Thursday, July 29, 2010

Connectivity Restored

If it's not one thing, it's another these days.  We have been dealing with 'connectivity' issues the past day or two, but they are finally resolved.  What we initially thought was our satellite provider's fault turned out to be our wireless router giving up the ghost.   I spent over an hour of phone time with Wildblue's technical support agents Tuesday evening to rule out any problem on their end, and another hour picking the brains of my geek friends in Icechat to narrow the problem down to the router.  Yeoldfurt came to the rescue, he went out yesterday and got us a new wireless router.   He had everything hooked up and back online by the time I got home from work.  That's my 'Furt!

Needless to say, Tuesday was frustrating with all that hold time waiting for a Wildblue agent to come online and even more frustrating when it didn't turn out to be their problem.   But some good did come out of it.  We've been with Wildblue for over three years and have been considering shopping around to see if there might be a better deal out there.  Part of our motivation for shopping around was that we had been having some connectivity issues lately and didn't yet know that our router was the real problem.  But, in general, I think it's a good idea to shop the 'necessary evils' like insurance and internet providers every few years anyway.  So, at the end of my conversation with Wildblue, I asked if we had fulfilled our contract with them and what the procedure was to cancel if we decided to go with another provider.  The agent had been very professional and polite throughout the call and asked if she could put me on hold for a few moments while she reviewed our account options.  When she came back to the line, she said they did not want to lose us as a customer and offered us two months FREE.  We spend approximately $84/month for the service so two months free is a significant savings ...what a deal!  Of course, the new router Yeoldfurt bought for us yesterday was $87 with tax, but we're still over $80 ahead.  I guess the little bit of phone frustration was worth it after all. 



9 comments:

  1. I'm glad to hear you are back up and running well. Good deal on the savings too!

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  2. Thanks, Sci... it's good to be back. Savings is always good!

    : )

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  3. Too Funny...not haha funny though.

    We have been having trouble with Hughes Net and have considered seeing if Wild Blue was available in our area.

    I thought our problem was the modem and spent a couple hours in the past week on the phone with "Majabar" from God only knows where. Whatever was going on seems to have worked itself out.

    Maybe I will call them back and question our contract to see if I can get a "freebie"!!! Every little bit helps eh?

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  4. Happy to hear that everything is up and running again. I love it when companies offer incentives! We will call our internet service providers and our satellite tv provider and the phone company every few years or so and hint around at shopping for other providers just to get the deals. :D

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  5. WooHoo!
    Glad you got everything up and running again. :D

    Good deal on the incentive too!

    Hope to see ya in chat soon. :)

    Hugs~Fel~

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  6. MammaBear ...I've missed you!

    That's another good thing I've noticed about Wildblue ...their tech and customer service people all seem to be here in the states. If Hughes Net has foreign based support staff, they won't be on my list when it's time to shop this contract again.

    Hope you get your freebies!

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  7. Hello, Craftivist ...good to see you too!

    I shop my insurance every few years, but rarely change my ISP. I should probably rethink that though and shop them too.

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  8. Thanks, Fel ...I'm glad we are up and running again too. I also appreciate how patient you other chatters were while I picked the Geek brains in the chatroom that night. I didn't get to bed until after 1:00am so I was running on empty the next day. We've gone to bed extra early the last two nights though so I might have enough steam saved up for Chat again this weekend. I'll try!

    : )

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  9. Its so true that it pays to call once in a while and ask key questions, like "Am I currently under contract with you?" but being on the receiving end of those phone calls, it cracks me up when someone calls who has been disconnected for non-payment to advise us that they are "shopping around." Funny, but it happens more often than you might think...

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