Tech "support"

Raider30

Shared on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 19:23
Greetings all,

Just a disclaimer up front.  This blog is aimed at tech support for one specific company, namely Frontier Communications. 

So here's the situation:  I go to be last night around midnight.  One of the last things I usually do is check my email, just a habit there's never any email worth reading at midnight.  My internet connection works just fine.  I get up around 8, check the email around 10am.  No go.  It just keeps hanging on "connecting".  Ok, no problem I've been through this drill before.  I shut down the computer, power cycle the modem.  Power up the computer - still nothing.  No worries, I'll let it sit for a few hours to see if it will correct itself.

Now the background:  I live in a small town in Iowa.  I use a phone company called Frontier Communications.  I use them because they are the only ones who service my town.  About 5 years ago they installed DSL in the town.  That was good.  Very good.  Every couple of months my serice goes wonky.  I've placed probably 25+ calls to tech support in the past 5 years.  Usually the go down their check list of stuff, have me power cycle the modem, check my settings, fiddle with the anti-virus, fiddle with the firewall, reset my ip address, etc.  I go along with it because, well because you have to.  Why do you have to you ask?  Because before they will put in a repair ticket they must determine that it has absolutely nothing to do with you.  I can accept that - sort of.   In 5 years and all those calls not ONE SINGLE TIME has my setup been the problem.  NOT ONCE.   Every single malfunction has been on their end.  Now keep that in mind as we go on with our story.

Today:  Around 3pm I call tech support.  After about a 4 minute wait I get a tsg(tech support guy) on the phone.  I will say one thing for Frontier, because they are a relatively small operation their support people are all located in American and speak english as a native language.  So I explain to the tsg whats happening.  I explain that I cannot connect.  I explain that I've already restarted the computer and power cycled the modem.  Whereby he promptly tells me to power cycle my modem.  Ahem...so I do it.  It doesn't work.  I explain to him that I've already run ping checks using the cmd prompt and I'm getting 100% packet loss.  He tells me to ping yahoo.com.  I do it and report back that I have 100% packet loss.  Now he gets serious and has me shut down the computer and power cycle the modem while the computer is shut down.  I began to weep softly to myself.  Of course this has no effect what-so-ever.  He then has me perform a series of 'tricks', shutting down my anti-virus, turning off my firewalls, etc.  All the while I am explaining to him that in 5 years this problem, which has happened before mind you, has never been my fault.  I ask him to put in a repair ticket so the ground techs can go and reboot or kick or whatever the fuck it is they do to the main station in town here to fix the problem - as they have done in every single instance in the past *5* years!!! He says he's tried putting in the ticket and they denied him.  Hah.  Finally he has me ping yahoo.com again.  I get 0% packet loss.  At which point he declares that I *am* connected to the internet and therefor it is a brower problem.  He says I should contact my computer manufacturer and ask them to help solve this situation. 

Not so fast eager McBeaver I say to him.  I just so happen to have brought my work laptop home with me this weekend.  If it is a browser problem then I should be able to connect with my laptop and surf the net just fine.  Hm...one sec...nope.  Laptop won't connect to any websites either.   Guess its not a browser problem after all.  Well says tsg 'I've already asked for a repair ticket and been denied - is there anything else I can do for you?"  "Nope' I reply and hang up.

Call back 10 minutes later and get a new tsg.  Explain the situation to him.  Tell him I was just on the phone with other tsg and that I thought, based on 5 years(did I mention 5 years) of experience with this type of problem, that a repair ticket needed to be issued, that calling it a browser problem was just dumb.  He says...hm...hold on a minute they just sent out a problem report stating that your area is having browser difficulties.  I tell him, yeah thats probably my last call.  Then he says no...I show that you have been having intermitant dsl outages all day, to a point where they are now about 2 minutes apart.  I tell him yeah, thats what I told the other guy when a minute after my 0% packet loss I was back up to 100% loss.  He says...hm...they just issued a full dsl outage report for your area and have entered a repair ticket to go fix the problem.   I say "great, I'll check back in a few hours. Thanks for the help".

Seriously, wtf? I mean I know tsg's have to deal with people who don't know enough to turn on the power sometimes, but you've got my entire trouble history right in front of your face on screen and you know damn well it shows the problem has NEVER been on my end of things. 

The irritating thing is this took up an hour of my Sunday and I know in 2  months I'll have to go through the same thing again.  I suppose I should just be thankful for having dsl in this tiny town though eh? Heh.

On the plus side, while the net was down I got some laundry done and played several hours worth of Puzzle Quest from xbl arcade.  A most enjoyable game.

Comments

Mulchinator's picture
Submitted by Mulchinator on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 20:32
First off, you don't need a work laptop. ;) Second off, yes, that is extremely frustrating. Third off, call Iowa Telecom and ask them to service your area. For a mid-sized, local provider (I used them in Newton), they have damn good service and are known to be expanding.
zeta_thompson's picture
Submitted by zeta_thompson on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 00:33
At least they did not charge you 10.00 for 2 calls on the same ticket.. http://zetasgeekout.blogspot.com/2009/03/earthlink-end-of-era.html

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