Internet Catastrophe! Who Else Works at Home?

Apologies for the light posting yesterday, but Janel was left as a lone blogger (thanks, Janel!), while I spent hours on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why I had no DSL connection. After getting transferred to all the wrong people, I hung up with the "advice" that it was my modem and I should just buy a new one. After an hour of collecting myself and figuring out how to proceed with my frustrating day, I called back and spoke with a wonderful, intelligent person, willing and able to help...

Alas! He acknowledged that there had been several complaints from my area, and that according to my service record, none of the many people I spoke with earlier had run ALL of the proper tests. Then he found the culprit: Moisture in the cable box 8,100 feet away from my home. How specific, and how Chicago-appropriate to blame the weather!

We are wondering how many of you rely on your home internet service daily for work. It was so difficult to be reminded that we don't have a Tech Department down the hall who just comes by and fixes whatever we need on a whim. We tend to get a little freaked out and really hate it when our self-structured at-home work day comes to a hault because of our increasing reliance on the internet.

So, how many of you also share in the joys (and occasional pitfalls) of working at home??

(Image via Home Office Design UK)

Comments (1)

I started working from home in Jan 2006. Since then, my internet goes down sporadically. Ranging from once a day to 10 times per day.

My company has 3 corporate locations and each time I would call the corporate Help Desk, I would get excuses ranging from it's your modem (never was) or it's your cable provider (ditto, never the case).

What WAS the problem was related to our company server. One in MA, one in FL. They never work properly and not a week goes by without some sort of downtime. Sometimes only the remotes
(those of us that are allowed to telecommute) are affected...sometimes it's the whole company.

One thing I do know after 15 months of continual run-around is that my modem and internet service are FINE. My company's servers? That's another issue.