DSL Installation Fail 371
An anonymous reader writes "Here's an example of fine Qwest workmanship. In our business park, they just installed a DSL connection for our neighbors, for which we share an exterior utility space. They left: a DSL modem stuffed in a cardboard box, wrapped in a Wal-Mart bag, sitting outside in what will be below-zero (F) temps, on top of a bank of ten natural gas meters in some of the driest air of the year. They also left it plugged into an exposed exterior power outlet above a snowbank, with network cables running around the building, through snowbanks, coupled and protected by zip-lock baggies, and into our neighbors office. Not to mention the hack-job of patching the phone cable directly into the demarcation box. And if you're wondering — I was told upon calling them that this is not their problem, and I need to contact my primary phone service provider."
Re:Call the Fire Marshal (Score:0, Informative)
Slashdot editors don't screen comments, retard.
This is a bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
If you were dealing with some local company or something, this might be ok to give them one more chance to 'make it right.' However, you are dealing with a big corp. The best thing to do, to avoid unforeseen consequences, is to call the fire marshal and inquire as to who is actually responsible if there is a situation like yours (the installer or the building owner). If it is the installer, then you immediately report the situation and get an official record of it on a government piece of paper. You then take that report and fax it to them while on the phone with their secretary and tell them they need to fix it, as the fire department has documented the faulty job and you aren't sure if they are being investigated . . .but you have confirmed with the fire marshal that they would be the ones found liable in case fault is found in the installation job.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't immediately dismiss it.
I worked for an ISP for a while. And while our techies were at least halfway decent and didn't cause too many problems, the installations we outsourced to various companies were sometimes rather crude hacks. They got paid by the installation, so anything that required more than a "go in, assemble, turn on, go" would cut into their profits. And that in turn led them to quite odd practices sometimes, where cables were thrown across rooms because the installing technician didn't have enough cable with him at that time to move along the walls, network boxes that were tossed behind desks instead of being neatly screwed to walls, bent and twisted cables that weren't replaced when they accidentally dropped something on them and simply "stealing" power cables because they had two installations to do and only one working power cable with them (so they installed it at the first customer and simply swiped that cable to be able to install the other one).
I have no idea what could possibly get a tech to do a hack like this, but I wouldn't deem it completely impossible without knowing the whole story behind it.
Re:Call the Fire Marshal (Score:2, Informative)
ACMA would fine the installer $10k on the spot for that in Australia. Sadly there are far to many people who do dodgy installs like this all over the world. :
Wonder how long it will take someone to 'recycle' the spare copper in the wires.
Re:Joke? (Score:4, Informative)
This looks like an install done by someone who knows enough about the basics of installing DSL, but just wanted to get the fuck out of there. I completely believe this because I've seen similar installs.
I once went to someone's house late at night for a trouble call (I'm a cable technician). All of the cable lines at this house were ran on the outside, just laying on the ground, not even close to the house. Even their splitters were just laying in the dirt. Water had gotten into everything and killed their connection.
We later looked into this contractor's other jobs and found similar results, so we back-billed him for all the installations. Turns out this guy was just trying to do as many installs as possible, because he was getting paid by the install. Happens more than you'd think. I'd say this DSL installer spent a grand total of 20 minutes installing this, whereas a quality install could take half the day. Multiply that by $50 an install...
NOT QWEST AFTER ALL (Score:5, Informative)
Qwest (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Qwest (Score:4, Informative)
Fake (Score:1, Informative)
Fake...and he's already removed the pic from Picassa and backpedalled it being quest.