[NCLUG] Re: my cable modem is still not working :-(

[Daniel Herrington]

I got through to tech support again, now the guy says that he doesn't
have a MAC address provisioned in the system for my cable modem.  He's
writing a provisioning ticket to send to the provisioning group.  He
says it could be provisioned in 5 hours or two days, it just depends
on how soon they get it done.

What a drag.  I spent a lot of hours yesterday thinking it was
something on my end, only to find out that the automated call I got
yesterday was bogus.  My service was _not_ up on their end!

Daniel


=> Replying to Daniel Herrington's message, "my cable modem is still not working :-("
=> (sent Dec 10 @ 11:22 -0700):
 > Well, I have three solid green lights on my RCA DCM-215 cable modem,
 > which usually means it's connected and working.  But I can't even ping
 > the DNS servers:
 > 
 > 216.148.227.68
 > 204.127.202.4
 > 12.242.19.50
 > 12.242.19.34
 > 
 > Does anyone else have this same model of cable modem?  Last week there
 > was some talk about the DCM-235 having problems, and it was related to
 > MAC address starting with 001095.  Well, mine is a DCM-215, but it has
 > the same MAC address prefix.
 > 
 > I'm getting really frustrated.  I spent over six hours on hold this
 > weekend:
 > 
 > I called yesterday at 2:30pm and held for an hour, decided no one was
 > ever going to pick up, so I hung up.  I called back, and the second
 > time I waited just over an hour.  (While I was on hold, another call
 > beeped in, and it was the automated call telling me my service was
 > up.)  Anyway, "Ernie" finally picked up.  He had me try my (wife's)
 > Win98 pc directly connected to the cable modem.  I did the "release
 > all," "renew all" in winipcfg.  It didn't help.  He said his tool
 > wasn't working to allow him to write me a trouble ticket, but that he
 > would transfer me to senior tech support anyway.  He transferred me,
 > and I got an automated message saying, "We're sorry, we cannot
 > transfer your call at this time... click."
 > 
 > I called back and selected "sales," and surprise, surprise... they
 > answered immediately!  I asked the person to transfer me directly to
 > tech support, but when she did, it was just back out to the main menu.
 > 
 > I called again and spoke with a second person in sales, and told him I
 > was upset that they could answer their sales phone lines immediately
 > but that it took an hour or more for them to answer their tech support
 > line.  He made some excuse about not being able to train people in
 > three days to do tech support, and I told him to tell his supervisor
 > that I was upset about this inconsistency in service.
 > 
 > I called back at 9:30pm last night, waited for two hours and 15
 > minutes (until 11:45pm), and finally gave up for the night.
 > 
 > This morning, I still don't have anything good to report.  No change
 > in symptoms after power cycling the cable modem and the Windows PC
 > directly connected to it.
 > 
 > I'm on hold right now (15 min).  Will it ever end?
 > 
 > Daniel
 > 
 > P.S.  Are there reports of _anyone_ being more pleased with the new
 > "optimized" 1.5MB/s downstream bandwidth?  The only reports I've heard
 > are negative.  (Of course)
 > 
 > -- 
 > ------------------------------------------------------------------
 > Agilent Technologies          Email: danielh at ftc.agilent.com
 > 4380 S. Ziegler Road 	      Phone: 970-288-0661                 
 > MS 72			      Fax:   970-288-6580                 
 > Fort Collins, CO  80525-9790  http://members.home.net/daniel.herrington/
 > ------------------------------------------------------------------