "well it doesn't look good, they may not ship it out until Saturday."
I voiced my displeasure at this turn of events, and she said at the latest, I'd have my modem on Tuesday. I imagine I said other things, but my frustration level was so high that I'm not sure what they were, and I hung up and considered my situation. I can't do everything I need to do for my business without net access, and I'd already had clients upset that they couldn't reach me. Time and energy I've spent on the Cave is already worth hundreds of dollars, and I'm losing money by the day.
I got back on the phone, and called Cavalier Customer Care, asking for new DSL service. They've been advertising a $25 special at 1.5 or 3Mb, and they'd have to connect me to a different DSLAM, so this might be a way out. Weird, once again I'm putting in my phone number, then when I get a sales rep, I have to offer all my ID info again. You'd think that at least sales would see the number, don't they have computers? Well, anyway, they can't get higher bandwidth to my address, but will put me on a list. Anything else they can do for me? I consider and then go for it - yes, I'm already a DSL customer, but my service has been disrupted for a week, is there anything they can offer me in the meantime?
Um, no, but they'd connect me to tech support. Thanks, but no, trying to cut down.
How about a dialup account to tide me over? Sure, but it will take 3 to 5 business days, and they'll have to charge me for it. HUH?!?!
Thanks but no thanks. I started dialing other ISPs. "I'm not happy with my ISP, how fast can you get me online?"
Verizon gets a nod for being able to get 1.5 or 3Mb to the same address the Cave can't - interesting since they're using the same building and lines. They also get bonus points for offering to set up a dialup account in the meantime, they can do that immediately, but will take 3-5 business days on the DSL switch, and of course, have to switch my phone as well.
It's getting late, here comes the weekend again, Friday was booked solid and I'm running out of ISPs to call, and then I got Comcast on the line. Note - when I called, they didn't need me to give them my phone number. I called at 4 pm - the rep says "I see you're at [my address] and have cable tv access already." "You're about 10 minutes away from our Boulevard office, if you don't mind driving over there, we can have you online in about an hour. Are you comfortable plugging in the wires?"
Um, yeah, I can plug in some wires. I drove over there, picked up a self-install kit, drove home, made a sandwich, opened a beer, hooked up the modem and turned everything on. Called the number, and the rep was utterly klooless, but activated the modem and I could take it from there. I think she believes the technology is magic, because she kept saying "it just works." It does work though, and I have to say - from dialing their number to being online at 2Mb was a total of 45 minutes, and that includes the sandwich.
At least I'm back online and can get some stuff done.
Oh yeah, and pinging my IP still shows a broken router at the same place, so even when and if they finally ship that new modem, I still won't have a decent connection.
Spent all freakin day Saturday running cables through the walls and reconnecting my LAN. Nothing is ever simple with these old houses, but... well.. that's a whole different rant.