A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I miss Suddenlink. The Mrs. and I are getting settled in our new abode. There will likely be many future whatchamacallit articles on tech in a new parish. Of course, that’s assuming I have internet in the future. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I’ve already made several calls to tech support. I think that might be as many as I’ve had to make to all other tech companies I’ve dealt with in twenty years.
We moved on Saturday, July 14. To prepare, the day before I drove to Livingston to set up electricity, water, garbage, etc. Since I finished early, I decided to also start cable and internet. I should have paid heed to the fact that it was Friday the 13th.
The apartment leasing office recommended that tenants use EATEL, a company that I had never heard of. Like many other ISPs, their website advertised a fiber optic network with all of the bells and whistles. I decided to drive to the business office (about 20 miles) and arrange for service to start. Aside from an internet plan, I needed TV for the Mrs. The package had to include the Game Show Network (also not for me). I’m personally fine with streaming services, but I know that I could never teach the wife to use them.
Of course, I wanted to use my own modem and router but was told that I couldn’t because their network was fiber. She told me they didn’t have a rental fee. After being told that no, they couldn’t give me the equipment and let me do the setup, I made arrangements for a service call on Tuesday morning. That was a tough weekend for me. The cell phone service here is terrible and I started having internet withdrawal symptoms. After asking the sales representative to write down my account number, I was on my way back to Livingston to sign a new lease.
July 17: Tuesday morning I was pretty impressed when the installer arrived only about thirty minutes late. He installed a modem and a router. The reason he could not use my router is the television box is Wi‑Fi and could only connect to their router. (At least that was the reason I was given.) I allowed the setup because I knew I could connect my router later and have my same secure network names and IDs that I had previously used. I was pretty giddy. After all, I could get online again.
After he left, I realized that there wasn’t a DVR. I didn’t think this would be a problem because I was planning to call support anyway and set up an e‑mail account with an @eatel.net address. I would only be using this account for the off site address for my web hosting service.
July 23: I called support and gave the lady my account number. She couldn’t find the number in her system. She searched for my name and couldn’t find it. She finally found it by an address search. It turns out that when I signed up for service, I wasn’t given the complete account number. There should have been a -001 appended to it. I asked for a recommendation of what DVR I should buy to use with there system. Tech Support seemed amazed that the installer hadn’t installed a DVR since it came with the plan. Another service call was scheduled for DVR installation. She set up my EATEL e‑mail account and gave me a temporary password: Etl‑10981. I repeated it back to her at least four times, making sure of the hyphen and numbers. I even used my old military training to repeat the letters: Echo – tango – lima.
July 24: We received our first EATEL bill in the mail. The due date was for July 12. We had moved into the apartment on July 14. I told the wife that I was calling them the next day anyway. The e‑mail password wasn’t working and I also could not sign in to “Light Wave TV”, the service that lets you stream TV stations that you subscribe to.
July 25: I got an e‑mail from EATEL explaining that the due date was incorrect and should have read August 12. Once again, I called Customer Support. This gal was really nice and told me that I could easily use other e‑mail services like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. She said they might be easier for me to set up. I calmly explained that I was pretty good at setting up e‑mail addresses as my other 92 of them were all working perfectly. She transferred my call to Tech Support. In less than five minutes the problem was solved. It turned out that the password I so carefully verified was wrong. It should have been Eatel instead of Etl.
July 26-AUG 1: I went to Yankee land for a reunion of my siblings. Each day, I expected a call from the wife asking what to do about the internet. Thankfully, no long distance trouble shooting was required.
After a month of several frustrations, I am finally mostly satisfied. One day I was so upset that I went to Spectrum. I was going to change even if I lost the money I had already given to EATEL. I was surprised to find out that Spectrum couldn’t service my address. I’m pretty certain that this is because the apartment owners have a deal with EATEL. I am getting upload speeds of about 290-300 Mbps. When I use my VPN service, speed drops to about 50 Mbps. Interestingly, when I go online with a UK address, I get about 90 Mbps. Some day when I have time, I’m going to test all my VPN servers to find best speed. There are 128 of them (25 in the USA).
One of the reasons for such a drastic speed loss is because I’ve connected my router to the system and am using it for access. I feel much better knowing that I have control of my local networks. The biggest difference with my setup here than in Lake Charles is that I am only running four networks instead of seven. I still miss Suddenlink.
Thanks for reading.