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Originally Posted by fov, from the Attack Of The Spam thread
Ahh, dial up. I remember those days fondly.  |
LOL. Get this. My bro-in-law just started his new job as an installer for a direct t.v. service, so he's going to be entitled to some benefits. We currently have a combo service of cable t.v. and cable broadband. Problem is that he cancelled the t.v. part of this service in anticipation of his satellite t.v. from his job (without first knowing what exactly his benefits at work will be), so the cable t.v. will end tomorrow. When he did that it somehow affected our Internet connection and it was intermittently interrupted so that we hadn't had Internet in the past week. We had a service man come over twice, but it didn't help and we've been offline ever since, which affects my sister's job (she works at home twice a week and relies on Internet for email and other things). Now she's furious at her husband, and I'm thinking what a sad dipsh!t my bro-in-law is for not doing his research:
1. He didn't cover all his bases by not fully investigating and getting a written list of all his benefits at his new job (including when exactly these benefits would kick in) so he can set up his satellite t.v. service properly, so now we have no cable t.v. service for the next month or so. He cancelled the existing t.v. service
before he could even install the satellite dish
or even find out when he could switch to satellite t.v. connection.
2. He eventually wants to set up a satellite Internet connection through his work when he didn't already know the terms of his benefits for that (including when it kicks in), in writing.
3. He didn't think how a possible interruption of our Internet service would affect his wife's at-home work.
4. Because they live so far away, I can't set up any kind of DSL service. The only available options are cable (and I'm trying to fix our current connection), and satellite, which is very expensive ($700 for a stupid dish, then $50+ monthly).
5. Because the cable company screwed up our connection (somehow), in desperation he signed up for a free trial dial-up service from AOL
and Earthlink, and argued that his wife (my sister) could use this service for her work at home. When I tried to explain that dial-up is an awful idea because it will interrupt our phone service and my sister cannot know her job is contacting her unless she connects manually, and that with broadband you're always connected to the Internet 24/7, he wouldn't listen. Besides, dial-up connection, no matter if it's 5 times as fast as before, is nowhere near as stable as broadband. You could be downloading a large file and get booted off because someone is trying to call you or for whatever other reason.
6. He didn't know that with the free trial to dial-up you must notify the provider that you want to cancel the service before the free trial ends, otherwise they may automatically sign you up for a one year contract and start billing you for something you didn't want. I explained this to him.
So, now I have to sort this mess out myself, simply because he's such a jack ass and didn't plan this whole thing properly, and because all he wants to do is try to save money. I told him that we should have stuck to the month-by-month service of cable t.v. and Internet UNTIL he finally gets his benefits at his job and has everything (satellite dish, Internet dish, etc.) fully installed and running. Then and only until then should we cancel the cable service.
Sorry. Just had to rant.
