Class Action Lawsuit Hits T-Mobile, Amazon, Cox and Hundreds of Large Employers for Allegedly....

[Stonepounder]

11. A couple of years ago we were having problems with our cable.

It kept falling offline. Having spent about 40 years working in IT I have some knowledge about networks and the like. Looking at the error logs on our modem/router I determined that we were getting 'T3 timeouts'. (When you have 3 reconnect failures in a row it generates a T1 timeout. If you get 3 T1s in a row you get a T2. 3T2s generate a T3). It took something like 12 service calls to resolve the issue. I had one tech want to know 'Who told you how to log onto the router?'. Ummm...Google? Each time a young man would come out, never bother to look at the error logs, just replace the ends of the cable and go on their merry way. Never fixed the problem. Of course I suspect that they took a one week class on how to fix a problem and that was it.

Finally got someone in the call center who had a clue instead of a script and who actually listened when I told him I had an app where I could see what was going on. He grabbed the same app, watched it with me for a bit and agreed that there was a problem. The next day an old guy (LOL...probably about 40) came out. Checked the cable that ran from the street box to our POE. Major drop in signal strength. He called dispatch on the spot and told them go get a team out to replace the cable from the box to our POE.

Haven't had any trouble since. We old farts tend to get paid better because we know more and have been there and done that and learned our trade over time. But we cost more. But I'll bet it cost our cable company a lot more for the 12 service calls that didn't fix the problem than it cost for the one guy who knew what the hell to look for.