I hate .gov and comcast. Not sure which is worse.

[Cameramonkey]

So I'm currently in Nashville, TN waiting to move our branch office from the rental space to our new spacious facility we purchased. So new if you look up our address on Google Maps its just freshly scraped ground.

So my boss in early June put in orders with both ATT and Comcast for install this week . Comcast estimated install for today, ATT yesterday. So we started the move with no indication anything would go wrong.

Ive been here since Sunday evening prepping. ATT finally showed up today. And finally had the job done at 5. But at least it was done.

However Comcast updated us today to tell us the project was STILL in "design phase". Its not being installed today. Upon further investigation, we discovered that they had pulled a construction permit from the city to attach their lines to the power poles and the building. However as Nashville is famous for glacially slow response, they still havent approved the permit 60 days later.

And of course nobody at Comcast could say "yeah, we may have a problem and we are waiting on permits." Nope. for the past 2 weeks we have been riding them for confirmation because we MUST be out of our old building this weekend. Not once in the past 2 weeks did anyone tell us anything about the permit issue; they just kept acting like they were ready and able to install as soon as their construction/install teams could do it on their schedule.

We now have people trying to pull strings to get the permits signed so I dont have to come back next week.

This place makes Bloomington look like a well oiled machine.

/rant

 

[Haven]

Is there someone's re-election campaign that you need to "contribute" to in order for this to go faster?

 

[wtburnette]

Two things you can always expect trouble with is telecom and the government. I recall trying to spin up some new lines in one of our branch offices back in the early aughts with SBCGlobal. After a couple dozen calls over 6 months and a few missed installs, we finally gave up and made do with the lines we had. It was mind numbingly bad trying to work with those people...

 

[dprimm]

Sounds like a couple of unlimited data plan hotspots might be in the works. Too bad there is probably not 5G where you are in Nashville.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Sounds like a couple of unlimited data plan hotspots might be in the works. Too bad there is probably not 5G where you are in Nashville.

Currently running the skeleton crew that moved already with a Dlink LTE modem and cheap router. We get a whopping 5mb/s out of it and our VPNs like to bounce. But its better than the alternative. We have to move the rest of the crew tonight and move my servers and infrastructure tonight.

I'm actually working from my hotel room 5 minutes away this AM so I can actually have decent stable service on the hotel wifi since I'm done with all but one 30 minute task in that building.

 

[Thor]

Hey, you should try telecom run by .gov (or not) it takes us 9 months minimum to get a line installed. You just have to add it into the timeline. Don't even get me started on RF spectrum approvals (oh, you wanted to use that radio you bought this year? Isn't that cute. Call back after it's obsolete and been replaced).

 

[JettaKnight]

This place makes Bloomington look like a well oiled machine.

/rant

Yeah, but the food is good.


Just head to the Pancake Pantry and watch your cares melt away like the butter on their sweet potato flapjacks.

 

[AtTheMurph]

Comcast is a branch of government as all regulated utilities are.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Comcast is a branch of government as all regulated utilities are.

Regulated how? They're sure not regulated on their rates. I've never heard of a cable company having to go to .gov to get approval to raise their rates like an electric or gas utility does.

 

[Thor]

Also, telecom is nuttin compared to trying to designate new airspace for training. We've had one proposal for allowing F-15s to fly lower to practice (dry) strafing in an existing airspace on the books for 14 freaking years and it's still in limbo. The taxpayers have forked over going on $3M for this over the years, some good money for the environmental analysis folks.

Pretty sure I'll retire before this ever sees the light of day. And for the last decade plus the Eagle drivers on the east coast have not been able to practice something they are tasked to be proficient in.

 

[actaeon277]

bureaucracy.
The bigger it is..

 

[dieselrealtor]

The incompetence at comcast is mindboggling. Several years ago my office was moving, scheduled it with comcast several months in advance for a specific day & was assured it would happen. That day came & ended, no show. I moved & connected service myself as I speculated it was live at the building & that service was modem based.

About a MONTH later a service guy showed up to do the move. I used to like comcast but they have declined to being equal with att in my opinion, so it is a matter of which one is "less evil" to deal with.

 

[edporch]

I'm sorry to hear these horror stories.

In my case, some years back I had DSL on ATT for several years, and they were the worst.

Then I got a chance to get Comcast Business Class, I switched over and they've been great.

I moved from there after a few years to where I am now, and they've been great here too.

The few times I've had problems, they're out promptly the next morning and they fix it.
And the people who work in that division (as opposed to the residential Comcast techs) that show up here have all been competent and knowledgeable.
Comcast Business Class has been the best Internet service I've ever had.

 

[maxwelhse]

I have a an oddly similar situation in the works...

My employer has been planning on moving us into some new digs (they told us this back around late June) "as early as August first". There is a small corner of the building that is still in use by the previous tenant, who said they'd be out 8/1, no sweat, and we could do whatever we wanted to prep the rest of the area as long as we keep the noise down.I hadn't heard anything so I asked what was going on...

The previous tenants have some sort of grant from the state that REQUIRES them to stay in place for several more weeks. Sounds like they submitted what amounts to a receipt to the state for the rent and can't weasel out of it until their year is up or face some sort of fraud allegations. I guess the previous guys made some sort of experimental medications or something? There's a ton of very small labs in the place with suspiciously high security areas.

Also, despite getting keys for the place back in early July, apparently there is STILL no internet in the facility for us (for reasons unknown to me... NMP). I assume the previous tenants still have their service, so it can't be a permitting issue or anything like that. I think they did throw out a couple of 4G hotspots for the 4 or 5 people that moved over there "early".

Anyhow... It's mind boggling what the gov can screw up, although likely aided by the previous tenants in this case too.

 

[Thor]

I have a an oddly similar situation in the works...-snip-

If I were your employer I think I'd ask the local K-9 unit to do a walk through before I moved in. I was a member of a flying club that had a twin which was once a drug running aircraft...there was apparently so much coke in the carpet that it got randomly seized and searched while on cross countries.

 

[maxwelhse]

If I were your employer I think I'd ask the local K-9 unit to do a walk through before I moved in. I was a member of a flying club that had a twin which was once a drug running aircraft...there was apparently so much coke in the carpet that it got randomly seized and searched while on cross countries.

The previous tenant is part of a huge hospital system up here and just consolidated that facility into one the main hospitals. So, I do have every reason in the world to believe that they were making literally drugs that could upset a K9, but what are we really going to do about it?

With the state funding and the obvious paper trail, I think we're probably in the clear. I have to admit that I do worry about the situation you described whenever I buy a used car.

 

[indyjs]

Say, for example, @tt closes the installation order as completed on time. Customer calls in a day later to state service not working. Repair goes out but can't fix because there is no existing equipment and repair must like for like equipment. Installation managers make their bonus as all install done on time. Numbers are everything at the phone company. Management states customers happier than ever as no complaint as of end of install date. Telecoms suck