Google Fiber Build Complaints Mount

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Google Fiber installers are "butchering" people's property while installing service? Who cares? I can live without a gas line, bring on the gigabit speeds baby! :D

Previously, we have discussed a number of instances in Kansas City where those installing Google Fiber were "butchering" the homeowner’s property. Although Google says they're learning as they go, complaints are still rolling in about installers tearing apart property with rutted lawns and busted gas lines.
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I would gladly accept rutted lawns or a broken gas line for Google Fiber. Bring it!
 
Better headline

Lowball Bid contractors do Shoddy work while installing Google fiber. The world is not surprised.
 
Some people forget that that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street doesn't belong to them, no matter how many flower boxes and trees they put there. :)
 
bucket said:
Some people forget that that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street doesn't belong to them, no matter how many flower boxes and trees they put there. :)
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In my case, the 'city owned' part extends more like 5' to the inside of my sidewalk.

I found that out when a city employee knocked on my door one day, and said that they were going to be removing two dying trees that were on 'my side' of the sidewalk.

They DID need to be removed, and we were just about to call a couple of tree services to give us bids.

However, the city paid for all of it much to our delight.

Now, as for tearing up my lawn, I don't have no steenking lawn, I have a YARD, with dandelions, and other 'non-grass' stuff. If someone want to run FIOS to me, I say 'tear away' :D :D :D
 
I live in KC and have seen some patchways that have been cut through some thick wooded areas to run fiber lines, some yards that have had some dredges run through them to bury fiber lines, as well as some shoddy asphalt work to cover up some roads that have been torn up to route fiber. However this kind of stuff can and does happen with ALL utility companies.

The overall impact (from what I have seen) doesnt appear to be that bad. As for the roads being torn up, this is the perfect time as most of the roads and bridges are Fed up due to MIdwest winters and MO/KDoT sucking ass at building bridges.

What sucks even more than having your lawn torn up as fiber internet is ran to your house is living on the opposite side of the highway where Google Fiber is. I live on the NE side of KC and Google does not have the ability to ru nthe fiber to the other side..............
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so im moving! (no joke)
 
Because Google has been issued "tens of thousands of construction permits" for work in Kansas City which impact planting boxes and cut through lawns/sidewalks/driveways, it should not be surprising that Google has seen complaints climb recently due to the speed of construction.
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Oh no! Who would have thought that a trench that ran the cable from the street to your property would destroy some landscaping!?!?!!!!!

Still sounds better than what AT&T (Pacbell) started rolling out DSL in huge numbers, they hired a shit ton of new employees most of which had "computer tech experience" guy took 3 hours to wiring up the box in my garage, which IIRC is 4 wires or something. Later on had trouble and it was an actual phone installation guy and he went on about how they thought they needed technicians with all these extra skills, except the one that was most needed... working with wiring.
 
virtualheretic said:
I live in KC and have seen some patchways that have been cut through some thick wooded areas to run fiber lines, some yards that have had some dredges run through them to bury fiber lines, as well as some shoddy asphalt work to cover up some roads that have been torn up to route fiber. However this kind of stuff can and does happen with ALL utility companies.

The overall impact (from what I have seen) doesnt appear to be that bad. As for the roads being torn up, this is the perfect time as most of the roads and bridges are Fed up due to MIdwest winters and MO/KDoT sucking ass at building bridges.

What sucks even more than having your lawn torn up as fiber internet is ran to your house is living on the opposite side of the highway where Google Fiber is. I live on the NE side of KC and Google does not have the ability to ru nthe fiber to the other side..............
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...
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so im moving! (no joke)
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You would have thought that the DOT would have put in auxillary conduit under the freeway just encase something should arise where they needed to get more lines across.

In my house here in Vegas, they wouldn't need to tear up the yard as the conduit is already running from the street to inside the garage wall. Stuff like this should be code.

I don't see why they couldn't retrofit a conduit into a storm pipe.
 
I'd only care if they broke a utility line esp one like water or sewage and that caused damage to my actual property not just the yard.
 
That's just how moving forward is. Road construction leads to great things, but the journey can be a pain. It's more than worth it though.

Winers.
 
Dear Google,

You are welcome to butcher any piece of land you wish so long as you leave us with a roof over our head and electricity to power our computers, just bring us a decent ISP.

Signed,
The Residents of the State of California
 
Honestly? Google could trench through my head if I could get their service where I live.

Anything other than Comcrap....
 
Dear Google, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE come here!
I've got a chainsaw, tractor, 4wd truck and hauling trailers and I'd be thrilled to help!
Hell, run it through my property line! I'll bulldoze 2 of my barns and rebuild when you're done!
 
yikes, some of you guys want google way too bad.

I mean, I would obviously sacrifice my first born son to google to get internet, but some of you guys are just nuts!
 
shade91 said:
Dear Google,

You are welcome to butcher any piece of land you wish so long as you leave us with a roof over our head and electricity to power our computers, just bring us a decent ISP.

Signed,
The Residents of the State of California
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I'll 2nd that :)
 
bucket said:
Some people forget that that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street doesn't belong to them, no matter how many flower boxes and trees they put there. :)
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I think it does, it's just that there's an easement.

Then there's eminent domain, so even when you own it the government can talk as much of your property as they need, they just have to compensate you for it.
 
If you guys think that is bad whining? Wait until people in Portland start moaning and complaining.
 
i too would gladly trade a jacked up lawn for google fiber. I can fix the lawn my self and I dont use gas!
 
Let me know when and where and I will destroy my law for them, all they have to do is lay it and hook it up.
 
Hey people should be happy they're even getting the service. The damage is temporary.

We recently got FTTH here, which I was lucky enough to get, but anyone who is not fed via aerial cable plant can't get it, as they wont do underground, too costly.
 
As for gas lines... arn't these guys getting cable locates done?!? This could indeed be dangerous if they're not.
 
"Gas lines"? We buy LPG tanks (11 kg) over here...

And how much is the GF service exactly? I'm guessing it's still slightly cheaper than the most expensive ever over here in my country, yet is 4-5x faster.
 
We were in Fiberhood #58 and it took us about 10 or 11 months of waiting. They have two different crews. The first Google Fiber Crew showed up a few days before installation and dropped the fiber from the pole out on the street to the house. The 2nd crew came in a few days later, 2 guys, installed the box, hooked the fiber into the box and then ran the fiber into the house. Once inside, there was a small converter box that the fiber hooked into. From that box, the cat5 connection ran into the WiFi router. It took them literally 15 - 20 mins to bring the fiber into the house. The guys were very nice, explained everything, presented us with the free Nexus 7 and literally spent more time showing us how to use the box and all it's features than they did installing Google Fiber. They even put on the little blue feet booties which I though was very professional. In addition to all of that, they gave us 3 or 4 hdmi cables for free.

Over the last year I've had a few minor issues, mostly with a cable going bad if you can believe that as well as wanting better placement on the inside converter box. I've talked to the Google Fiber people about these complaints and was told it was maybe 1 person in a 100 who had a problem. That while the problems were real concerns, they were fixed and the customer was happy. He said that basically Google through money at the problem and they always fixed the issues.

Also, 100% of the Google Fiber work crews came over from the traditional coaxial cable industry and the installation is nearly the same. So the complaints are the same across the board regardless if you are coaxial or fiber or what company comes out. While coaxial maybe have been installed in past years, those installations had the same problems as what they are having today running the fiber.

Side note: Google Fiber has hired several hundred people from out of state ( installers ) to come to Kansas City to help role out the service. We were at Google Fiber place once when 3 or 4 of these installers had been invited down and shown around. They all said they were being treated and paid very well. We are talking Google here.
 
I moved into a newly built subdivision consisting of 96 homes last year. Comcast came in after everyone moved in and decided to lay lines. They fucked up every single persons yard in the entire neighborhood, and these were brand new yards with pristine sod. So we all joined together to boycott their services. Wonder how much money that cost them to install all that shit not to get a single customer. Not to mention they still refuse to fix it! It's just 4x10 patches of dead grass in every persons yard and up and down the street in the common areas. Probably cost them a few grand to resod.
 
entropy13 said:
"Gas lines"? We buy LPG tanks (11 kg) over here...

And how much is the GF service exactly? I'm guessing it's still slightly cheaper than the most expensive ever over here in my country, yet is 4-5x faster.
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Internet is $70/month, and with TV it's $100/month (last I checked). The TV package is only a little cheaper than my Comcast bill right now, but the internet connection is 34x faster down and 200x faster up. Google can tear up my entire property if they need to should they come to SWFL... Just don't damage my house ;).
 
Armenius said:
Internet is $70/month, and with TV it's $100/month (last I checked). The TV package is only a little cheaper than my Comcast bill right now, but the internet connection is 34x faster down and 200x faster up. Google can tear up my entire property if they need to should they come to SWFL... Just don't damage my house ;).
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Fiber + TV is $120/month :cool:
 
viscountalpha said:
If you guys think that is bad whining? Wait until people in Portland start moaning and complaining.
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What do people in Portland moan and complain about? I mean are they still bitching and moaning about god damn Californians moving there and jacking up their property values?
 
bucket said:
I live in Portland. Google is free to fuck my yard all it wants. :D
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It depends on the neighborhood anyway. It's not like all fiber has to (or should) go below ground; they can use existing utility poles, too.

Now, my neighborhood is on Mt. Sylvania (more of a big, wide hill) and everything's already underground. When Google does come in (they will, they will!) they'll be able to run the lines through the existing conduits to my place pretty easily. I'm pretty sure I could arrange a unanimous decision at the homeowners' association to just yank the cable junk and mount Google's hardware in its place. :D
 
PS- Not that lawn damage matters here anyway. We have a seemingly intractable mole issue - as long as Google's conduits are varmint-proof, we'd hardly be able to tell the difference if they tore up the lawns.
 
sfsuphysics said:
What do people in Portland moan and complain about? I mean are they still bitching and moaning about god damn Californians moving there and jacking up their property values?
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Gluten free foods and the carbon footprint of duck egg farms.
 
Another KC guy here with GF.

First crew came by and strung fiber along the utility poles along the back property line. Fiber was then strung through the air (just like power/phone/coax). The only problem we had was with Crew 2 who had to drill through my concrete house. They worked with me though every step of the way and made sure I was happy with the work. GF rocks.
 
sfsuphysics said:
What do people in Portland moan and complain about? I mean are they still bitching and moaning about god damn Californians moving there and jacking up their property values?
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You better believe it. I don't mind though. The air quality and water quality is so much better then most places. I had a lady from California actually tell me her nails and hair started growing better when she moved up here.

That's creepy actually.
 
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