The Space for Expatriates

Living in Los Cabos: Doing the Bandwidth Boogie

As of this evening I’m going to have a new hobby. It’s going to be great fun. For the foreseeable future every evening I will be making a call to my new best friends, the English-speaking tech support agents at TelMex, and asking them why I cannot stream movies using my high-speed internet connection. I consider writing this blog a public service and envision that many of the readers will take up this fun new pastime.

Several weeks ago I subscribed to the perfectly legal NetFlix service that is new to Mexico. Since we love movies it seemed like the perfect solution. So far we’ve been thrilled with it, that’s not the problem.

Well, that’s as far as I got yesterday as two of our agent’s needed my attention. And that’s probably a good thing as I now have much more to report. More background: on Tuesday we tried to watch a movie that just couldn’t stream, we’d see a few seconds and then the screen would freeze until the iPad caught up. Frustrating! We turned off our lap-tops, but being the only internet device operating didn’t help. So now I’m thinking to myself “They wouldn’t sell NetFlix if the infrastructure wouldn’t support it.” [And yes, these rose-colored glasses fit me just fine.] So I called the tech support number. The very polite and helpful young person, and no that’s not sarcasm, had me go to a website called http://www.speedtest.net and report the numbers I got to him. Well, that night it registered about 1 MB of download signal. Which wouldn’t be bad except that our internet package is supposed to be 5 MB. No wonder we couldn’t watch the movie!

He next instructed me through everyone’s favorite computer fix: unplug the modem for 30 seconds and try again. This time the numbers were even lower! So he told me that someone would check it out. I’ve been down that path before and figured I’d have to call daily for at least a week. Turns out I was wrong. Sort of.

Last night I got our speed numbers and called again. I got another very nice person who noted that there was already a service request for this problem. Now here’s the thing: the customer service department is in Mexico City. Besides being very large New York City and Mexico City have one thing in common: the residents of each believe their city to be the center of the known universe; which can work in your favor if you let it. So I said yes, I’d called last night but surely he understood how it is out here in the frontier: you’ll never get help unless you keep on them. Since I can’t contact the local technicians I just have to keep asking him to keep on them and so I’d be contacting his office nightly. He completely understood and agreed about life in the provinces and expressed his sympathy for anyone living in the primitive wilderness. He was so sympathetic that he told me he’d make an extra effort on my behalf.

Amazingly, I received a call Thursday morning before I left for work. It was the local technician! At 10:30 and Bob called to let me know the technician said the problem appears to be fixed. He put the technician on the phone and the Spanglish interchange came down to our service was fine on the street, so the tech came inside and found that the cable from the wall to the modem had been chewed nearly through. Wonder how that could happen? Betsey Ross Billups, of course. That said, since so many of my friends are having the same problem, and at my office as well, I suspected more than one chewed cable may have been involved…..

Which was the case since when I came home… speedtest showed us still at 1 MB, so another called ensued… sigh…. Wonder how long until it really does get fixed?

So here’s the public service bit: if your Infinitum is running slow or if you’re having any other problem with a TelMex product this is what you’ll do.

Call 01-800-123-2222
The first prompt will ask you to enter your phone number including area code
After second prompt enter 1
Then hit 1 for tech support
You should now be talking to technical support, simply ask for English [EEN GLAZE POOR FAH VORE] and you will be transferred to those nice young people who helped me.
Be sure to write down the ticket number they give you for your subsequent calls.

In my experience if you call in the early evening (after dinner) you will experience zero time on hold. When I’ve called during the day it’s been a little more time consuming.

So that’s my Broadband Boogie, day three and counting….

Carol Billups is Broker/Owner of Cabo Realty Pros. She has enjoyed working with both buyers and sellers for over eleven years and still thinks hers is the best job on earth. She is also the real estate columnist for Los Cabos Magazine. You can read more of her articles on the website blog www.caborealtypros.com. You can reach her from the U.S. or Canada at 1-760-481-7694, or in Cabo at 044-624-147-7541. You can listen to our 24/7 broadcast on http://www.livecabo.net for a mix of happy music, weather reports and local information.