Recently, over the 4th of July holiday weekend I was without my broadband internet connection with only a backup dialup number available to get online. Every customer on the West Sector of the White Pigeon Tower has been facing intermittent outages (mostly off for me) since around the 22nd of June. My broadband connection was completely out beginning the afternoon of June 29th. I had called Rural on 7/2/08 and was told that they were aware of the problem and yes, it was affecting all of the customers on the West Sector of the tower. They hoped to have it solved by the following morning (7/3/08).

Well, July 3rd came and went and based upon my past experience with Rural Communications I was certain that they weren't going to have anyone working on fixing the problem over the holiday weekend. Needless to say, they didn't disappoint in that regard. I was still without a broadband connection on 7/7/08.

Now, the story is that technicians are replacing some equipment and they expect (read "hope") that this will resolve the problem by the end of the day.

Why did I title this the Steak and Potato Problem?

I liken stiffing your customer because it's a holiday weekend (or any weekend - they don't fix problems between 5pm Friday and 9am Monday) to the following -

Say it's a Friday night and you're at your favorite steakhouse and you place your order for a delicious T-bone with baked potato with a waiter who happens to be at the end of his shift. Instead of giving your order ticket to the kitchen he puts it in his pocket as he heads out the door. He will drop your order off in the kitchen when his next shift starts the following Monday.

Meanwhile, you sit there waiting and waiting for an order that will never arrive.

Does that sound fair?

I think not. But it's essentially what my broadband internet provider (Rural Communications) did to me. They knew there was a problem (my order) and instead of taking care of their customer and sticking with finding a solution to the problem (think - cooking my steak) they simply placed the order in their pocket and took off for a long holiday weekend.

It amazes me that they see nothing wrong in stiffing their customers for days on end. Again, if I had other options I would run, no, sprint to another company and sign up today. Unfortunately Rural Communications has a bit of a monopoly on anyone not living in a town or village that would otherwise have cable for an option at least.

Please forward it on to your boss or even the owner of Rural Communications. I'd like to believe that somehow he doesn't know his customers are being neglected and treated so crummy, but I doubt it. This is a rural area and word gets around. Everyone I talk to either has first hand experience with the apathy of Rural Communications or they know someone (like me) who is unfortunate enough to be one of their customers.

Out of all of the times I have been without service over the nearly 3 years I have been a customer I have received a credit on my bill only 2 Times.

Beginning in January of 2008 I had little to no signal and my service was not just bad - it was horrible. When I had a connection it was just a fraction above the speeds of dialup, but mostly I was without a connection at all.

It just so happened that one of the days my broadband connection was acting up a representative from Rural Communications called and wanted to check and see how everything was going. I told her I was SO glad she called because my "high-speed" internet connection was horrible and had really been bad since right around Christmas.

She said that she would enter a trouble ticket and a technician would be in touch with me. Like a fool, I waited a week for something to be done.

Luckily, all of my trouble tickets can be looked up by logging in to their online "support" suite. On January 22nd I entered a trouble ticket as the "customer service" rep that called the previous week NEVER entered the trouble ticket as promised (yeah, I know - I was not surprised).

January 27th - Still no word from anyone at Rural Communications. Here is what I wrote in the update feature for the trouble ticket -
I haven't heard back from anyone on this and wanted to let you know that the internet service is worse now than when I reported it last week. I have tried bypassing my router and plugging directly into the modem in addition to turning off my software firewall - no improvements whatsoever.

I hope to hear some good news soon.

February 1 -
Again, from the trouble ticket update feature -
Still NO word from anyone. Internet is still horribly slow. My electric company is beginning a test of high speed internet service over power lines and that is starting to look pretty good right now.

This problem has been ongoing since just before Christmas. It sure would be nice to at least get an email or phone call saying that you are actively working on the problem.

Since I haven't heard back from anyone and my internet speeds are still bad I can only assume that this trouble ticket is being ignored.

February 7th -
Ran a speedtest this morning at speedtest.net. Here are the results:

Ping - 691
Upload - 73kbps
Download - 183kbps

Does anyone look at these tickets?

February 12th -
I have called and left a voice mail message for John the past three business days. Still NO WORD from him or anyone connected with Rural Communications.

I will be calling again this afternoon.

This is crummy customer service.

Later that day -
I called and talked to a low-level tech support person just so I could share my troubles with a live person. They added to my trouble ticket and I hoped this would garner a response.

March 6 -
This was a response left via the trouble ticket feature from John at Rural Communications. It appears to be a mass letter to all the customers on the same tower as I. Remember, this is the only communication I have received since I first was called by that customer service representative the week of January 14th.

Dear customer,

Over the last 10 days, we have made several adjustments at the White Pigeon tower and within our network in an effort to improve your service. Some of these changes may already be noticeable, however a complete resolution has not yet been fully implemented. We will continue to monitor and make changes within the White Pigeon service area over the next few days, and will keep you updated [Ha! Yeah right!] on our progress. Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,
Rural Communications Internet Solutions

March 9th -
My response -
Thanks for finally communicating with me. Who do I speak with regarding a credit on my bill for this nearly 2 month period of horrible speeds? It shouldn't take a company this long to get in touch with their customers. I left multiple phone messages and submitted numerous replies to my original trouble ticket with no response until now. My initial call to you was around January 22nd. That was nearly 7 weeks ago.

March 12th -
Response from John 3 days later -
Sorry for the delay in communication [From a company with the word COMMUNICATION in their friggin' name]. We are continuing work in the White Pigeon area (which you will get another similar email for shortly). Generally, for large-scale service issues such as this, our administrators assess a credit to be given to affected customers once the issue has been resolved. Once we have reached that point, the credit will be applied to your bill.

I have never received a credit for this outage. Surprise, surprise.

Later that day this email was received -
Dear customer [Don't you love the personal touch?],

As planned we have made several further adjustments at the White Pigeon tower and within our network in an effort to improve your service. These changes should make a noticeable impact at this point. Please let us know if further problems persist. Once again, thank you for your patience [as if we customers have a choice].

March 20th -
[My reply to the above email] Since this email (the above email) was sent, the White Pigeon tower has been down at least once for approximately 6 hours (during the day) and today I can't even load a simple web page (and yes, I have power-cycled the modem).

This has been a real disappointing few months of service.

Later that day I received this -
We've identified an apparent problem with your provisioned configuration that occurred during the recent tower outage you've referred to. We apologize for the inconvenience, the corrections should be complete by 11:00AM today. If you continue to experience trouble, please let us know.

March 24th -
From me -
Things are just as crummy today. When it is working it takes minutes (yes, minutes) to load a simple text based webpage.

Why are there so many problems lately? It seems like every other day it either isn't working or it is working poorly at best.

It'd be nice for some communication as to what the problem is - I doubt I'm the only customer experiencing this.

Late that day I receive this response -
Could you please run a speed test at http://speedtest.myrural.com and reply back with the results? If possible please try to run a speed test and note the numbers before and after power cycling your home router.

March 25th -
My response -
Download 157 kbps
Upload - 150 kbps before internet connection was lost.

I have been unable to run a test after the router was power cycled.

I later spoke with Chris at Rural Communications and reiterated my problem with their service that began back around Christmas of 2007 and got really bad in January of 2008 and had continued here to the end of March.

He spoke with his boss and they agreed that a tech should come look (because they said I was the only customer still having problems - yeah right) over my antenna, modem, and anything else that could be causing my issues. This would normally cost me $49 for the first half-hour and $99/ hour after that since I am not on their monthly support plan.

Because they dropped the ball and did a poor job of taking care of their customer, me, they would waive the charges. I would only be charged if there was something wrong with the equipment (they own the antenna and modem) due to something I might have done.

The tech came out and while he was looking over everything he admitted that I wasn't the only one on this side of town (where the tower is located) that was having problems. There were people up and down our road having similar issues.

Hmm, and here I was told that I was the only one having this issue. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time someone at Rural Communications has outright lied to me.

The tech was at my home for about an hour and a half (having no success in finding what was causing my problem) when he finally asked me if I was on the monthly support plan. He had not been told this was a "no charge" deal and had just assumed I was on the monthly support plan. He grabbed his stuff and left because he didn't want me to get charged a huge bill for his time.

He came back the next day and replaced the antenna hoping that would make a difference. It actually didn't work too bad after that. I still have problems (see the STEAK AND POTATO PROBLEM) and their support and customer service still stink.

The real kick in the pants on this deal was when I had an extra $159.75 on my next bill. Here's the breakdown -

Male Crimp Connector (3 pcs) $18
Bulkhead Surge Protector $25
.75 Hour Labor Charges $74.25
Service Call Trip Fee (I live XX miles from their White Pigeon office and 10 miles from their Three Rivers office) $42.50

Oddly enough, I was not charged for the new antenna at $99. They nickel and dimed me on parts that I know cost much less than that at retail even.

The part that ticked me off was the $74.25 for labor and $42.50 Trip Fee. This was what I should not have been charged for based on my conversation with Chris. I called to complain around late April or early May and spoke with someone named Max. I told him the situation and explained that as far as I knew I was not supposed to be charged for this and he said he would speak with his boss and call me back the next day.

Well, you know how well they communicate at Rural Communications. I didn't hear back from them until the day I received my May bill around the middle of June. I noticed a credit of $37.13 for half of the labor I was charged for on March 31.

Max called to let me know about their generosity and the amount of the credit.

Big wup-d-do.

I should have got it in writing.

Currently, my power company (a nice little local co-operative) is conducting tests on the feasibility of running a broadband connection through the power lines. All that the customer will need is a modem that plugs into any standard outlet and converts the signal so you can plug it right into your computer or router.

Sound too good to be true? Well, this time it isn't. Early test results show that this will work quite well. The only hangup is that to roll this program out en masse my power company needs to have a request for federal funding to go through.

I haven't heard that this has passed yet, but I am certainly hoping. I am on the waiting list and as soon as things come online for the program I am signing up.

Rural Communications has done absolutely NOTHING to garner a single shred of customer loyalty from me.