Author Topic: Upload weather data to anywhere with free Internet service  (Read 591 times)

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Offline galfert

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Upload weather data to anywhere with free Internet service
« on: December 20, 2020, 11:00:31 AM »
I just had the most peculiar thing happen. I've been a customer of my local cable company for 20 years. I've never missed a payment and I'm on auto-pay with my credit card on file. A couple months ago my credit card needed to be updated with all auto-pay services because of expiration date change. That is a frustrating thing to have to deal with. Amazingly some companies somehow automatically get the new expiration date and others don't. So it was still work but not as much as I thought it would be. You still have to check to make sure it is up to date but at least you don't need to manually change it everywhere.

So now we get to the local cable company which luckily isn't Comcrap but lets just say it is the other major cable company. Yep they are just Spec...tacular I tell you. I tried to update my credit card in their system. It didn't work. I wouldn't accept a simple expiration date change. So I called customer service. They couldn't change it either. They advised me to delete the card and add it again. So I delete the card and then it won't let me add a new card into the system. The customer service person tells me to just try again later or the next day. They said that their system needed probably reset as removing the credit card too me off of auto-pay and that I couldn't re-entroll in auto-pay just yet because changes were pending. So basically by removing the credit card you change your customer billing type from being auto-pay to manual pay. I've always been auto-pay so this is ridiculous. The system also didn't just let me add another card because the card has the same number and thus it said that the given card number was already in the system and would not accept that same card number twice. So their billing system stinks. Just a bit frustrated at this point because I can't solve the updating of the credit card simply and I have to deal with it again the next day. Well life gets busy and of course I didn't update it the next day. Some time passes, weeks, and I finally rather than deal with their terrible online system I decided it would just be easier to call on the phone and have them do it for me. I talk to a representative and they say no problem and I consider the matter resolved.

Then just a few days later I get a letter in the mail telling me that I'm past due and that my service is about to be cut off if I don't deal with this. I wonder if the letter just crossed paths in the mail with me having handled the matter on the phone. So I call back and ask if everything is okay. I'm told that everything is fine. I figured great problem solved. That was last week.

Then today at 9AM on Sunday morning my Internet stops working. At first I don't think anything of it. I figure that my router is maybe having issues. I recently put in a beta version of a router firmware to test some things out and I think maybe I need to deal with my network stuff. After a bit of troubleshooting the Internet service is weird. I can ping but not receive data. I can do DNS resolution with Google DNS but no Internet web access. I reset my router. Then I think maybe Pi-hole Docker is having issues...so I take a look at that and it seems fine except for a noticeable increase in DNS traffic, a big spike. I then turn off Pi-hole and revert back to Google DNS for the network. Still Internet not working. Then I think that maybe cable company is having a service issue in the area. Before calling them I figured I reboot the modem for good measure. Still no Internet. So I call the cable company and immediately I'm greeted by a recording after identifying myself that my Internet service has been cut off for lack of payment! WHAT?! Oh I'm mad now. This is now 45 minutes of dealing with my network not realizing what the real issue was. I'm then on hold for only 4 minutes which is enough to really get me going and I rip into the customer service person. I apologize to them for getting the brunt of it, but I tell them that they better sort this out. I tell them that I've been with them for 20 years and that this is unacceptable. The utter incompetence of the whole thing is just ridiculous. Cable companies are the worst. So a few minutes later and we are now 1 hour into the outage before my Internet gets turned back on. I had to give them my credit card number again. But it isn't over. Because I still don't know if I'm properly enrolled in auto-pay or if they just turned my Internet back on because they know they caused it and maybe they just took a one time payment over the phone and they said that they waived the reconnection fee and over the phone payment charges. So I have to check into that later. Even though they tell me I'm now enrolled in auto-pay. I won't believe it until I see it. So I'll have to keep an eye out for the next payment to actually go through.

The good news in all this. My weather station was able to upload to just about all online services during the outage. I couldn't surf the Internet on my computer, WU...yep no problem all the minute historical data is there, PWSweather...same thing....CWOP...yep its all there! AWEKAS...yep it uploaded!!! So no Internet service yet weather data makes it out to the Internet. Fascinating! So if anyone has a location that only needs to upload weather data to the Internet maybe you can do so for free. I'm not advocating this. I'm just being facetious.

I don't know why it worked. It seems that maybe the cable company only cuts download service and the upload works. Or maybe it is because of Pi-hole acting as a cache for DNS that allowed it to continue to work. Maybe it would have been different if I was using the ISP DNS servers. But many people use Google and Cloudflare DNS and those continued to be reachable via nslookup also.

Internet companies....they are just wonderful aren't they?
« Last Edit: December 20, 2020, 11:05:10 AM by galfert »
Ecowitt GW1000 | Meteobridge on Raspberry Pi
WU: KFLWINTE111  |  PWSweather: KFLWINTE111
CWOP: FW3708  |  AWEKAS: 14814
Windy: pws-f075acbe
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Offline vreihen

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Re: Upload weather data to anywhere with free Internet service
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2020, 03:11:41 PM »
Thank you for the timely reminder!  I just did the exact same thing with said cable monopoly last month, and received the notice that I was off of auto payment for a month as well.  When I just logged in to check, it says that I'm on auto-pay and all is set for my December bill to be paid next week.  Screen shot saved, because I don't believe them.

On a side note, there has been a lot of Nigerian fraud attempts to change people's pay check direct deposits this year.  A huge payroll-processing company that my employer uses has a new policy where they will now issue a paper check for the next pay period after any direct deposit change.  Their logic is that the intended payee will ask why they received a paper check, giving them time to stop the fraudulent direct deposit account change before it goes into effect.  I just changed my direct deposit last week, and my next check will probably be late because of the holiday mail backups next week.....
WU Gold Stars for everyone! :lol:

Offline Bushman

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Re: Upload weather data to anywhere with free Internet service
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2020, 03:31:56 PM »
I have an internet email address and FTP site  from the 90's (seriously) that still works.  The telco claimed the servers were decommissioned a decade ago.  Nope.  :)  Also, I switched providers at the lake and yet all my email and FTP are still live.
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