We had a lot of problems with our cable service a few years ago, they would tell us that WE were the ONLY ones calling with problems, so then I went around to people in the neighborhood and found out that we were NOT the only ones having problems.. we fought with our provider for months, everytime they came out to our house they wanted to charge us 29.94 for a service call, heck no I aint paying for that when it is their problem! Once they replaced cable line that the squirrels had chewed on, another time they replaced the cable to our house, another time they replaced our splitters in the house... it all ended after I made a call to the home office in Georgia, then they sent out two experts from a bigger city, one was at the house with a meter on my line, another at a box a few blocks away... the guy at the box wiggled something and bingo bango, the meter dipped... it turned out it was a lose connection so they replaced it... We have had no problems since, and I got two free months of service due to all the problems we had...
Our problems would occur at night, when the wind blew or it rained...
We also would keep a check on our speed at speakeasy.com or dslreports.com, nextech has one, and there is one by froggie, internetfrog or something that, I really liked froggie but cannot remember the exact address...
You getum Ray, and let them know what I would tell them "When my electricty goes out, the meter quits running, when the cable goes out, the meter continues to run, why would I have to pay for a service I am not getting?" gets you a discount everytime!