Internet Vanishes After Thunderstorm

It Miraculously Works When Cheaper Competitor Arrives

“But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” (From the 1976 movie “Network” written by Paddy Chayefsky

The Comcast Internet (aka Xfinity) stopped working at my house. It crashed after a loud thunderboomer, and it stayed off for three days.

As a remote worker, the Internet is now essential for my family’s economic well-being, if not survival. A disruption in this service is highly impactful.

Immediately after the Internet was knocked offline, I started efforts to reach Comcast through their 800 phone line. Those efforts failed. After waiting on hold for nearly an hour, I drove in person to the sales office. I was pessimistically hopeful the in-person staff would at least be able to send a note to the technicians.

The salespeople refused to help me, stating their jobs were focused on selling their products, not assisting current customers to ensure they could use them.

I trekked back home and used the virtual assistant, a robot response system that insisted they couldn’t detect an outage in my area.

Our backyard has a cable hub for several neighbors who use Comcast. Neighbors’ efforts to contact Comcast were equally unsuccessful and unbelieved by the robots.

I finally went to bed and decided in Scarlet O’Hare fashion :

I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.

I was up at 5 a.m., my usual wake-up time, and decided to call the customer service line again. The early bird catches the worm, which in this case is the Comcast worm. I reached a live agent based in India. Their accent, plus my lack of coffee, made for another unsuccessful effort at informing Comcast of my dilemma. The agent, however, applied a $10 credit to my account. I’ve been a Comcast customer for over ten years and, by my estimates, paid them approximately $24,000 for their unreliable service. The $10 credit was woefully pitiful and a slap in the face for my loyal patronage.

Granted, to the Indian customer service rep, $10 must have seemed generous as the average salary for customer service reps is around $3,500 a year, based on Salary.com’s information. (Yes, you read that correctly, $3,500 yearly, not a month.) I wonder if the man from India realized his company’s CEO, Brian Roberts, made $33 million in 2021. I bet Roberts doesn’t wait on hold when his Internet crashes, and if it does, he’s probably automatically given another million in stock options.

Internet access is a problem for people with resources. However, I recently took a home-based remote office job, so maintaining a reliable Internet connection is necessary to make a living and keep the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to. You know the lifestyle of living in a house with clothes on my back, food in my belly, and access to a health insurance plan.

Consequently, during the Internet outage, I was forced to use two workarounds: renting a day office and using my cell phone hotspot. Each of them had their drawbacks:

· Renting the day office was expensive.

· The hotspot allowed me to work on a limited basis but kept me from completing more sophisticated tasks, such as video-based platforms.

After the third day, my family and I surrendered and found another Internet provider offering the same services for about half the cost.

The same day we switched, Comcast came back on.