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Mike the ComputerGuy


Ferret

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Mike is good and I am glad he was able to solve your  problem.

You said you were going into Telmex to get a new modem. That used to be easy to do. I understand now that you have to phone Mexico City and that they will send someone out to your house to check your modem and that going to the Telmex office is no longer the solution.

I hope I am wrong. Please share with us how one gets a new modem. Good luck.

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You've never seen me in action Pete. I have had sooo many problems with my connection and it's ALWAYS the fault of telmex. I've called Mexico City twice already since Tuesday. All they have to do is try my modem and they'll see that it doesn't work. I am sick to death of paying for service that I don't have. God forbid that they should issue a credit for the 7 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS and 4 DAYS that I've had problems over the last two years. iLOX cannot get here fast enough for me.

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Gosh that sucks. I guess the closer you live to a Telmex office, usually the better service you get. According to the computer at the Telmex office, I live 1070 meters from their office (or from my DSLAM card) and therefore I get fairly good service. Internet is not as fast as I like but it is OK.

I am glad there will be more options soon. I think that will motivate Telmex to improve their service to include offering higher internet speeds.

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We waited with multiple excuses for our new modem....took 3 wks to get here & then they had to have a local tech bring one to us!!!  They have their own delivery service which is practically non-existent........good luck.  The other option I've heard people use is to flag down one of the service people out on the road..........

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I calmed down and phoned Mexico City and got an authorization number... went back to Telmex (they are open 'til 4:30) and waited again and came away with a modem. I will let you know if and when it works. Too tired now. Way past nap time. Sigh.

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A few years ago my Telmex modem failed. Same process of calling Mexico City, going through their instructions to unplug it, detach all the cables, plug everything back in and got an authorization number for a new modem. Went back to Telmex with the number which they were able to verify on their computer and walked out with a new modem. Whole process to less than an hour.

So it sounds like that is still the process. A little bit of a hassle but fighting it will do no good. Just follow their instructions and you should up and running pretty quickly.

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My observations so far:

The modem that I was given by Telmex in Ajijic is NOT new. It didn't come in plastic. It didn't come with cables. It didn't come with the noise reduction filters. It didn't come with instructions. And it doesn't work. WTF?  Be warned.

FYI... the password code on my DEAD modem was 70wWkk9BEe …….. so if they try to give that modem to somebody else just to get rid of them, take note that it doesn't work.

The password code on the modem that I was given as a replacement is C440F8872B . Anyone recognize it? Anyone turn it in lately?

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Great that you have someone great that seems ethical, capable and honest.

 

I got my high speed Internet in Guadalajara installed with Tel Mex.  I've been really happy with how quick it is (I got 100 MB) service which was the fastest you can get.  But one day it stopped working and dealing with Tel Mex was a hassle calling in.  Luckily when the Tel Mex guy came out to install it I happened to ask his number if I had any questions.  When it stopped working they came out and said it was the Cable.  I'm not sure why but there is a really thin and delicate fiber optic cable that he said breaks all the time.   I guess I wasn't dealing with TelMex because he said dealing with them would take a few weeks.  He charged 400 pesos to replace the cable and voila!  Right away it was fixed.   

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I was able to verify Ferret's "new modem" problem this morning. It is an older modem, perhaps six years, and had an odd TelMex sticker pasted over the password and ID. So very obviously used, and never tested, or they wouldn't have given it to her. It doesn't work. Period. A long-standing ploy with the morons at our local TelMex office: any excuse, any device, any time. That's not customer service: it's dereliction of duty. A firing offense, where I come from. But that is life here.

So now Ferret is forced to a: call Mexico City and lodge a complaint; b: go back to TelMex yet another time, with the modem, and go through that hassle; and c, pray when she gets back home with (we hope) the replacement modem that it actually works, plus d: not be recompensed for downtown, travel time, waiting time, gas, and so on.

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Just got off the phone with Mexico City again. I plugged in the modem that I was given by Telmex on Friday...they tested it, confirmed that it didn't work and gave me another authorization number to go back to Telmex again and get a NEW modem.

imho, it's not Telmex that's the problem. After 22 years in Mexico, I never had problems with Telmex in San Miguel de Allende or with Telmex in San Pancho. It's only been since the move to Ajijic in 2011 that I've encountered problems with Telmex HERE.

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New Flash: The Telmex office in Ajijic will not give out new modems only used ones for existing customers. The new ones are only for "new customers".  The young lady picked one up off the next desk that had just been turned in. I asked how I knew if it would work and was told they have no way of testing if they work in their location. Yeah, right. I got up and walked out. I will make arrangements with Mexico City to have one sent to iMail.

Be assured that I have no problem with refurbished equipment... providing that there is a sticker or something that states that it is in working order and that the equipment is bagged and sealed with the notification inside.

 

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YES it is local. After years of calling about low low low internet speeds, despite changing modems etc (and it still continues)- I was told a piece of honesty by an operator at Telmex in Mexico City- that 90% of their calls come from the 376 area code and that it is "over subscribed". That means they are selling something they do not have. On weekends here out west it is virtually zero speed. I am looking forward to the new optical fiber line coming in from Joco.

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This is my experience dealing with the Telmex/slow speed Internet here. I live in Mazatlan, but rented a house in Villa Nova in Ajijic for a month. The speed at this house is 6 Mbps download and .6 Mbps upload. I already knew that the speeds in Ajijic were slow, but I called the Infinitum trouble report number and talked to a tech there. She looked at the line and said she saw no problems and there was nothing she could do from where she was to improve the speed, but she gave me a trouble ticket number and said a tech would come by and check the line. A tech came by a couple of days later. He checked the line coming in to the house and said the maximum coming in to the house was 7 Mbps and it is normal for me to see 6 Mbps, using the “speedtest.net” Web site that shows how much a person is getting with their computer or other device. He said I was lucky to get 6 Mbps. He said across the road at another subdivision, and in other parts of Ajijic, the maximum download speed is 2 or 3 Mbps. And I believe him. I talked to a woman in the Ajijic Telmex office. She lives not far from this house and she said she does only get 2 or 3 Mbps download.

For the last 3 weeks I had thought about buying a new modem from Mercado Libre, just to give it a try at this house to see if it made any improvement in speed. I finally did it about a  week ago. The modem that was being used at this house was a Huawei HG532e from 2012. It was and still is a good modem. The modem I got from Mercado Libre is a Huawei HG659. It was manufactured in April of this year. It is the latest in technology. It is a 2 band modem transmitting at 2.4 and 5 GHz. And incredibly, I paid 240 pesos for it. That is about $13 or $14 US dollars and for that price it was shipped to me by the seller and got here within 2 days by FEDEX. It did not improve the down speed,  but did improve the up speed from .6 Mbps to around 1 Mbps. I might have been able to call the Infinitum techs in Mexico City and ask them if there were any options they could change remotely from there to try to improve my speed, but being as this is not my house I did not want to do that.

Modems like this were designed to be used with fiber optic facilities, but being as they are the latest in technology, being 5 or 6 years newer than the old modems, they do sometimes make an improvement in speed. I will of course take this new modem back to Mazatlan. I have an HG 658 modem there and I get down speed of between 35 to 40 Mbps. I do not have fiber optic cable in to my house, but there is apparently fiber optic cable somewhere between my house and the central office. So I will use this wonderful HG659 in Mazatlan and will have the HG658 as a backup.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Oatsie said:

Mike....   I wonder if this would be a good alternative for Mexico ?

SkyRoam Solis

Expect to see a lot of these "WiFi access points" being advertised in the coming year. (It's the latest "fad", like those USB sticks that promise to magically fix your computer, and Dr. Love's Traveling Miracle Elixir.) I haven't tried one yet, but they will only help if the infrastructure is already in place, which it isn't here. And how much they will help is questionable.

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I am not complaining about speed. I had speed before with the modem that died (20 mbps up and 4 mbps down). I had speed with the modem that ComputerGuy used to prove that it was my modem that was dead. I have NO SPEED at all with a dead modem. … make that NO SPEED with TWO dead modems.

I made an official complaint about the Ajijic Telmex office to Mexico City. If no one makes complaints official to Mexico City, you can be assured that absolutely nothing will change and they will continue handing out (read reshuffling) modems (that they have no way to check if they work) to customers. You MAY have bad wiring but you may also have a bad modem. How are YOU going to be able to tell the difference?

I have only lived in this house for just over two years. For the first seven months I had problems with inconsistency of service and many calls to Telmex and visits to the office resulted in nothing. I finally hired a guy to check the connections and the one, up a pole and around the corner from my house, was badly corroded. All it took was a stripping of the end of the wires and reconnection. All was fine until a contractor for Telmex cut my line to install a line in a new house on the next street. I informed Telmex within a 1/2 an hour of it happening but it took three weeks to get it fixed. Now this modem trick. They are incompetent and lazy.

I have already signed up for iLox and can't wait for them to get here. I've had it... and am more than a little pissed off and at the end of my patience. If you're not happy with Telmex then do something about it. Phone Mexico City and lodge an official complaint. 01-800-123-2222 They have a lot of English speaking techs now. Ingles por favor. Muy facil!

 

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There is an astonishing lack of service around here from service providers of all types. But not being able to test a modem in a company that specializes in modems... well, that's out-and-out disgusting. For want of a better word.

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