So. Yeah. I’ll be moving in the next week or so, so we can get the house sold and finally be done with… many things. It’s been an experience.
Among other things, there’s a distinct difference between a wireless router being nonfunctional, and being – heh – cut off.
Long story short. I need internet to work, update blog, you all know the drill. So getting that established over in the new place was a priority before we could think about moving over there in earnest. So… apartments have a “concierge” to handle that, we set up an account, should have been good to go.
Well. Except for a few things. Like not having the phone number for the new place. That took some hoops to jump through, especially since the concierge was suddenly Not Available for a few days.
And then there was trying to hook up the internet equipment – router/modem combo. Which came as a self-install kit, ’cause due to the whole Covid mess phone companies are trying not to send out techs unless they absolutely have to.
We followed the directions. And installed it. But while the power lights came on where they were supposed to, no data was being transferred.
Me, poking the piece of equipment that came with the apartment, that we found on top of the water heater. “It’s supposed to be a fiberoptic hookup. So… where’s the wire hooking it to that?”
After banging our heads against it most of an afternoon, we had to admit defeat. And try to get a technician for help.
Note: I am Not Impressed by websites that offer to allow you to chat/send messages to get technical help, then demand an ID before they’ll allow you to talk to anyone. The ID we didn’t have. Because the concierge was out.
Ended up having to spend hours – literal hours – on hold to finally get through on our current phone to set up an appointment for the other phone. And can I say there’s an inherent flaw in the system if it automatically assumes the phone you’re calling on is the one you have a problem with? Does Not Compute!
Anyway. Technician appointment obtained. Guy showed up on Wednesday within the 2-hour timeslot. (We spent the waiting time measuring things, fitting in washer and dryer will be doable but tricky.) Technician took the equipment, took the piece that came with the apartment….
Picture the most perplexed expression, ever. Even over a mask. “Um… this is supposed to be attached to a fiberoptic cable.”
Me: (I knew it.)
Fortunately it was apparently a relatively easy fix – he just had to trim wires and reattach the box where it was supposed to be. Then the router could be hooked up, and everything finally worked.
…The self-install instructions do not start with “check that no idiot has clipped the equipment off the fiberoptic cable”. Oi.
I wonder what else “I’ve never seen that happen before!” we’ll run into.
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
It’s best to assume everyone you meet or do business with is a blithering idiot. Then when it turns out to not be the case, you’re happily surprised!
…yeah it’s a bit pessimistic, but it honestly seems to be the best way of handling things. Now if only I could overcome my own inherent optimism that says “this person should know what they’re doing, so I’ll treat them as if they do” I could stop being disappointed on a near daily basis.
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I tend to get the same problem, every time I set up a new internet service, no matter what company.
The power light is on, the network light is on, no internet.
Call the company, stumble my way through the automated menu that isn’t as smart as it thinks it is.
“I can’t get any internet, could you try checking your end to see if it’s activated?”
“First try restarting the modem.”
*5 minutes of awkward silence later, no internet*
“Now try reconnecting all the cables.”
*5 minutes of awkward silence later, no internet*
“Now try restarting your computer.”
*5 minutes of awkward silence later, no internet*
“I’ll try pushing it through from my end.”
*30 seconds later, internet!*
Honestly, the best explanation I can come up with is that the online signup doesn’t actually activate anything. It just sends a ticket for a person to activate the account, and until they do, no internet.
I haven’t had to deal with fiber installation issues yet.
They keep sending me advertisements, but whenever I ask they say they don’t offer it to my address.
Apparently they just wanted to taunt me.
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I guess we got lucky in El Paso– every time we contacted them, it was “What’s your address? K…. yeah, our computer can’t see your router. Check the cables? Hm. Restart it? K, I got a flash, that means your router is dead. We’ll have a guy out there tomorrow, unless you want to come pick it up now. You rent the router, so no charge either way.”
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Much sympathy. In our townhouse it took us over two years to locate the circuit breaker box. Because it was outside. In a nondescript, unlocked metal case we thought was part of the meter and anyone on the street could have opened.
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….K, “chopped the cable off to remove it” is a new one to me, too.
I’ve run into a lot of stupid stuff, but usually they’d notice that in the moving out inspection.
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Well, we did the moving-in inspection, and guess what? We found stuff, but there was nothing on the list about internet equipment, condition of.
If they don’t inspect it, it’s obviously not a problem…. *Facepalms*
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*shakes head*
That is just… epic.
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My life. Welcome to.
Honestly, if something’s in the 5% or less category I can almost count on it happening to me. Murphy has keys to my house, camps out on our rugs, and fiddles with all the appliances, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
Er, to specify, that’s generally in the Bad Things category of odds. I never seem to get good odds. I’m afraid of what might happen if I ever tried to get a lottery ticket. The resulting implosion of bad luck might cause a spontaneous black hole.
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“You won the Lottery!”
“Wow, that’s great!”
“In fact, you won the super-duper-lottery and now you own the entire lottery company!”
“Ummm…”
“-And the company is several billion dollars in debt!”
“There’s the other shoe.”
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*Double thumbs up* You nailed it! That’s exactly my kind of luck.
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First thing internet-related I did when I moved into my current location was insist a tech come out and do the instal. The building was constructed back in the 80s, and I wasn’t sure it even had coax cable.
The tech who came out had to finagle some wires at the box, access the attic, and finagle even more wires to get everything set up. It was an hour+ long mess I would have never been able to sort out myself with the self install kit.
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That sounds like my five percent medical luck, which…yeah. Though I figure buying a lottery ticket once in a while concentrates it somewhere else.
And geeze, your place doesn’t do all wire inspections? It’s been mandatory here ever since a few high profile places got sold with all the wiring stripped out of the walls. (Yes, they left the outlets on the walls, just no wiring inside, you can imagine how much that thrilled people who just dropped half a mil on a house.)
Good luck with the rest of the move.
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I would guess that the internet company upkeeps the internet wires– we have a similar thing, but the guy who redid our house either was an electrician or the guy-he-knows was, to the tune of “d**n it, THIS WILL BE DONE THE WAY THAT _I_ WANT!” and it’s easy to work on.
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Yeah my fiance and I got super lucky in that we moved in February, before the madness started. Which is a good thing, because we live in a duplex that’s somewhere around 200 years old. It took the tech over an hour to install our internet and he was running new lines everywhere, there’s no way we could have done it ourselves
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We’d really, really hoped to be out of here by April. But in February I came down sick and, as you said, the madness started. And then many other things happened that have made trying to get anything done at all an uphill fight, and I wish I could just hide under the covers for a week.
Not going to be able to. So I guess we’ll just have to see if we can get moved before I collapse. This year sucks.
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For a while I had a computer that needed to be plugged in to get internet. Mine was the only one that didn’t get Wi-Fi (which could be funny when the Wi-Fi went out and I didn’t even notice), but in order to get the wire into my room, dad had to drill a small hole in the floor (the router was in the basement). The only problem was that on my end the little tab that held the end in the port broke off while he was putting it through the hole.
It got to the point where if I lost internet, the first thing I did was pull the tower out so I could see if there was actually a problem, or if I or the cat had just bumped the wrong thing.
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*Snrk* Now I really feel old. I’ve always used Ethernet cables for the internet. My comp has wireless capability, but this is the first time I’ll be using it regularly.
Which, with my luck, will mean I need a new computer. Sigh.
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If you’ve got a USB slot open, the adaptors are really cheap. Even if you already have a WIFI card in the machine, and the router is just much, much newer. *glares at her glorified typewriter laptop, which cannot see anything but vanilla wifi*
I prefer to spend the same money on 80ft of wire, myself, but de gustibus!
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Ethernet cabling is a lot better and more reliable than any other manner of connection, however the cords themselves can constitute a fire and/or safety hazard if you’re not set up in the same room as the router.
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I’ve only had a wi-fi capable computer for less than a year, actually. To be honest, the really nice thing about it is that it was new, so I’m pretty sure it won’t spontaneously decide to die on me. I went through three different (admittedly used) computers that died, froze up constantly, or just flat refused to do anything at all. Thankfully, all my stuff was on a USB, but I still haven’t transferred all of my bookmarks (listed in at least two different files on said USB) from sheer paranoia. And I’ve had this for 11 months.
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We are very blessed to live in the 1950’s style house my grandfather built… except when it comes to the wi-fi. Modern wi-fi was not designed in mind with… the over-construction our house has thanks to my grandfather learning most of he knew about construction from his time in the US Military reserves in WWII.
This includes two fully bricked chimneys and a very thick concrete pad in between the basement and first floor. And the wi-fi comes in the basement… getting it around the thick concrete pad into the first floor was a trial and a half involving an ethernet cables and repeaters all throughout the house. And no one wants to mess with the original custom wiring for good reason.
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