My first Brighthouse/ Road Runner Rant after 12 years

[GreyWoolfe]

I know complaining isn't going to get anywhere but sometimes just simply venting is enough.  I have been a Brighthouse customer for 12 years.  For those who don't know, they are a large regional cable company who consistantly ranks high in JD Power surveys, for what it's worth. 

After being on vacation for awhile and not checking email after that, I finally check my road runner email and I get an error that the incoming mail server is not responding.  I triple check all the settings in outlook 2007, send a test message which completes successfully but I don't see it in my inbox.  I check webmail and it's there.

Now to get on the phone.  I finally get through and ask if there is anything wrong with my email account or has anything changed.  The CSR gives no indication that anything has changed or is wrong.  She has me try a few things w/o success.  Then she has me change the port assignments for the incoming mail server.  I ask when did this happen.  She said it was always the ports she gave me.  My reply was that was incorrect as my email has worked for 12 years up until 2 weeks ago.  She has me test and still no love.  Then she tells me to change in incoming and outgoing mail server names to something different.  All of a sudden, mail starts downloading.  I ask, did this change within the last 2 weeks as that was the last time I got email.  Now, her response is yes.  I asked why didn't Brighthouse send out a notice to all its customers that this was happening.  I got no real answer as I guess that the question wasn't in her script book.

Brighthouse has a large customer base.  It is my only option as I am too far from the CO to get DSL service.  Their service has always been great, the Internet down time percentage is almost non existent and I have received messages from them in the past when there was a planned service interruption.  I don't understand why they couldn't be arsed to send a notification out that the changes were taking place so myself and other customers could have made the appropriate changes in a timely manner instead of wasting time calling tech support.  It would have not taken much on their part and I could have saved over a half hour including hold time and simply made the changes in about a minute.

Brighthouse is now Spectrum as they and other cable companies have been bought up.  Hopefully this is something that just slipped through the cracks during the transition and not the start of a trend.  Anyway, as I said, just a vent because venting to SWMBO is a waste of time, she uses only a single gmail account, where I have 7 different email accounts including 2 roadrunner.  She could care less, unless the Internet is down and then the world is spinning off its axis into the sun and I need to fix it right the hell now.