VoIP BTU LMNOP

I've decided to stop measuring my computer usage in Watts, and start counting in BTU's (British Thermal Units) instead. I decided a couple days ago to start putting my computer to rest from the time I go to bed at night until 5:00 p.m. when I get off of work. I did this to hopefully offset the energy costs of running my air conditioner. So far, I think it's working - but not at all as I thought. When I came back to my apartment today, it was considerably cooler than it had been. In fact, I didn't turn on the AC one time the entire evening. There are several words and phrases that define the types of people who run their heater in the summer and the air conditioner at the same time. A few of these names follow: stupid, rich, very short people, very tall people, and almost anyone who regularly watches Fox. What do you know? I just joined a big club.

In other bad luck with technology this week, I finally decided to call technical support at Lingo to resolve my problems with my virtually nonexistent VoIP service. They are the worst-rated well known Voice over IP phone service provider. It appears that I'm much happier paying $22.09 per month for their worthless service than I am paying a $35 cancellation fee and switching to Vonage. The logic goes something like - if I want to break even switching to a more reliable carrier, it will cost me the equivalent of about 2 months of service - I don't want to pay double price for bad service - Therefore, I'm much happier paying regular price for lousy service.

So today I decided to take the leap. I tried to call their technical support. I wanted to tell them that since my long calls to them the first day I got hooked up, I have had consistent drop-outs every couple days and that every time the service goes down, I ahve to physically go to my closet and reset the device. The last few days I've had even worse service. Today I had a dial tone for a full 10 seconds. One thing I've gotta give to them - there was no hold time. They hire so many "level 1" support technicans that there are low-paid, often quite irritable techs ready to answer at any time - 24 hours per day, 7 days per week ("level 1" can be roughly translated to: they can read a list, mostly full of ways of keeping really stupid people from reaching level 2 support at all, but have no idea how the hardware or protocols actually work) .

The first technician was mad right from the start. I di something to set him off I guess, which I think was asking him a question that must have been mentioned on a later page of the script he was reading from. About 20 seconds later we mysteriously got "disconnected."

Technician number two was actually quite a friendly guy - still probably using a script/diagram sheet of questions, but he actually listened to me and went to right where I left off (which actually was where I was BEFORE technician #1 because he just made the problem worse). I spent about an hour on the phone with this guy. True that it was only 25 minutes or less into the call that I realized that it was something that either he couldn't handle or it was faulty hardware (which he wasn't authorized to determine). By the end of the call he had a pretty good hunch that it was bad hardware, and said that it would be passed on to level 2 support (finally!) .

I almost asked at the beginning and lied that I was already waiting on level 2 support. As it turns out, I probably didn't lose any time. Level 2 support was now supposed to contact me within 24-48 hours. Try to compare that with hold time. Not only do I have to babysit them and make sure that they do call ( the level 1 guy VERY specifically mentioned the steps to follow if I don't hear back within 2 days as if it's a common occurrence), but it is also on their time basically any hour of the day(s). He did put into his notes the time that I preferred a call-back.

Wow - so you might think that's enough to make me cancel. No - I'd much rather see firsthand just how bad it can get and stick with it until they get it right. At least in 200hrs. of phone support time, I might have cost them any money they've made on my account.

Looknig at the random post title I thought I might as well justify my throwing "LMNOP" in my list of acronyms. Ok, here goes.... "Lingo Means NOP." NOP is an assembly language command that, for no real other reason than taking upspace actually does "No OPeration." How fitting that I randomly typed that in. For any of you Googlers out there, not many people read this site, but I want to be there for anyone who searches for "Lingo bad service" - and that's now pretty much guaranteed since the phrase is actually on this page. At 2:38 a.m. after all my rambling....good night.