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On 5/8/00, ten days later I called the "800" number I had been given and asked for my installation date. I was connected within 2 minutes. After several minutes of hemming and hawing by the service representative, I was given a date of 5/24/00 between 8 am & 5 pm and was told to call again on the installation date for a narrower window
5/24/00 8:53 am, 27 days after I had placed my order, I called the "800" number and after identifying myself the customer representative agreed that I was on the schedule for that date but he'd have to check with the installation foreman to get a better time. He put me on hold and disappeared for several minutes. When he did finally get back to me he said that the installation people had me on their schedule for 6/6/00. This is 13 days after my "assigned installation date".. He didn't know, or wouldn't tell me, why his data base didn't agree with the installation force's data base.
5/31/00 A Pacific Bell installer showed up check out my phone line. He had not bothered to make an appointment and was lucky to find me home.
6/6/00 8:44 a.m., 40 days after I had placed the order I called "800" number in order to get a more accurate appointment time so I wouldn't have to stay home all day. I was .referred by the service representative to the DSL installer's phone number. Left a message on their message set asking for a better appointment time and with a request to be called back. Nobody called me back.
6/6/00 14:30 - Got a phone call from Virginia, the DSL installer saying she'd arrive in 25 minutes.
6/6/00 15:00 - Installer arrived. Did outside work. Installed splitter at interface box. Brought wire in for a DSL terminal box in my computer room. She installed the Ethernet card and DSL modem. Modem worked okay until 17:30 when it lost synch and didn't restore for the rest of the evening.
Virginia was new at the DSL game having been an ordinary phone installer up to two weeks before. She had been put through a short training course which made her a DSL and Network "expert". Every little while she'd get on her cell phone and call somebody back in the office for advice.
She tried to install software but ran into trouble. By this time her "guru" had gone home so she had to give up on the installation and said she'd return at 8:30AM Wednesday (6/7/00).
6/7/00 9:30AM, 41 days after placing my order, Virginia, the installer returned. The DSL signal was once again synching. After removing a few unused and obsolete TCPs the needed software installed properly. From there on the installation went smoothly. As of about 10:30AM I am working on DSL.
Final task is the DSL project: Write a Curmudgeon article about my experiences. Comments on my DSL service. When DSL works it is great. But, as our speaker from Pac Bell at our meeting a month ago said, the DSL only improves the transmission between your home and the ISP, Pacbell.net, in my case. It does nothing to improve the service from the ISP or from the WWW.
To test out the new DSL service I accessed the Microsoft update page to get a "critical update". It must have been a busy time on that web page because I'd see the progress bar move real fast for a moment and then it would stop cold for a few seconds, jump ahead again, wait a few seconds, etc.
On the my second experiment I downloaded a program during a quiet time and what would have been a ten minute download at 56K came through in less than one minute. Am I satisfied with DSL? YES!!!!!!
Am I pleased with Pac Bell's installation forces? What do you think? NO -- it was lousy. Virginia was a (Continued on page 12)
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