SONIC.NET JUST RUINED MY WEEK

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you know I have no love for AT&T. As a remote worker my Internet connection is my lifeline to success. In a telecommuting world uptime is of paramount importance. AT&T failed to understand this or deliver on speeds we paid for each month. These last two months things got even worse - I would regularly lose connectivity at least four times an hour every hour and then on Thursday & Friday of last week we had no cable or Internet at all. The only bright spot in this fiasco was that we had already cancelled our service & would be switching to a small ISP based out of Santa Rosa called Sonic.net.

When you read about Sonic the reviews are glowing. People I know who rely on home connectivity as much as or even more than I do love their service. We went into this change with high hopes. Such high hopes.

(You can guess where this is going, can't you?)

When we ordered the service we were assured this was a common situation and one that they handled all the time. As such the installation - for which we paid $125 - should be easy for them. We'd have just a couple hours of downtime, they assured us.

At 11 a.m. today AT&T cut our service. At around 11:15 a.m. the Sonic.net installer showed up. So far so good. After about an hour he told me everything looked great except for one minor issue - AT&T hasn't ported the line yet. He said that it should happen in the next couple of hours but if nothing happened by 3 p.m. I should call Sonic.net back to report the problem.

(You can guess where this is going, can't you?)

So, pretty much all day I didn't have Internet. You know, the person who telecommutes. Thankfully I had several projects I needed to work on and I was able to devote time to them without distraction. But, you know, I now need to send these projects to their recipients - today.

Except I can't leave my house to go find The Internet so that I can send these docs & presos off because I'm having back & forth calls with Sonic.net trying to figure out if my Internet works yet.

At 4:45 I realize today is mostly shot. At 5:30 they finally call me back to tell me that it looks like AT&T finished porting the line at 5 p.m. and that something must be wrong with the installation. You know, the one we paid $125 for and was assured was a normal procedure for them.

I did not take too kindly to this information, especially when the very perplexed Elijah told me that he'd have to schedule a technician to come back out to check the installation - ON FRIDAY. (Today is Monday, as you know.)

Essentially Elijah was telling me that this normal procedure they do all the time had gone haywire and I was now being punished for both the ineptitude of Sonic.net and AT&T. For the rest of the week I'll need to find Internet or drive down to my corporate office 2 hours away, each way. Oh fun! Or, I can be put on a special escalation list where if there's a cancellation they can send someone over but I'll need to be around to let the tech in. So yeah, no driving to my corporate HQ every day. Looks like my in-laws in the next town over are about to get a large dose of me. It'll be just like when we moved back to CA from PA and had nowhere to live. Except this time I've got a kick ass job where I'm kind of important so my mother-in-law won't have to ask me how many jobs I've applied to this week. ;-) (Those were awesome times. Maybe more awesome than this.)

I chatted with Elijah a bit longer and let him know that Sonic.net would be refunding our installation fee and they'd be taking some amount of "sorry for your trouble" money off our first bill. He seemed amenable to the first directive and a bit taken aback by the second. Oh, do not cross me Elijah. I once nearly got a Macy's employee fired for lying about our couch order & delivery date (it was off by three months), and I will come for you too if I need to. People make the mistake of thinking I'm a pathetic pushover because I might sound pathetic and I might actually be crying (I cry when angry, I can't fight it - sue me) but I am a determined bitch and when I pay for service and I'm wronged - when you eff with my life or my livelihood (ie, my job) - I will cut you ... and I will enjoy it.

So yeah. Not even one day in as a customer and Sonic.net has ruined my week and put me in a FOUL mood. I think I'll tweet this blog post and cc the CEO. As a small local company I'm sure he'll love hearing about these shenanigans.

And Elijah dear? I expected better of you. I hope you have an awesome week because you fucked mine.