Down again: My Optimum not-so-hot spot

Cablevision runs my life. OK, that may be an exaggeration. But only slightly.

I’m an Optimum Triple Play customer times two. At home and at the office. Internet, phone, TV. Even though the internet is the only service we really consistently use, we get the other two because buying the three services is somehow the same cost as one of them alone. And of course we can’t have “basic” TV because if we’re going to have TV it’s got to have the weather channel. So $360 a month later and I’m sitting in my office with no internet. Again.

It’s been like this — it works, then it doesn’t — since we moved to this lovely Victorian-era building in downtown Riverhead. When the internet goes down, I reset Cablevision’s modem as well as my Airport base station router. When that doesn’t work, I plug the modem’s ethernet cable directly into my laptop. When that doesn’t work, it seems clear there is no internet signal coming out of that modem. I call Cablevision.

The “customer service” person in tech support will never acknowledge anything I say about my prior experiences with this issue, or the fact that I just reset everything. I have to do it again.

Then he or she insists that the modem is working fine. The signal to it is fine. It is my router that is to blame, not their equipment.

The first time, which was shortly after I purchased this Airport Extreme router (it’s the new model of the one I’ve had at home that’s worked flawlessly for years) I thought perhaps I did have a defective piece of equipment. I brought it home to try it there. Worked just fine. Brought my router from home to the office and that worked fine, too — for a while. Then the internet went down again. So just for fun, I bought a Linksys router. The Cablevision folks seemed to distrust Apple. And the Linksys worked — but also only for a while.

The next thing Cablevision “support” told me was when a system outage or some other event changes my IP address, my router and their modem have a hard time talking to each other. I should get a static IP address, one that never changes. So I upgraded my service level and got a static IP — and a new modem to go along with it. Cool. I should be all set, then.
Guess what?

Two field technician visits later and I’m told the new modem is “bad.” The technician installs a new one, sets it up and — bam! — all is well.

“Don’t even bother talking to those guys in support,” he tells me. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Just ask for a technician to come.”

After not quite three months, it goes down again yesterday. It was fine Tuesday evening, but by Wednesday at 8 a.m. — gone. I go through the motions and ask for a technician. One will be at my office between 2 and 6 p.m. At 4, we get a message he will be here between 4 and 8. He arrives around 6.

After about an hour, he, too, insists that everything is fine. He tested the line and the modem. Everything checks out on their end (wherever they are.) All is well. It must be my Apple router’s fault.

“Plug in the ethernet cable from your modem to this laptop,” I challenge him. “If it works, you can pack up your stuff and leave. It’s my router. But show me that it’s working with the cable.”

Good point. He does. And it doesn’t.

“Oh,” he says.

Now it’s 7:30 p.m. I was supposed to be covering a meeting at 7. He calls in. He ends up on the phone with a “senior tech.” The other man offers to come help after he finishes the job he’s just about to start in Southold. ETA? Who knows? He hasn’t even started yet.

I ask to have a serviceman return this morning and he assures me he will have a “senior tech” sent here.

“I’ve only been doing this three years,” he says. “I don’t really troubleshoot static IPs. You need a senior tech for that.” He was very apologetic for insisting Cablevision’s equipment was working.

A senior tech would be back Thursday morning, between 8 and 11.

At 9:15 or so, Eddie arrives. Nothing senior-looking about him, but the older I get, the younger people look.

He starts from square one. Well actually, before square one, because when he called in, he was told he wasn’t really here. Once he got that straightened out, he went through the steps of testing cables and connections and signals. And of course, he pronounced everything hunkey-dory.

“It’s a problem with your router.”

Of course it is.

“Forget the router. Plug the the ethernet cable into my computer. If there’s internet coming out of that modem, it will work, right?”

Yes, he agrees. He plugs in and — nothing.

“Maybe the modem has a bad port,” he says. There are three ports. Let’s try another. He plugs it into port two. Same thing. Third port. Nada. As he begins to press the cable’s clip and tug on the wire to remove it, presto! The internet signal comes back.

He phones the mother ship. I can hear the man on the other end asking if the modem is working. And — incredibly, unbelievably — Eddie says… yes. I hear the man say, “Well tell the customer it’s her router.”

That’s when I lost it.

Eddie didn’t like what I had to say and threatened to leave. I got his supervisor’s name and number. He offered to request a new modem and a router — Cablevision now provides routers for customers with static IP service, he tells me. Hmmm. Maybe my situation’s not so unique after all. They can have the equipment here tomorrow, he says.

I need to get to work. This is really messing up my morning. Fortunately I am able to mooch a neighbor’s wifi. It works just fine.

The only redeeming thing about getting a modem and a router from Cablevision is if — when — this happens again, they won’t have my Airport to blame.

About 20 minutes later, Eddie comes into my office, contrite. Sheepish, even.

“Everything is all taken care of,” he announces. “The problem was on our end.”

Say, what? I control the urge to lunge for his throat.

“Yes, it was something on the backend. They rebuilt the work order and then it was fine.”
“What does that mean? What work order? What was wrong?”

“Something,” he tells me. “Maybe a code or something.” Something. Maybe a code.

I learned a long time ago that if you don’t really understand what the problem was, you can’t ever be sure you fixed it. So color me skeptical, Eddie.

As he is trying to explain what was wrong and why it’s all better now— something about which he is obviously completely clueless — a member of my staff enters the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “But the internet is down again.”

Taking in the expression on his face, I can’t help but pity the poor dude. He thought he was home free.

I surrender. Cablevision promises to return between 8 and 11 tomorrow morning to install the new modem and router. May the force be with me.

Denise Civiletti is the editor and copublisher of RiverheadLocal.com. An award-winning reporter, she is an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman (1988-1991); she lives in Riverhead with her husband and business partner, Peter Blasl and their two college-student daughters. The views expressed in her blog are hers alone.