Goodbye Insight

My cable provider, Insight Communications, no longer exists. They were bought by Time Warner Cable last year, and today the “Merger” is complete.

I put the word “Merger” in quotes because most of the uses of the word are both highly amusing and incorrect; when Company A buys Company B, B usually refers to it as a “Merger”, while A refers to it as an “Acquisition”.

One way to tell a real merger is to look at the name of the resulting entity. “JP Morgan Chase” is the result of a merger. So is “Lockheed McDonnell-Douglas”. So, for that matter, is “Time Warner”.

The result of the Time Warner/Insight “Merger” will be called… “Time Warner“. It is not a merger. Let’s call it what it is: Time Warner is eating Insight alive.

All that aside, I have been with Insight since they were TKR Cablevision. I have found their service to be fairly good; they answer the phone promptly, it is not too hard to get through to a real person, and their repair crew are very responsive… but they have a nasty habit of sneaking in up-charges on your bill when they think you’re not looking.

• A couple of years ago they added a $7/month “connection charge” to my phone service. I didn’t notice until a few months later, and they refused to remove it. They try to pass this off as a “Government Mandated Fee”, which it isn’t… and the FCC caps this fee at $6.50.
• More recently, they started charging me a “rental fee” on my Cable Modem. This is interesting, considering that I have owned my Cable Modem for about eleven years.
• When I first got my Home Phone Service with them, it cost $18/month. Now it costs $39. For local home service, with NO long-distance. When I asked them about this, they told me that I could get a better home phone service, but I would have to pay them $80 for a Cable Modem.
• Every January they raise everybody’s prices and see who kicks up a fuss. If you kick and scream and threaten to leave, they give you a “promotional discount”, but they will NOT lower the price back to its original level.

It is easy to complain, but in the past, I have simply called them up and told them that if I cannot keep this bill under $100/month, I would start amputating stuff and surfing on over to the competition. Perhaps this is why my service costs $98/month (for Internet, Phone and Cable TV), while a family member pays $150 for the same service.

Insight were a slippery company to deal with, and the second most adversarial company that I do business with (the first is Verizon Wireless, with whom I am under contract until next May)

So goodbye, Insight, and Good Riddance

Time Warner, I will be watching you. You have been Time Warned.

Web FTP Upload is back!

Some time over the past twelve days the FTP upload for these webpages came back up. Nice of them to tell me.

Oh no not again

Usenet News Server offline – gives a “480: Authentication Required”, but providing authentication info does not help.

Spoke to Alec B via support chat. He said “The newsgroups are going up and intermittently…. authentication is not the problem…. Access is just intermittent… The DNS is having a hard time keeping it’s resolution to the real server.“

Lost e-mails

An e-mailed death announcement from our church reached everyone except my wife and I (who had insightbb e-mail). I finally found out through my work e-mail.

Since I am the administrator of the church e-mail (yes, it’s a Yahoo Group) list I KNOW that we were on the list… the conclusion is that insight LOST these e-mails… and God knows how many others.

It’s back! Sort of (part 2)

Internet connection came back up.

Curiously, IP address has changed from 12.202.XXX.YYY to 74.130.AAA.BBB.

News server and Web page upload are still not available. Phone support is STILL offline. Used online “chat”. support. The person I spoke to was not much help – he said that those two issues were “Still a crisis”.

The Insight Vans of Doom

Insight Vans show up and start poking around in our neighbor’s back yard.

Over the years, I have learned that these vans are the harbingers of disaster; the presence of more than one of them in your neighborhood means that the system is about to go down.

I was not disappointed. Dialing 502-357-4400 yields a busy tone. It appears that even that insouciant “Not-in-service” recorded voice has gone home.

More of the same

Tried calling Morning, Lunchtime, Afternoon and Evening. “All circuits” are still “busy”

Down again

Nothing has changed. The system is dead, the phone is unanswered.

It’s back! Sort of (Part 1)

Broadband was back up but the Usenet newsgroup server (netnews.insightbb.com) was down.

Still cannot upload to Personal Web Pages.

“Help” pages were no help (reboot! Reboot! REBOOT!), and telephone support was an “All circuits are busy” message that persisted all day.

Lies, Damned lies and Customer Service

0130: I got through to Customer Service again. The gentleman I spoke with tried to play the “Scheduled maintenance” card, but I reminded him that Scheduled maintenance was not due to start until 2AM, and my connection had been down since 10PM. Under intense questioning he admitted that the maintenance had started early and faulty drivers had been installed on critical equipment. This sounded plausible. I gave up and went to bed.

0800: Internet connection is up.

2100: Power outage. Power was restored at around 8PM, but once again Insight Broadband was down and stayed down all evening. Your support number was also unavailable, chanting the “All circuits are busy” mantra.