Hope this never gets traced back to me but if it did, who gives a shit? Besides this post is on the front page and no one's even going to see it but never the less I feel like saying it so here it is.
I work for a competitor of Time Warner Cable. Had the pleasure of working with their techs and support staff from the level 1 tech you hate talking to, to the tech that makes you wonder how much Time Warner has to pay someone so smart to stick with an ISP. Many parallels between our jobs and I can say one thing for certain, we can't sustain anything.
Things break, we don't have enough money to repair them in a timely fashion because the guys at the top all unanimously feel like improving their lives instead of the company.
Boss: Like my new Porche? Just got it detailed
Me: Yeah, it's great boss. Well its Friday night. Gotta go eat some ramen and turn off all my appliances to save money.
We make enough to eat not to live (don't plan on going out and still being able to afford groceries at the end of the month). We basically think up the shit we give people (i.e. network ideas, solutions to shit we've never seen before sometimes, etc.). We don't have enough people to support you. We never will. When we say there is no tech in the area, we mean there is no tech in the state (probably in the closest 3 states)and you have to wait for about 15 to 20% of the total customer pool to have an issue that requires a technician visit (or make a huge stink) so the guys who live on the road laying the physical network all day every day can take a trip over to your house and tell you that your wifi is turned off on your PC and you click this button, this button, and this button to turn it back on.
It is a wonder Time Warner Cable or any ISP has the stones to even say that they have a supportable network when you don't have enough people to support the state the headquarters is in, let alone the whole country. News flash. Cable pullers (guys who's job is to literally pull cable from a big box of cable from one place to another) end up picking up the slack. Meaning guys who have no IT experience at all. So when you say they dicked something up, we believe it. We KNOW it's true. We're just never going to say it because we are LITERALLY being constantly monitored through the phone system we help set up ourselves in the office, and by the supervisor that's in earshot of everyone in the room.
To the people who are fortunate enough to have techs that are in the serviceable area of a state and come out to fix things in a timely manner, don't ever move. You may not be so lucky next time. To the people who live out of a service area, it would be faster to fix it yourself. Chances are you know exactly as much about your system as the tech that will visit. On the off chance you get a tech with a background in IT, use the SHIT out of him/her while they are there. We IT guys decided to pick this shit up and learn it for as long as we did because we were told there were copious amounts of money involved. That is rarely the case for the guy/girl who you talk to on the phone or visits your house. Keep that in mind the next time you want to tear them a new asshole and just ask for a supervisor. We'd appreciate it.
You might ask "Well how much do you guys make anyway? Can't be that bad right?" Yes. It is that bad. Imagine going to school for 6 years (2 years at a tech school and 4 years undergrad) only to amass a massive amount of student loan debt and make as much as you would while working at McDonalds. It's not a joke. I've seen McDonalds across the US (because I travel for this job alot) that have help wanted signs advertising more money than I make in my tech job. Made me think about flipping burgers for a living. At least then I wouldn't have to work "On-Call" on the weekends (Both Saturday and Sunday) from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. for very little pay (100 bucks before taxes. Used to be no pay at all till a new law forced them to pay us something).
Best you can hope for is to get a Certification in something like Cisco. That way if you get a computer networking job, you should be fine for a while.
Did a little complaining in this but the point was to illustrate to anyone who finds it that you should avoid working in any support role with an ISP or dealing with an ISP if you can help it and before you move anywhere, check with them and make sure that you are in a serviceable area so you can get a tech in a few days. Otherwise you'll be shit out of luck.