I'm not the kind of guy who has
historically acted on his knee-jerk reactions. Yes, there are times I
act impulsively, as when I bought my house in Boynton Beach, Fla. in
2001, and especially when I bought my house in Greenville in 2006. In
my defense, I made out like a bandit on the sale of my Boynton home
when I sold it in 2006. During the housing boom, it more than doubled
in value in the five-or-so years I owned it. Too soon to tell with my
Greenville home, but I certainly won't sustain a loss.
Removing those two decisions from the
averaging, I usually think things through. I may still not make the
best decision, but it isn't because I haven't thought about it. It's
taken not one, but several factors to nudge me into changing gyms.
It's been a progression of smaller things that have morphed into an
avalanche of reasons to move on after 11 years. Some are almost
insignificant, like changing the music played over the sound system
from various satellite-radio stations alternating from classic rock
to current pop, to permanently turning to some head-banging station
where screeching and hollering pass for music. They have been
torturing the membership with this for nearly a month. It's like a
Chinese water torture: drip, drip, drip. Why not just waterboard us
as we enter and get it over with? Other deciding factors are larger,
like the machines not being maintained. I haven't pulled the trigger
on the change yet. That will come sometime on Monday, but the
decision is made.
You may well be thinking where in
the hell is he going with this? Stay with me.
Also early on Monday, if
Comcast/Spectrum is on schedule, I will replace my AT&T Internet
connection with Spectrum's Internet. At least I hope they are on
schedule; AT&T will terminate my service at midnight on Sunday.
The reason I am penning this entry to
Clanging Bell today (Saturday), rather than my usual Clanging Bell
day (Sunday), is that I've been knocked off the Internet twice
already this morning. And, it isn't even 9:00. I will be at home the
next two weeks and have a ton of work to do before returning to the
road in mid April. I have some big assignments to knock out. Today
was to be a research day for a couple of those assignments. I can't
research if my Internet isn't performing.
A little background. Because of the
treeline to the south of my house, satellite TV doesn't work for me.
I have two choices for TV content: AT& T Uverse or
Comcast/Spectrum. I had Comcast when I first moved to Greenville, but
it has positively the worst DVR in the industry. It is severely
limited in the number of channels it can record simultaneously. I
dumped it after a year for Uverse. When I switched to Uverse, I also
changed my phone service from Verizon to AT&T. My Internet
service had always been with AT&T. Yes, I bundled. Perhaps the
biggest scam in the digital universe.
At the time I started with AT&T
Internet, streaming still wasn't much of a thing. Also, I wasn't
uploading videos to Vimeo or YouTube. The 12 mbps (Laughable, I
know.) I originally purchased gave me all the steam I needed for what
I was doing. Even when uploading my short 3- to 5-minute just3things
videos to Vimeo, upload time was reasonable. Once I began
BEER2WHISKEY, which has segments running as long as 30 minutes,
suddenly it was taking five, six, even seven hours to upload to
YouTube. I mitigated that by uploading over night. I was unhappy, but
making do.
I recently stayed at a Ritz Carlton.
While there, I finished editing a 20-min B2W segment and went about
uploading it. It uploaded in about 90 minutes. This was four hours
less than it would have required at home. I took a giant step in
making the decision to switch.
In the past couple of months, streaming
at my house has taken a nose dive. Often the picture quality is like
watching an episode of "Bewitched" on a 1969 Admiral table-top TV with rabbit ears.
There were times I couldn't even get Amazon TV to come in. This issue
became progressively worse to the point that between 4 pm and 8 pm on
weekdays, I can't stream at all. I suspect it has something to do
with kids being home from school and gaming or whatever. AT&T's
broadband during those hours apparently is something akin to the Blue
Ridge Parkway during fall-foliage season: stop and go. As I say, in
recent days on my PC, my Internet drops two or three times an hour.
I returned home from my Ritz Carlton
stay, and checked on my current Internet plan with AT&T. This was
when I realized the $64 a month I was paying was only giving me 12
mbps. But hey, they had another plan that, for $2 more, I could get up
to 24 mbps. I “upgraded” to that two or three weeks ago. Clearly
the key phrase in that upgrade offer is, “up to 24 mbps.” There
was not a prayer that I was going to actually see 24 mbps or anything
close to it. I did see it up to 10 mbps while I was streaming
something from Amazon TV, but on a good day it hovers around 6 mbps.
During peak times, it was more like 2 or 3 mbps. Two bucks doesn't
buy you much in the world of broadband.
Early last week I checked out Spectrum.
I receive solicitations from them like I owe them money: often two
per week. Normally that would be enough to prevent my reaching out to
them, but, as I mentioned above, my choices here are limited. The
offer I found and picked is 400 mbps for less than $50. Seems like a
bargain, right? I took it and made an appointment for 8 am this
coming Monday to have it installed.
Now came calling AT&T to cancel my
current Internet service. I got Paul from AT&T's customer service
on the phone. He's located in Dallas, he was quick to tell me,
letting me know he wasn't Bob from New Delhi. To his (and AT&T's)
credit, he didn't try to keep me on the phone for 20 minutes
attempting to talk me out of canceling the Internet portion of my
service. But he did tell me he wished I had called before taking the
plunge with Spectrum. You see, he confided to me, my area qualifies
for an upgrade to 100 mbps that only entails an AT&T tech showing
up and attaching some sort of box to the side of my house. Oh, and
the upgraded service would cost $14 less than I am currently paying.
Are you kidding me?
Rather than instilling some degree of
buyer's remorse in me, the double-secret-probation offer ticked me
off. If this upgrade is available in my area, why was this the first
I had heard of it. When I upgraded a few weeks earlier, this 100 mbps
option wasn't on the list of available services. I never received an
e-mail nor a snail-mail letter notifying me of the 100 mbps option.
Nope, apparently this is something they keep in their back pocket as
a hail Mary to try to retain defecting customers. It would have
worked on me had I not already scheduled new service. Problem was, I
was already over the wall. I had already defected.
So, beginning Monday (fingers crossed),
I will have new and much improved Internet. I am stoked.