Why I hate AT&T and why I'm disappointed in Sonic.net

Okay, this is not the normal thing I blog about, but this has given me so much trouble over the last few weeks I had to vent about it so bear with, okay?

I have DSL at home. I have it mainly because I don't have a tv, and truthfully because I wanted to stick with my ISP, Sonic.net. I love them. They are a California company, their call center is in Santa Rosa, and they give follow up calls and are all around stellar with customer service. Their high standards have kept me with them, even though I pay more. You see, I have to have a separate phone line via ATT because Sonic leases their lines to provide service. I'm spending easily $25 more a month than I have to, and have been for a good three years. I didn't mind because I knew I was paying for great service. That is until this past few weeks.

Over the last couple of months, I'm sure you all noticed the spotty posts on the blog. For some reason my phone line kept dropping, or degrading or no dial tone at all. I contacted my ISP first, to see if it was a DSL issue and it was not this time, but they said they would dispatch ATT to fix the line. If any of you still have a land line, you know ATT, the heartless bloated hydra they are will charge you if the issue is in the building, and not charge you if the problem is in their outside lines. First time it was in the building, or so they say, and the repair man even said that, 'my line should be faster,' because of the fix he did. This was in early November after a few weeks of noticeable drops in service. Faster? It was not.  It was actually worse.

The drops still kept coming, I couldn't check my mail or load a webpage at the same time. Lagging upon lagging. Nothing drives me more insane than tech that doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I called Sonic again, and this time the ATT dispatch repaired an 'outside' line.

So for a few weeks it was working. Then, in mid December, the same problems came back. Dropped connection, lagging pages. This time Sonic said there was some sort of 'static' on my connection, and my speeds were only half of what they should be. Again, AT&T was sent out, and mid December, I was operating again.

Now we hit New Years Eve. I return home to have no internet at all. Also, no dial tone on my line. What the hell? I contact Sonic again, and I had to wait until the third of January for the problem to be fixed. So I get home yesterday to find that nothing had changed! They apparently 'fixed an outside line', but I was still in the same boat. That rep called me at work saying that if there was a problem to call Sonic back. That is what I did.

And this time, for some reason, the person who talked to me said I needed to contact ATT. I explained to them that when this first started that I asked if I needed to do that and I was told that them dispatching ATT would be faster than me calling. He seemed to not care. He then said they had a new service that I had been waiting for to be offered in my area for about a year. I was ecstatic! Great, I said. Sign me up for that. Can it be done this weekend, I have Time Warner coming out on Saturday, give me a reason not to go with them.  Keep in mind, I've had issues with this DSL and phone line for over 8 weeks totaling over 20 days in zero internet connection. The guy was a dick and didn't try to customer service me at all. Just said no. I had had it at that point, and just said cancel my service and hung up.

I'm extremely disapointed. I've recommended Sonic to dozens of my friends, touted them to no end, but these last few weeks with the handling of this phone line and the tone of that rep just did it for me, and I'm sad. I love Sonic, I love their ethics and standards, but I can be treated like that from a shittier company and pay less money.

So that was part of my week. The good news is I'll save a good $25 a month extra, the bad news is Time Warner and my disappointment of Sonic. Perhaps I was stupid to think I could care about a company. I know, first world problems...sigh. Just had to vent, especially when I use my internet not just for entertainment, but communication with clients and freelance. It hurts me financially.

Okay, see you all later.