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I have to share two experiences here.

From 10/15/08

My return to Road Runner was not without some serious issues yesterday!

When I called on Monday to set up the order, I could not get the guy on the other end to understand that I was not a "reconnect". The sales droid kept on saying that the house was already wired. I kept on telling him that there was an old two lead cable coming to the house but it went nowhere once it got to the house. I though I finally got him to understand that a new lead would have to be run from the pole to the house because the old cable coming to the house had to be over 15 years old (when TWC stopped using twin lead cable) and it was surely brittle and would not pass the necessary signal for roadrunner.

So the installer comes and looks at the house. I could see in his face that he was in for more work than he thought. I asked him if his work order said "reconnect". Yup!

I said, "You're going to need to run a new cable from the street right?"
Yup!

I also got lifeline basic cable ($9.95/mo) so this poor guy spent 5 hours wiring from the pole to the house and then running new cable to three spots in the house by himself because the moron on the phone refused to believe me.

Anyway, this 2 hour install that turned into a 5 hour ordeal finally ended and I was hooked up. I asked about my e-mail…. Answer… ummmmmmmmmm. Two phone calls and a few people later (all by the
installer), I had my e-mail account. I tried to access it via outlook…
REJECTED! Web mail was okay. So really it was not the installer's problem at this point. I had signal coming in (6.8mbps) and going
(475kbps) out and all protocols were open.

I thanked the installer and stayed on the phone with the techs on line to take care of the issue. They insisted it was in my outlook settings.
I told them it wasn't and read my settings to them. I was forwarded 9 (No exaggeration here) times as the technical issue of why my POP e-mail wasn't working and my web mail was, each time I essentially had to prove over again I was not a moron who could not set his outlook properties.
After the 3rd tech they realized they had an issue with my modem. One of the techs cleared it up and I could now RECEIVE on the new e-mail account, but not send! When I tried to send, the server would reject the sender's e-mail address.

After the 6th forward on the call, I finally got a tech that wanted to come into my computer and check it with his own eyes. No problem. I allowed access to him through a web ap because he could not "see" my modem and the modem Mac ID I gave him was invalid according to his info.
(He also though I could not read) .

So this guy (who was very nice BTW) gets in my computer, sees the error screen then proceeded to check all my settings in outlook. I could tell he was perplexed because, of course, they were all correct. I kept telling him the issue was not on my end but I would jump though as many hoops as he wanted me to until he exhausted every possibility from my end and finally look at their end.

After close to an hour of this guy going though settings, reboots, loading info in outlook express (that was another ordeal—it took me two forwards to convince the tech that the program I was using was Outlook not Outlook Express) and getting the same rejection error to sent messages, he went into my ip settings.

WELLLLLLLL… what do you know…. The modem thought it was with Earthlink!
The tech was baffled! I told him that this was the problem right here!
The Road Runner e-mail servers (POP) will accept a request to receive e-mail from anywhere, but outgoing mail (SMTP) absolutely requires the connection be from the subscriber's Road Runner box. I continued to explain to him that since my modem thinks it's with Earthlink, Road Runner is rejecting any attempts to send e-mail through this "foreign"
connection.

So this guy, to his credit calls the local office with me on the line in a 3-way call. The number he dials sends him to the "phone menu hell"
that we have to go through and he ends up talking to a colleague two cubicles down from him (not local). That colleague then connects us to a 1st level flunky locally. After a brief argument between the two service techs because the 1st level flunky was trying to follow a script on her screen and the 3rd level national tech was trying to expedite things, we get forwarded to level two local tech who, after 5 minutes trying to understand the situation finally forwards us to a Network tech who is obviously not a customer service guy, but a network guru and ruler of all he surveys. This guy looked at my account and said, "What the hell!" I heard 7 clicks on a keyboard. My connection blinked off and my modem reset. After 30 seconds, I heard 3 clicks on a keyboard and my modem reset again.

BANG! E-mail was working through outlook! I did a quick IP check and the "Earthlink" designation was gone and all four IP registers had changed. The call was done.

It only took 4 hours on the phone to resolve the problem!

My modem had recently been used by an Earthlink customer in Dayton. The modem was still tied to that subscriber's service when I got it. The modem had to be reset to my account. That was the entire problem!

Though absolutely everyone who I had contact with was as nice and understanding as they could be, I still spent 9 hours of my day yesterday (from 10:30am until 7:30pm) dealing with getting RR service working on my computer. A painless transition, it wasn't!

Now I know why I hesitated for three months to switch. I needed to prepare!

See ya
Tony


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From 10/30/08



Well, I guess last night I was hit by one of the new Trojans that load on your computer by just browsing the wrong page. I was investigating a new international channel addition and the new channel's web site was infected with an activeX Trojan that downloaded a mail server program into my system. I knew right away I was hit with something because every single spam/virus and Trojan checker I have began to warn me the word was coming to an end!

I ran a few scans and thought I caught it. But I guess I didn't.

Today I got home from work to find no service from RR.

I called and after 5 minutes navigating voice prompt hell, I finally got to a human being that told me that my service had been cut off because I had a virus and was sending out thousands of e-mails! Great! She tells me that I need to visit Cincinnati Internet Security: Home and visit a service professional to have my virus removed and there is nothing else she can do.

I asked how I was supposed to visit the web site if my service was completely cut off. I understood why I didn't have SMPT or POP access and why I shouldn't be able to use any port other that port 80 and be automatically directed to the web page she mentioned, but there is no way I could follow her instructions with no access to the internet.

She replied with the identical statement. I replied with my identical statement. She replied with her original identical statement. I then asked her how I should follow her instructions. "I will now enter the web site you just gave me. Oops, I get a 'cannot connect' error. Can you help me with that?"

She said "there is nothing more I can do." When I asked for her supervisor, she told me she was the supervisor. I asked her if she wrote her own evaluation form when she got raises? She said No. I then asked her to connect me with the person who did write her evaluation form! She declined and once again repeated her initial statement about going to the web site and getting a service professional to look at my computer.

I ended the call asking her not to read her script from the computer and answer honestly, if she were me, how would she handle this? She told me that she wasn't reading from a script and she was a highly trained CSR then WORD FOR WORD she repeated the identical message from before. I said, did you have that memorized or was that on your computer screen. Then I said goodbye and was ready to give up on RR. But first I started my full scans with AVG and Spybot along with a Trojan scanner. I found a 3 nasties. As I was removing them, the CSR I had just talked to called me back and told me she had reconnected me and admonished me to make sure to follow all the instructions on the web site she gave me. So I have to give her credit for that!

But like everyone else, this company's motto is "Make the customer angry before you give them what they want."

If you have seen the web site, it is nothing more than a collection of virus checkers and security software!

So, for now I have service again. We'll see for how long.

See ya
Tony