The Process of Converting to VOIP from a Land Line- The 11th Day

I’m writing this on the 11th day after the first ticket was cut to establish a Voice Over IP service (VOIP) to replace my landline service.  Previous blog entries have detailed the problems I have had to this point:

• Obtain service from the VOIP provider, which is OOMA. This was relatively painless. I selected a new phone number and installed the VOIP provider's phone device.
• The land line provider (ATT) had to split my account into two accounts to enable the IP service to receive my current phone number. This took a couple of minutes on my part and the "apparent" elapsed time was a couple of days for the transfer to occur.
• I wanted to keep my current email address.  This was a nightmare of mess ups and lack of knowledge on the part of the technicians.
• ATT had to activate my DSL account. After dealing with 4 different technicians multiple times over 5 days. and with ATT having to reissue action tickets, this was finally completed. I was without both phone and DSL for 5 days.

At this point I should be done, right? Not! When ATT created the new DSL account, the speed they assigned to the account was the slowest they offer! At the time my DSL was activated at 9 days in, I told the technician that my speed was not set to the speed of my old account. (VOIP requires speedy and relatively noiseless DSL.) He apologized and connected me to the appropriate department to make the change. The technician I talked to said that the database had not been updated to show my account, so the change could not be made. I was told to wait 4 hours and I would be called.

After 4 hours I called back and got a different technician. He said that the account had not been updated and that he would make a note to himself to call me tomorrow, but it could take two days. Two days! (Note that the technician that got my DSL running appears to have had no idea that it would take two days to change the DSL speed!) I pointed out that this was Friday and asked if he was working the weekend. He said no, he was not working the weekend, so it would be Monday (13 days from the start of this ordeal). He also mentioned that this should not have happened. The conversion to a new account should have been to the same performance level as the old account. Aaargh!

So, it is Saturday, 11 days in and I am running at 765kbps download and 133 upload!

An update:  I called on Saturday and was able to get someone that could put in the order.  (Apparently my account was fixed between yesterday and 10am today.)  I did put in the order and was informed that the service would require 3 days to implement! If that is true, it will be 14 days.