Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Bell Canada - service vs. abuse
Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 23:16:20 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>Adam wrote:

>- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's 
>mounted on your roof

Every wire entering the house must be grounded. And yes, you might want
to run it through a surge protector.

>>I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
>>had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit
>>the building 

>Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable 
>doesn't involve lighting....

That's what they called an installation on the block that any building
could be hooked up to.

>>and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
>>company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
>>though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.

>Wait, maybe you did mean "lit"! I've just never heard that verb used in 
>the context of cable before....

>>No
>>contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
>>intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
>>for?

>Good point.

>>The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I
>>couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
>>find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was
>>adequately labeled. 

>Labelling is one of my pet peeves, even with my own house. (I'm 
>gradually sticking labels on every switch and outlet to indicate what 
>circuit breaker it is on so that I can turn off ONLY the correct breaker 
>the next time I want to work on that switch or receptacle.)

>>I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that that
>>outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
>>moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
>>also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
>>identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
>>pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
>>the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
>>appointment window was so long.

>I don't envy the installers. I'm sure most people underestimate the 
>amount of work they'll have to do. I have a 4 hour window for my 
>installation tomorrow and the email says they'll need three hours, even 
>though I'm already wired for fibre and the connection works fine. I'm 
>guessing they'll upgrade the little boxes they've got but whether they 
>need to do that to get me my new speed, I really don't know.

>I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem 
>with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down 
>to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get 
>free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious 
>benefit to them....

It's being returned to a different inventory than the one the installers
draw from.

>>Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me all
>>concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
>>address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
>>installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be
>>live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
>>lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back
>>on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement.
>>Everything else was just making physical connections within the
>>building.

>>That was quite painful.

>It certainly sounds like it!

>>Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
>>couldn't keep the old phone number.

>By contrast, my mother didn't move at all and STILL had to give up her 
>old phone number. Apparently Bell was taking that exchange out of 
>service - it was the oldest in town - so she had to get a new number.

That's a weird scenario.

>Luckily, she didn't care and it didn't mess her up at all. I don't know 
>what they did about businesses on that exchange; some of them must have 
>had major objections to their numbers changing due to the costs of 
>changing signage, advertising, business cards, etc....

>>The office admnistrator wanted
>>magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone
>>number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
>>the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
>>was our permanent phone number for five years.

>>magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding
>>anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
>>I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
>>a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
>>new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
>>a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
>>mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who
>>found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of
>>correspondence to fix as well.

>Sounds like a nightmare!

I didn't mean to bring you down. Enjoy your excellent subscriber service
while you can!