I'm not sure if this rant goes here or in the complaint department.

I was stopped at a traffic light in front of a commercial building where one of my customers has an office. I was admiring the building when I saw what looked like a 4-pair Cat 5 coming out the side of the second floor of the building and going sort of diagonally down to the basement window, where it disappeared.

I parked and went in to see wuzzup. I had not visited them for a year or so, since everything was working fine (or so I thought) with their key system.

I went into the part of the office where I had seen the wire and there were three, single-port surface mount jacks wired to the blue, orange, and green pairs. Nothing plugged in. Hmmm. I then went down to the basement and found the other end of the wire, with three modular plugs crimped on, but not plugged into anything. Hmmm.

I go back upstairs and ask the owner wuzzup? He says that he allowed a small local non-profit to use a desk for a telephone campaign, and they elected to use Optimum Voice for the dial tones. He says that they came and installed three lines, and before he could even say "no" they had drilled right through the front of his building and draped the wire across the front and down into the basement.

What drove me to curse was the fact not that the non-profit had not called me for assistance, or that the owner had not called me, either, but that at every location in the building where there is a telephone, it's wired with 25-pair because originally they had 1A2 and all the cables are home runs to the basement, installed by me.

If you stand in the basement, all you see are 25-pair cables, all cut down neatly, and labeled as their destinations. All the jack-hole from the cable company needed to do was take a faceplate off, find all the spares he needed, and do his cross-connections in the basement, thus avoiding the "drill first, ask questions later" mode of installation. Sheeesh!

What do you expect? These guys have no telecom knowledge other than get-er-done. They get paid something like $20 for a job like that so the only way they are going to make money is to hit and run and move on to the next of 15 or so jobs they have been assigned for the day.

And I agree, my other gripe is also why you were not called when something like this was to be installed. Most of the time it's because the customer doesn't care either how it's done as long as it works. Just look at all the fine examples of workmanship out there done by CGs, hacks and these jerks and you can see why customers have no idea how it's SUPPOSED to be done.

-Hal

"All the jack-hole from the cable company needed to do was take a faceplate off"

If they're like the cable techs around here, they don't know what a faceplate is.

all modern wiring is cat 5 , the calls wouldn't be as clear on that "old stuff "

I want to see what happens when the building owner calls Optimum and demands that they come out and remove their abandoned "drop." And patch the holes. And do a decent job of it.

When I was a kid, if I made a mess, I had to clean it up. It is the only way they will learn.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

I don't think they have to come out and remove the wiring if asked. They'll just say you own it now. I have had them remove a drop from the pole to the building. I told them that the building was getting torn down (it was) and I don't think you want your drop hanging down on the sidewalk. They wouldn't do it until the power drop was removed first to prove that I was telling the truth.

-Hal

I can die in peace now, I've heard it all. lol.
Hard to figure how anyone with the knowledge to terminate the ends like that would not have the ability to read the labels and make life easier for themselves.

I have been on tickets like this up here in Canada.

My favorite was a company that had us do the phone install for a two story building, but had someone else cable it.

The room upstairs destined to have the phone system and network had all the downstairs CAT5 coming out of a hole on the far left of a wall - but the patch panel was on the right side of a 20 foot long wall... the cable wasn't long enough to do it right, so the cablers just swung the CAT5 diagonally across the wall to the patch panel.

Wonderful work

Client used his electrician to wire a new office. He ran RG6 everywhere (no Cat5, no Cat3...just RG6). I went in to install the phone system & asked "WTF"?

Electrican stated the client was getting his dial-tone from the cable company, so RG6 was run, as that's what the cable company uses...

Just when I thought I had read it all.....

Damn, that's worse than normal for sparky.
Usually they run cat 5 and coax, because 'the internet is from the cable company'

Don't know what to say, Danny. Just amazing. Sad, but amazing.

I had the exact same thing happen except the landlord ran the cable .... he was a retired AT&T guy and figured since they would use coax.