DSL Modem No Go

I've been a generally satisfied DSL customer from Verizon. While I need to have the overpriced copper phone line to get internet, the DSL (for 768/128 kbps) is a veritable bargain at $17.99 monthly and suits me fine. I've had it since 2005, and to the best of my recollection, it was only down for one night in all that time- a good uptime record my anyone's measure. Even when my phone line died, the DSL kept chugging along.

With that in mind, I present the following. I went to turn on my internet yesterday, and the modem wouldn't connect to anything. In fact, while the other lights for power and connections glowed green on the box, the modem, a Westell 6100, had an orange light for internet- clearly not good. The computer acted otherwise fine, and I had made no changes to anything, so it clearly wasn't the problem.

Hmmmm. I went to check for a dial tone on the phone line, and it was connected so that wasn't the issue. I also double checked the wires and everything was still hooked up fine. Ok, time for some outside help, and a consult of the networking kind.

I called Verizon, and I wandered through their voice menus to "Repairs" and "DSL." They did a line test, and told me it was working fine (which I already knew). The next step was to speak to someone. I figured at this point I was going to tell them that it wasn't working, and they were going to tell me that they had a network outage, or a switch down, and they were working on it or something.

Not quite. The tech support is clearly outsourced, and I had reached somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. The reps accent was very thick, and her English was much less than fluent. She painfully talked me through rebooting the router, and reconnecting the wires to no avail. Then she talked me through some DOS commands to try to manually connect the modem to Verizon which didn't work either. She also had me take the wireless router out of the mix, even though I was plugged into it with a wire anyway. After over 45 minutes of this "just one more minute," and "thank you for providing this information," the two key American phrases she had mastered, we were no further along, and I had somewhere I needed to be, so I thanked her, and told them I'd call back when I could work on this further.

After dinner, I gave it another shot. This time I reached the Philippines, and guys English was quite fluent with much less of an accent. Yay! At least now I could focus on fixing the connection, and not repeating everything four times. After a few minutes of me explaining what had gone on before, him reviewing the notes of my previous encounter, an on hold consult with a network specialist, and my modem was pronounced dead. Ok, now what?

Here's the frustrating part. I was told I needed to contact billing, and they would figure out how to get me another modem. I was connected to them at 7:55 pm, but they close at 8, and they didn't pick up the phone. Clearly mediocre service.

I'm wondering how this will go at this point. If I have to buy another modem, I'll probably cancel the service, and try with something else. The original Westell 6100 was a piece of junk, and I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. The ideal would be if I could just bring it to a Verizon store, and they could swap me out, and hopefully charge me a nominal fee for a refurb.

Stay tuned, Verizon billing opens in 40 minutes or so...

Jonas