I waited about 15 minutes and it never came back on.

So to the phone I went and called Embarq Customer Service. I was on hold about 5 minutes, which isn’t bad for Embarq. I finally get a hold of “Chris” and tell him my problem.

Chris tells me to reboot my modem and computer. I politely tell Chris that I have already done that, too which he seemed surprised. I told him this wasn’t my first rodeo with Embarq. You can say that I’m an old pro at rebooting before calling Embarq.

Then he puts me on hold for about 10 minutes, comes back and ask’s me if I have all four lights on.

I tell Chris, no, I do not have all 4 lights on.

He then tells me it’s my modem. I tell him that it’s a brand new 660 modem that they shipped me a month or so ago.

Again, Chris seems surprised. I guess he couldn’t see my account history or Embarq doesn’t keep an account history. Which you would think they would because it would help them provide better service. This way, they can see how many freakin’ times the problem has been on their end, not the Customers. Or is that too much to ask?

Then he say’s it’s something on my end and he’ll set up a Field Tech to come out Monday afternoon.

Oh Wait, There’s More To This Story From Embarq!

Meanwhile, I’m motioning my Wife to get on the phone and call our neighbor down the street and see if their DSL is down. They’re not at home.

About an hour after I hung up with Chris, our neighbors call and sure enough, their DSL is down also.

She calls Embarq and they tell her that there’s something wrong locally and that it’ll be 2 to 4 days before they can make the repairs.

She ask’s why it will take 2 to 4 days and they say that they’re not sure if anyone is in the area to work on it. They’re not sure if anyone is in the area to work on it! Can you believe that?

My neighbor explains to them that there is an Embarq sub station is just down the street and that there seems to always be 2 Embarq vans parked at it most any day.

They’re speechless and repeat that it may be 2 to 4 days before our DSL service is back up.

This is how incompetent this company is. If it doesn’t fit the script they’re Technicians are reading, then they can’t tell you jack. Even Embarq‘s own Customer Service People can’t get the same information to 2 homes on the same street!

I got up this morning and the DSL was on. I was fixing to send some emails and it went down again. My wife said it was on for about 15 minutes about Noon. I got home around 2:30 and started writing this post. I started to save it and got the Embarq DSL “no service” message from the “Virtual Assistant”. My post was gone when I logged on tonight to finish it!

So, no calls yet from anyone at Embarq telling us whether or not they fixed the problem. Now I have DSL, in an hour, who knows!

By the way, just a tip. If you have problems with Embarq or any other service provider, make them credit your account for the entire day that you had interrupted service! You’re paying for unlimited service, if you don’t get it, at least you deserve to get your money back!

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About 1 p.m. today, I started getting intermittent Internet service. So once again, I called Embarq (I now have their phone number memorized) and sit on hold forever. It’s funny working your way through the prompts. Near the end, the automated voice will tell you there is not a need to talk to a Technician because I can go online at embarq.com and handle all my technical problems! Really! Of course, if I could get and stay online, I wouldn’t be having to listen to this stupid automated voice in the first place!

So now they’re telling me that they have “upgraded” the service in my area and that it is the lines running to my home that is causing the problems. I asked today’s Techie if that was true, how was it that the Techie yesterday was able to fix it? He stuttered and didn’t have an answer.

They’re sending out a technician (so they say) on Saturday afternoon to check the lines. This sounds a little fishy to me because they have never, ever, came out on the Weekends!

I’m betting they’ll call and cancel or have some other excuse for not showing up. Meanwhile, it may take me forever to post this blog post!

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I waded through the menu prompts to finally get to the one I needed.

A funny thing happened while I was doing that. The automated call asked if I wanted to partake in a Customer Service survey about the quality of service that I’ve received from Embarq. “Oh Hell Yeah” I thought as I pressed one.

After hitting “1″ to participate in the survey, it then told me “I’m sorry, the survey is not available at this time.” Hmmm can it read my mind?

Prior to calling, I also tried the “Virtual Assistant” that I had to install before getting the new DSL modem working. It walked me through rebooting the modem. After I had done that, the Virtual Assistant popped up a screen that said that it had detected the Internet and everything was fine. I looked down at the modem and there was still no light on the “Internet” light. Sure enough, I tried to get online and could not.

Now even their software is lying to me!

 After waiting on hold for about 15 minutes, I finally get a hold of the Technical service dept. The lady works with me for a few minutes, puts me on hold while she gets the engineers working on the problem, comes back and apologizes for the delay, puts me on hold again for a few minutes, comes back and apologizes for the delay again and after a few minutes she said “Sir, we’ve discovered that others are having this problem in your area and I’ve notified the Central branch of your problem and turned in a repair ticket. They should have the problem fixed by tomorrow.”

I wasn’t happy, but felt at least someone was working on the problem.

So today, I get home about 3 p.m. and still had no DSL. Hmmmm.

I picked up the phone and called Embarq again, this time after waiting on hold for about 5 minutes, this guy comes on talking to me in Spanish! WTF!

“Hey buddy, speak English” I said

“Oh, I’m sorry, you hit the Spanish prompt when you called, that’s why I’m speaking Spanish” he said.

“No, I didn’t” I told him

“I’ll transfer you to the correct department” he said

The call goes just like the one yesterday except the Technician is surprised to hear that the lady the day before said there was an outage in my area.

“Umm, I’m not showing any outage at this time in your area sir. I’m not saying there wasn’t one, but at this time there is none in your area”

“Yeah, that’s about what I figured” I told him

After a few minutes he tells me that he’ll get his engineer looking at it and make a few adjustments that should get my DSL back. Sure enough, after about 5 minutes my Internet light comes back on my DSL modem!

“Sir, the problem was on our end, someone changed some settings and caused you to lose your service.” he told me

That’s what happens 99% of the time when we have problems with our Internet service or phone service. Someone screws with something at one of the centers.

At least I have my DSL back! =-)

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