Wednesday, May 5, 2021

A Spectrum of Issues

     TV problems culminating in February with service call. Most serious was Channel 6 audio distortions. Also, unwanted switch to Spanish language on certain channels along with narrative for visually impaired, and at times lack of audio on Channel 13 and then those silent Spectrum ads, only  disturbing as a sign of some malfunction somewhere. The tech switched out the box and made other adjustments related to splitters et al.  Improvement resulted, though sounds still seemed somewhat distorted to me. Suggestions from family members were to buy a new TV set, as it may contain a problem and  for me to get my hearing checked for much the same reason. New TV set arrived and my hearing passed inspection, so all continued on for a while. (There had never been a problem with the picture.

    But then in April, all went awry again. Seriously muffled audio on Channel 6. The tech who responded said he'd never heard the variable sounds within a program, said it definitely was not my hearing. He switched out the box and made other changes as well, said we did not need the splitter another tech had installed in basement. When I told him we had just had a new box installed 2 months ago, he said no, it was not a new box and neither was this one he was presently installing. All are refurbished, he said. 

   All was okay for a while, but in a few weeks the former malfunctions resurfaced. Yesterday the audio on Channel 6 was distorted, and the audio on Channel 8 non-existent, Spanish was infiltrating some audio, and Ch. 13 displayed a silent Spectrum ad. 

   Today when a different tech arrived, the issues were not apparent. He said he couldn't say for certain they would be corrected as he couldn't compare the before and after. so he diligently went through all the possible causes and corrected what he saw as contributors to the problems. He switched out the box to a different type, a little larger and new. When I told him it had recently been replaced, he asked if it could be the same box just removed at the previous visit. He said if a tech is to replace a box and he doesn't have one in his truck, it is known that some will just bring the original box back inside. Deceptive, I said. So he did some other work and left to sit in his truck for the 10 minutes required to check in  with the company.

R. had called when the tech had arrived. I told her I would call her back when he left. I went to call and there was no dial tone. I brought the phone to the tech still in the driveway. He thought it unusual, but then the dial tone returned and I made the call to R. The call broke off, She thought her phone might be to blame. The tech drove off.  I went to use the computer and found it unusable. Troubleshooter said the connection between the access point and modem and internet was BROKEN. My cell phone also read no connection. I drove to Madigan's to report the outage and the rep said someone would call me back. There were 3 calls from Spectrum but they  broke off before any resolution or even explanation on my part.

  There was no dial tone on my phone, except that  every half hour or so, I could make or receive calls for about 20 seconds before they dropped off. I used one of those moments and asked Joe T. to call Spectrum and report the problem. He called me back and said Service Call was scheduled for tomorrow, 8-9 a.m.  OK, I'll have to wait. But a few minutes before 5p.m., Spectrum called to say tech was enroute. The same tech showed up a few minutes later, and fairly quickly diagnosed that the computer modem had died. 

He replaced it, and all seems well. But what a remarkable coincidence that perfectly working phone and internet died in exactly the same time period that the television was revived. 

  ***Spectrum rates are exorbitant, and I won't deny that. But at the same time the service is unique in that the customer does not have to pay for the repair calls or for most of the stuff they replace, like boxes and modems and cables and splitters. Rejoice!

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