Cable company bashes Vonage wrongly (sometimes)

Posts: 91 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 08, 2005 Posts: 91

I had a Motorola Surfboard 4100 with a RT31HP2 Vonage router. There were many service issues with that connection. The cable guys came out,did their thing, and always said the same thing: Vonage is the problem"

That is because the problem would always resolve when I shut off the 4100, and router, and did a reboot of both. Funny thing, when the whole setup was working, I kept on getting hour glasses as I switched sites.

Last week, I had 4 losses of both internet and Voip within 3 days. No internet light, and no phone light on on either unit. This time, I took the old surfboard back to the cable company office, swapping it out and got a new modem that is Doxis2 (?) compatible.

Guess what? No loss. No hour glasses.

Bottom line:Don't always listen to the cable guy. Cable company bashes Vonage wrongly (sometimes).

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

It's my experience that cable guys aren't as technically minded as we'd like to think, or hope. I had one show up to the condo that we live in, and he was asking residents if we knew were "the cable comes into the building from the street/" I said, oh, you mean the demarc (Demarcation point). He said no, just where it comes in and splits to different condos. AFTER I explained to him that what he's looking for is called the demarc, I took him there, and ran back to my condo to make sure nothing was screwed up. Eek

Posts: 448 · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:32 pm Post subject:

I agree, the cable guys on the street are little more than part swappers. Anytime we have a problem with Road Runner, the tech comes out and swaps the modem. One guy also swapped the coax between the wall and modem. If it lights up, he considers his job done. If not, then he jumps on his phone and asks someone higher up the food chain what to do. (and how often have you had one of these guys say it must be your router or PC at fault?)

Late last year we had major problems which turned out to be a faulty amplifier several houses up, but it wasn't until after a whopping 7 (!) modem swaps that they agreed the problem must not be somewhere outside (well, DUH) and sent a higher level tech to test the wiring up the street.

Posts: 9 · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:31 pm Post subject:

Same thing happened to me with Road Runner, but only 5 modems were swapped, and they wanted to blame my computer, I went outside and actually went to the cable box and followed it to the main cable box, and the cable was chewed by some animal, and I had to make them come out and look at it, and the guy say and I quote, " I guess that was the problem the whole time."

Nanci

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 14, 2006 Posts: 5

Typical of any company that I've delt with regarding anything wrong with their service to date... when in doubt pass the buck. If the person can prove you wrong then a simple "I'm sorry I'll check into that is supposed to be acceptable" or "We're working on that and will call you back tomorrow". Dissapointing but until a company with better customer support comes out or theres more options for service (which is not the case in my area) you can't do much but wade through the red tape swamp.