ACS Tech Help Doesn't Exist After 5pm Saturday Until 8am Monday, But Finally Our Internet Is Working Again [UPDATED]

So, Saturday night, about 10:45pm, our internet stopped.  It's pretty dramatic when you're streaming a movie.

We'd had an interruption just last Wednesday as well.  ACS (Alaska Communications Systems) phone tech couldn't fix it, but the next level was able to do something that got it on again in a couple of hours.

But when I called to report Saturday night, the recording said to call again during business hours.  Business hours do not include Sunday!   I was encouraged to report online.  But I never use the online system and couldn't figure out my id and password for sure, or even if I had one.

I did try to update my password with a user id that did get the response that they had send me an email telling me how to do that.  But I never got the email.  I tweeted ACS, but no response.  But even if you report it on Sunday, nothing will happen until 'business hours."

So this morning I finally got through and within 90 minutes (I only just tried the internet now after having breakfast) it's working again.

In this internet era,  how can an internet service have a 38 hour period where there is no one to restore someone's interrupted internet service?  Before I got my smart phone - which was only last December - I had no backup if internet went out.  And blogging on my phone is painful.

It turns out that you can't (have an internet service with a 38 hour help blackout period.)  ACS has this announcement on one of their webpages:

"We know how important it is to have a reliable internet connection. That’s why we are committed to keeping you connected with our reliable, dedicated business internet services that include a 24-hour repair guarantee. In the case of an outage, it is our priority to fix your internet within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support. If we are unable to fix your internet connection within 24 hours, you will be eligible to receive a $100 account credit.
In the instance that we don’t meet our 24-hour repair guarantee, simply call our Account Support team within 30 days of the outage to claim your credit."

Let's see if this works.  I see two potential problems for me:

• This is on a page for business customers, not residential customers
• It says within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support, but you can't get tech support between 5pm Saturday and 8:00 am Monday.  They didn't answer my initial call, but I made it around 11pm on Saturday night and service was working at 11pm Sunday night, or even until around 9:30 or 10am Monday.  

There are caveats below  including that it only applies to business customers.  But there is a different phone number that I'll try next time I have an outage during non-business hours.   

Alaska Communications Tech Support at 855-565-2556.

I'm less interested in the $100 than just getting my service back. (Though if I'm paying for service they don't provide, I should have a refund, right?  But $100 is way more than one 40 hours blackout.)

I have left a message at their corporate number.

[I'd note that when people have problems like this with a government agency, the reaction is often to rant and rave about how bad government is.  So I'd note that if that is a reasonable conclusion to make, then it would be equally justifiable for me to rant and rave about how bad business in general is.  But I think neither is a sensible response.  My problem is with a specific business, just as people having trouble with a government agency is a problem with a specific agency.  And with government, we are all the owners.  If we don't elect competent representatives, that's our problem.  And if we complain about having bad choices, that's also our problem.  In a Democracy we have to work to keep it working - even if that means finding and supporting good candidates to run.  Or even running for office ourselves.]


It's nice to have these little, eventually solvable problems, in these times of huge seemingly unsolvable ones.  But the House is working on impeachment, and there are things we can do about climate change - a carbon fee and dividend,  non-fossil fuel sources of energy; changing our eating and agricultural habits.  Solving little problems gives encouragement for the bigger ones.

And not having internet for a day, well, before the 1990s, I didn't have internet every day.  I finished a book yesterday and did household chores and had brunch with friends.

But still.  ACS, please get your act together.  I like having a local internet carrier rather than some conglomerate.  But I'm sure you can devise a work schedule to take care of problems between Saturday night and Monday morning.

[UPDATE October 28, 2019:  Over the weekend I also send a message to ACS via Twitter.  The Twitter reader apparently was off until Monday morning too because I got a message this morning telling me to call in today.  I responded with a brief summary of my issues and a link to this post.  I just got another Twitter message from ACS:

"Hi Steven, we're sharing your blog post with our tech support manager. Thanks, for your thoughtful comments. We are sorry for the trouble with your service this weekend. We appreciate you."]