Earthlink sucks...

Its very mention in most circles stirs up a plethora of hidden emotions, audible grunts, and twisted scowls. Contemplating it for too long will lead to sleepless nights, ulcers, and depression. I'm talking about...

OUTSOURCING.

My brother spent three hours this morning with multiple people in various parts of developing countries troubleshooting a failed attempt at setting up a new Earthlink DSL account. Now, three hours may be fine, if the problem had actually been resolved. But no...

After countless (begin Indian or Chinese accent) "We don't need to worry about that"'s and "That's not important right now"'s, my brother gave up on the phone end of things. Mind you, the questions he was getting the aforementioned responses to were "I just received an error stating that it can't get an IP address. What should I do?" and "It can't detect my NIC. Is that bad?" Apparently their troubleshooting scripts don't allow for logical questions.

Finally, my brother asked me to come over. He wasn't a happy camper. He kept mumbling something about "Frikkin' 'Dat eez note important now.!" After fifteen minutes of troubleshooting, we decided that we needed a second computer to rule out his laptop as the problem. Gee, maybe Earthlink should put something in their script about isolating the source of the problem. But I digress...

Oh, one more thing: every time my brother was put on hold, Earthlink would inform him that "J.D. Power and Associates ranked Earthlink customer support #1!" Join me for my continued rant about Earthlink next time we talk.