Thursday, April 27, 2006

If there's no Internet this must be Wednesday!

After arriving home after work yesterday while performing the usual regimen on the exercise bike (while watching an excellent A-Team episode!) my 17 year old informed me that the Internet was not working. Even though I have my Netgear WAP/Router keep the connection alive it does occasionally drop it. So, after I cooled down and put on a dry shirt I connected to the router via a web browser and could not re-establish the link. I did the usual power reset of the DSL modem and the WAP/Router. Same thing. NO connection.

DANG! The last thing I ever want to do is go through the totally crap first line tech support for my ISP. They are terrible!!!! A prime example of first line tech support that read from a prepared script and know next to NOTHING!

For example, months back we had a near lightning strike that fried equipment here and at the neighbor's house. The phone company had to come on site for my phone service and Internet. The technician sent was able to fix the phone service, but not the Internet. He connected a diagnostic device and verified that something inside the DSL modem was bad and directed me to call Internet support to have it replaced.

So, I made that call. "Hello" I said to the drone who answered after a seemingly endless wait. "I just had your repairman here who diagnosed the DSL modem as bad. He directed I call and arrange for a replacement."

"OK, what type of operating system do you have, Windows or Macintosh?" he queried.

"What difference does that make? It's Windoze, but as I said the tech was already here and diagnosed a bad modem. I need a replacement" I responded.

"We'll, I'll need you to log in into Windows so we can check your network settings" was his next comment.

"HELLO!!!!" I said in a loud voice. "Are you even listening to what I am saying"?

"Yes" he said but we need to check a few things....now bring up Control Panel and.."

Curring him off, I said, even louder "HELLO!!!????" and then said the following very loud with about a seconds pause in between each word. "YOUR REPAIRMAN WAS JUST HERE AT MY HOUSE. HE CONNECTED A HARDWARE DIAGNOSTIC DEVICE DIRECTLY TO THE DSL MODEM AND TESTED IT. HE SAID THE DSL MODEM IS BAD AND I NEEDED TO CALL THIS NUMBER AND TELL THEM TO ARRANGE A REPLACEMENT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"So, you're saying you think the modem is bad..we'll need to check a few settings to confirm this." was the response.

"NO!" I almost screamed at the top of my lungs, red mist forming in my vision as I resisted the growing urge to bludgeon myself into quiet, peaceful, blessed drone-free unconsciousness to deliver me from this nightmare! "I know the modem is bad. Now, transfer me to whoever can get me a replacement modem!" I finished in a very loud clearly very annoyed voice.

He did........now...granted this was awhile ago and probably not word for word what happened (I think it actually took more words before I was transferred) so needless to say I was hesitant to call! In all fairness to my ISP (which is a major company, name withheld in this era of nuisance lawsuits where they might attack me for speaking of my experiences with them) on cases where the first line drones on the phone have realized (often after emotional pain akin to what one would experience in purgatory), the next tier of tech support is excellent. While I understand the cost measures to put cheaper folks on front line support, I wonder how much hold time and reduced 800 costs companies could realize but making these folks a bit more skilled. Not to mention improved customer satisfaction which I know in the technical areas is lacking and been falling off for several years now.

Well, back to the present! That experience still burned into my memory never to be forgotten, rather than go through that again I decided to do what I have done in the past which is jack into the DSL modem directly from a PC with a network cable. At least this way I can isolate if it's a problem at the DSL modem or the line since the modem has excellent diagnostics.

HOWEVER, since the last time I had to do this I had moved my home office PC up to the living room to become the entertainment PC after I acquired the 50" plasma display. So, I had planned on connecting a laptop in the office, and I actually had the laptop on the desk. Inter net's Down! NO TIME to connect and external keyboard and 19" LCD as I had planed and neatly run the power, just plug in the network cable.....what's that?? IT'S TOO SHORT!!!????

AAARRRRRGGGG! So, leaning half across the desk so I could connect to the network cable plugged into the DSL modem I changed the laptops network setup to agree with the DSL's Ethernet port. A quick connect and diagnostic report later I was confident the problem was with my ISP and was ready to call them.

Meanwhile while this was going on Chris and Scott headed out in Chris' car to go to the local mall to pickup a couple of games for their DS systems! (I am jealous of the kids who now have more spending money than Dad does!). Chris called once on his Cell phone as I was getting ready to call my ISP to tell me he was lost could I give him directions. I did, and got my diagnostic results and account info ready in preparation of making the call.

SO now I call the REPAIR number on the phone bill, play Touch Tone 20 questions and the last one is "We see from your account records you have high speed data service on this line. Is this call to report a problem with that?" Press 1 for yes. Pressing 1 I was rewarded with "This number only takes calls for the phone portion of your service. You will have to call Internet repair; this number is clearly marked on your DSL modem or phone bill. Goodbye

Oh! Looks like I forgot to mention that while I was almost up to the 20th question I heard the call coming in tone and thinking it was my son still lost, I hung up, only to be greeted by the X calling me to tell me she had picked up a new cell phone for the boy, which explained why when I had called him back a few minutes after his initial call to see if he was on track, it went straight to voice mail....sigh! I explained how I had gotten off of tech support call thinking it was him, and went back and completed the call and hit the dreaded 20th question.

Again AAARRGGGG!!!!! I was ticked when it hanged up on my! Since it had asked my phone number at the start of this process could that not have been the second question instead of number 20? Nothing on the phone bill for Internet Repair, just a number that says ISP Name Internet.....so I called that. This time a voice activated system answered that already knew my phone number!! Only a few questions to receive an automated bulletin that the Internet was down for large portions of Michigan! AAARRRGGG! Done in by my own revulsion of their low end tech support!!!

Thus ends my tech suport tirade! Anyway, by that time the boys were back, Danielle was home, and kids were hungry, so we headed out stopping at the X's house so Scott could get a Best Buy gift card as he wanted to pick up the new Final Fantasy DVD. We hot Uccello's for dinner (Scott having pasta with marinara sauce, Chris the usual hot winds, Danielle Bow Tie pasta) and then went to Best Buy so Scott could get his DVD.

When we arrived back at my house Scott headed off to watch the DVD off the PlayStation and I played some Oblivion with Danielle at my side most of the time (she often chooses to watch that instead of watching TV with me). The kids headed home at 8PM, just as the Internet came back up.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Yikes and yikes again! What a tale of woe that was!

- David

Anonymous said...

Well next time you have to call them just thank god there not comcast as i have had some really bad times with them like an hour on the phone with there tech support just to have them tell me after like the 50th question that yes there dhcp server is down like i asked them when the call started.

Charlie said...

Wow, Ive had conversations with techys like that. You just want to scream, LOOK ive been doing tech support since before you were born will you F**K off and stop treating me like a bimbo and yes, I do know how my computer works.. need me to explain it? and train you? I'll charge of course.

Mind you, I had almost that conversation with my mobile phone company this morning, a very odd number ran my phone and hung up as I answered, so I tried to ring it back to find out.. only to be told "Your phone is not able to make a call to that number" meaning its been blocked.. given Ive never had any form of block on my phone I was phoning to find out why they had done this..

The support guy I spoke to would not listen, his english was hard to understand not coz he wasnt fluent, no, no, just coz he had pittiful phone manner and didnt obviously speak into the phone but waft in its general direction.

The guy answered, and I explained that I had received a call from an odd looking number and on calling it, had been told it was blocked, and that my phone shouldnt have any form of blocks on it .. (as when it was setup I had them removed)..

He then went on to say that I would have requested the block.. at which point the "are you listening" kinda questions had to start..

He then changed to say it was automatically put on to make sure that people didnt run up high bills by accident.. I swear, if I had been PMT he'd have had a lecture on how Im an adult and if I choose to run up a 3k bill its my right I dont need some fool deciding for me to protect me..

Needless to say he couldnt help, didnt help and was a complete waste of my time. He couldnt tell me the number, in fact he couldnt tell the number that had called me either.. so I gave him the number and he basically called me a liar..

Some people just need to be extinct.

Blandishment Blog said...

Wow, another support incident from Hell! Sorry you had to go through that, yet, great that I am not the only one suffering!

Blandishment Blog said...

Jason, I have had the same stellar level of service and support and over billing with comcast which is why I dumped them and went with sbc. Overall the service is somewaht more reliable, the cost is much lower....and the service.....well......

Blandishment Blog said...

David, the tech support is so bad, if the internet goes out again, I awear I will figure out how to do DSL over two tin cans with a string between them!