If it's not us, you'll pay $50

Hotwire is so shifty...

(how shifty is it?)

.. that if you have a problem with your internet / devices and you know rebooting the system(s) aren't working, Hotwire coming out to troubleshoot could possibly end with a fifty dollar convenience fee if they find no fault of their equipment.

Also known as "it's not us, it's you".

My mother texted me after 12 yesterday (Tuesday) saying the TV went out. She waited... and waited... it never went back on. 

Shortly after, the internet crapped out. 

Again... she waited. She even tried unplugging the main power adapters from the wall unit, and to no avail, nothing worked. 

So she called Hotwire. 

She explained that the TiVo box was saying it is not connected to the internet, and that all our devices that were currently running, were not connected to the internet. 

Hotwire ran some tests from their end and said it definitely shows that we aren't connected. They did something to try to reset it on their end, but nothing worked. Even by guiding her how to reset (unplug) the Eero and the Nokia, nothing still went back to work. Therefore, the earliest time slot someone from Hotwire could get here would be between 8am and 10am today (Wednesday) to check everything. 

Keep in mind that this phone call was made around 1pm and I was at work, so there was still probability I could look at it and fix it, thus, cancelling the appointment. But I still had to come home and check it out... 5 hours later.

My mother was also told that if the tech comes out and sees everything in working order, she will be charged $50 because the was nothing wrong with the equipment. 

As if we are jeopardizing an already shitty service. 

She said that she shouldn't be responsible for paying anything, given the fact she was in the middle of streaming something on Amazon and the internet shut off. She tried everything herself and the TV was still saying we had no internet. 

Hotwire said it was protocol and that's what they do. If a tech comes out and finds everything working, you get charged 50 dollars for wasting their time (so to speak). If they see that there is a problem with their equipment, you pay nothing. 

I keep telling people that the reliance on wireless internet (fiber optics) is like Dish network. Any way the wind blows, the dish cops out. Well, any way you blink, the fiber optics cut out and you lose your wireless service. Too many people in my community right now are up in arms over how junk the company is and we're stuck in a 10 year contract. 

My mom is fit to be tied. She's texting her friends and although they are all seemingly connected, she's still reading old posts about people having problems. 

I get home and I'm trouble shooting everything. I'm unplugging things, I'm plugging them back in. 

The Nokia isn't fully lit up and for a solid minute the FAIL light is red.

The Eero is blinking red.

The tv is still circling and saying we aren't connected to the internet. 

I'm no technician, but I see a couple different problems. 

1. Everything Hotwire is using is piggy backing off the Comcast lines. We aren't truly fiber optics when it's partially connected to Ethernet cables attached to cable lines. 

        We've been told by Comcast that the wiring running under the condos are getting old and that's why we don't get the super speed we pay for. So old wiring + new wiring meshed together = something is going to fail. 

        Plus, the Eero in the living room is connected via an Ethernet cable for some reason, even though it's not near the Nokia. Therefore, if it's a (Comcast) wiring issue, the whole house needs to be rewired. Which would be on our dime because it's an internal construction job for an external issue (long story short, we had a problem with our doorbell. Board member says the wiring is on the inside of the house for the bell, so we are responsible to fix it, not the association, as the bell isn't technically an outside association responsibility. So that logic extends to the Comcast cable lines). 

2. The Nokia box is failing. Hence the reason the fail light was lit up when I rebooted everything. The box is trying to talk to the Eero extenders and since the extenders can't work without a proper signal, everything is going to fail. 

        Which doesn't make sense that the (Comcast) phone line is plugged in to the Nokia and we still have an active land line. 

        Which makes me think it goes back to #1. 

I give up for the night. I can't fix this. Since we have no TV and no internet, I call it a day and go to bed. 

I get up this morning and go to work. My mom sits outside at 7:50 waiting for a technician to come. She sees all her friends walking by and they stop to talk to her. She explains what's going on. They are mad for her because Hotwire isn't a great company to work with. 

9:30 she texts me saying someone finally showed up. He walks in and looks at the Nokia. He says it might be that box, based on the lights that are lit and not lit, plus the Eeros being red. He does some tests with other equipment, and says it IS the Nokia box - it's failed. Broken. Needs to be replaced. 

Which proved me right on number 2. 

My mother asks if this happens a lot... these things just break. He wouldn't confirm nor deny he question, so she's to believe it does happen frequently. 

He changes the box, and it's still not talking with everything. He calls up his tech line to ask questions. They still don't see us having internet. 

He has to do some other things, and eventually says it's a configuration problem. He has to reconfigure everything to they all talk to each other and this could take a while. 

"Reconfigure everything"??? Like we're doing some back door admin stuff to this service so we break it. If it were that easy, I would have been able to log in to the admin panel myself to check everything. As it is, there's nothing I can log in to currently, to even change the Wi-Fi password. How in the hell would I be able to log into the portal to do anything else? 

So he gets everything completed and goes around to check the televisions and make sure they're all working. The end result is we have a "new" box, things are connected, and my mother made a scathing post on the community Facebook page - something she never does. She felt she had to air the grievances because it's yet another person having problems with a company the community never asked for. 

We will see how long it lasts. At the rate things are going, I think a lot more people might drop Hotwire and get a plan with someone else, even though it's "cheaper" to stick with this piece of junk service than it is to go with a reputable company. We pay for it in our HOA, so we technically aren't saving millions of dollars, but depending on what you want in your package, you could possibly save a few hundred dollars. 

But is a $300 savings better than what we were getting... because now we're getting constant drop outs, constant loading problems, people are rebooting their boxes daily (even multiple times a day), the frustration levels are higher than the money saved. 

All this for what? To attempt to get the community a step into the future? I think we'd be better of staying in the present past if it saves us from headaches. I bet more people will move because of this... between Hotwire problems and some other rumblings, this place is going south, quick. 

Until something else gets shifted...

Cheers;