Ever got into an argument with your ISP?

[Somenoob]

My connection is usually quite stable, but not on this night for a short moment. After it got disconnected for some reason I attempted to reconnect a couple of times. After realising that it did not work I called the ISP help desk. The "expert" obviously did not know much, I said the WAN info in the router's settings states I'm not connected to the ISP, he asked what WAN meant, why would an ISP hire someone like that? Anyway, somehow He assumed that I had altered the router configuration. But the root of the problem was within their system. He started to get irritating when he asked "what web browser do you use?" and other questions that had little relevance. When he instructed me to retype the username and make other needless changes was where the argument started, Eventually he acknowledged that it was their own error.

[jdhore]

i did when i had Comcast many times...about them capping my bandwidth and the service being MUCH slower than advertised...i switched back to my Verizon DSL, i couldn't be happier with it

[yabbadabbadont]

I've only had to call SBCGlobal's tech support twice. Both times I spoke with a nice guy in India. (noticable accent, but perfectly understandable) I just told them what I was seeing and all the steps, in order, that I had taken to trouble-shoot the issue. Both times the problem was on their end. I was pleasantly surprised that neither guy made me walk through their diagnostic scripts. They just went quickly down the list until they came to a test that I had not yet tried. Both times it turned out that they were rebooting the domain controller used for my area. (probably applying security updates...)

[dbbolton]

"sir, press the reset button on your modem. that will fix everything. now give us money."

[userundefine]

You should just ask to get transferred to tier-2 tech support, something like that. The people who first answer the phones only read from their [Windows] script and do not know what they're talking about.

[raublekick]

i argued a lot with verizon in the past few months, and then i just switched ISPs because they apparently are slow moving in a ) acknowledging their problems, and b ) fixing them.

[Phatfiddler]

I've never had any problems with my ISP so I can't say I've had to call and argue with them. The only issue that I had was trying to add my fathers computer to the network. They wanted to send someone out to set up the network. This required them using their own router and lines, which I promptly decided against. I set everything up myself, but according to them, it is not "supported" if I have any issues with it. But as I said, never had any real issues.

I feel that I would only become more frustrated by calling my ISP. If the net goes down, I can use my phone browser until it comes back up :P

[Hortinstein]

ummm my internet was provided by the university, and I had to explain to them I just used a lot of bandwidth and was not P2Ping at all...it took me a while but I won the first time haha

now i am in a frat, and the guy whose in charge of our internet fights a constant battle with my constant use of all our bandwidth...i am very greedy when it comes to torrents

[beefcurry]

Never had a problem with reliability with mine (PCCW Hong Kong). Good speed, little downtime. I had a few when they were building roads nearby and the Taiwan earthquake knoked me off for a whole week. The speeds are something I have emailed many many times, My Plan is a 6MB/S Dedicated. From that you would assume it means seriously 6000kb/s up and down. but in reality I know they really mean 600kb/s down and up. Sure it reaches around 700kbs sometimes. In other less busy times of the year I can occationally go over 800kbs if Im really lucky. But upstream is capped at 80kbs. I've sent multiple emails complaing but they say its my measuring problems and in reality upstream would always be slower. I know this is true so I do act like a good consumer and let them be.

[kerry_s]

I use to call them everyday, we were with verizon dsl for years, but they pulled out of hawaii and dropped us on hawaiintel, that's when we started having problems and i started calling them everyday, all day long, i got nothing but time :) so this wasn't a problem. Finally after months of calls, i broke them down, they built a server just for are house. Since then we haven't had any problems with are connection or speed. I only wanted what we paid for, no more, nothing less, no down grades and no upgrades. Just what we signed up for. It just strikes me as funny that some where there is just 1 server that is only connected to are house and the internet, they even set it up exactly as i asked them to. :lolflag:

[Wicca]

I once was told that re-installing Windows should fix my problems :shock:

In the end it turned out the cable modem was broken.

[milehigh]

Not exactly an argument, but - I've had Earthlink DSL for a couple of years, and it's been very reliable. I've only called for support once; I was having trouble reconnecting after a power outage. I was encouraged by the voice menu option "press one for Windows, two for Mac, or three for Other". I'm thinking option three would get me to someone who at least knows that Linux exists. Wrong - I was told, among other things, to "go to the lower-left of your screen and click on the Start button...". I actually figured it out myself while still on the phone. After I told him I was connected, he went into a sales pitch for antivirus software. I politely explained why I didn't need that product; running Linux with a firewall behind a router & not logged in as root, etc. After a brief stunned silence he thanked me for calling and said to have a nice day.

[eentonig]

ummm my internet was provided by the university, and I had to explain to them I just used a lot of bandwidth and was not P2Ping at all...it took me a while but I won the first time haha

now i am in a frat, and the guy whose in charge of our internet fights a constant battle with my constant use of all our bandwidth...i am very greedy when it comes to torrents


If I were that network admin, torrents would be blocked rather fast. There's no need for one guy ruining the fun for everyone buy monopolising the available bandwith.

[zoetrope666]

We use Dodo 512 Broadband, and although the speed is of course a dream compared to dialup, it took us ages to get set up. The tech support with Dodo totally sucks - it's pretty much all outsourced to India - which would be fine if India had the same telecommunications system as us, but they don't.. they just read answers out of a textbook, and if your problem isn't in the textbook (which is often) then the 'help' they provide is pretty much useless. That is assuming, of course, that you can get through to tech support at all.. often it takes a LONG time to get through, with people often seeming to just transfer you through to someone else and not actually deal with your problem.

It helps to be quite assertive when you're talking with them. Be understanding, but also stand up for yourself. I once had a problem and couldn't get through to anyone who understood what I was on about.. after a few days of being transferred time and again to different parts of the callcentre(s), I got hold of an Australian operator. I explained my problem, and he went to transfer me on again, however this time I said 'NO. I want a solution to this, and I do NOT want to talk to someone in a different country about this who can not understand what I am saying. I want YOU to resolve my problem' (or words to that effect). It worked really well.

I talked to one guy in India a few months ago when we were having problems with our connection, and with our payment being deducted on time > With Dodo, you need to either pay by credit card or have the money debited from your account. Because we have no credit card, we have to rely on the latter. The only problem, however, is that they say that they'll deduct the amount from your bank account on a certain date, but don't actually do it until a week later - I don't know why, it just happens that way. This means that, for over a week every month, it comes up that we haven't paid our bill (when in fact, the money is sitting in the bank ready to be taken) and we have to put up with either (a) a very fragile connection, with lots of disconnections, (b) a connection that is made, but that doesn't allow you to load anything other than the Dodo website (with the Dodo site hijacking all our browsers and not letting us access anything else), and/or (c) no connection at all.

SO I phoned to complain about this and ask about whether it could be fixed, and the guy pretty much said 'Yes, it can be fixed. Go and get a credit card and pay for your bill using that, instead.' What a complete rort!

There was nothing in the terms of agreement that said that it was a necessity to pay using a credit card, and nothing explaining that if you didn't your connection would go crap for a week every month until your money was finally taken out by them.

Being in a 24 month contract, there isn't a lot we can do. I would, however, encourage Australians who are looking to get broadband to choose a different ISP. I'm not really sure which one, because all of them seem to have customer service problems. And in regard to the outsourcing issue, I'm pretty sure that most have changed at least some percentage of their tech support to this, however I do think that Dodo is probably the worst in this regard.

[xpod]

Has anyone ever heard a Scotsman trying to argue with down the phone with some poor indian bloke\lass ?????None of us can spoke proper Engalnd and it just becomes farcical in the end although always worth while i have to say:)
I`ve called up many a time determined to have someones hide but it usually ends up with the two of us ******* ourselves laughing as we try our best to communicate.

But heres some of the reasons i`ve had to call..

Double the bill amount being taken from our bank.(human error)
Once changed Bank accounts but isp tried to take payment from both the old & new account costing me £35 in charges at the time.(system error)
Was charged for extra features for months on end when they should have been free after an upgrade.(system error)
Had all services cut off for outstanding payments which had been TAKEN from our bank three weeks earlier.(system error)

Lost loads of family photos(for now) stored on their Photobox service when we upgraded Broadband speeds....and were so given a completely different lot of accounts for all the freebie services(broadband plus) thereby losing access to the old ones,without ever being told this would be the case of course.

Apparently they were going to change my photobox account back to the old one as they could`nt just transfer the photos over but now i dont have access to any of them .....phonecall time again:)

We have the whole shabang with TV,Phone & Broadband and all my "calling up" has had me a kinda free upgrade from 1meg to 4meg about 7 months ago then another completely free upgrade from 4meg to 10meg a few weeks ago........plus i still have the separate old 1 meg STB free of charge.

Theres a lot of price wars going on over here with Sky & Virgin media apparently so the Virgin 10meg customers are possibly getting another free upgrade to 20meg in a couple on months or a £15 reduction on the price of the 10meg......????

The more incompetent they are with things though then the more i can squeeze out of them as far as i`m concerned.:popcorn:

[BarfBag]

We use Verizon DSL. It's fairly reliable. Their support flat out sucks, though. Every time they run a line test, something bad happens. For example, once our house magically grew legs and moved ten miles out of range of the service.

[Sunflower1970]

We use TimeWarner Broadband bundled with our digital cable. We have problems every once in a while. When I call, I usually just tell them to send a guy out..because it's never something they can fix over the phone. The service seems to 'degrade' where the box resets itself quite a bit, and the digital cable has a fuzzy look. They come out, play around with the outside box, and everything works well for a few months...then gotta call 'em again to have them come out to fix it, etc, etc, etc...*sigh* At least it gets me a half day off from work (since they ask for someone to be there between 12&5pm or the morning hrs 8&12...)

(Of course now, if they come out, I'll have to hide my wireless router. If they know I have it, I'll be charged $15-$20 per computer, plus they'll boost the price of the broadband too...)

[Frazer]

I use NTL (now changed to Virgin) and have had quite a few problems, from different phone calls they have told me That NTL broadband wont work on anything but Windows XP, I Cant use a router, I cant use linux and isnt that just command line text base anyway? They also used to say I was only allowed 1 computer.

I use Ubuntu for pretty much everything and have a router setup ....

So they dont know what they are talking about and usually cant understand what im saying anyway.

I dont know how good it is speed wise I am on 1 meg broadband and get 70 - 120 kbs

The service has been pretty slow since Virgin took over but I havnt been disconnected at all, It used to happen all the time on NTL

[FoolsGold]

We use Dodo 512 Broadband
I feel for ya man. I'm using Internode (which have been great so far), but my brother uses Dodo and has come to the conclusion that so long as everything it working and you don't have to contact their "support" services, then it's OK. Once you need their help though, things goes south pretty quickly.

On the other hand, their quota measuring system appears to be broken for him (ie. it's not counting his usage), so for some reason he has effectively unlimited bandwidth quota on a regular plan. No-one tell Dodo! :)

[Redache]

I had to speak to my ISP last week. They aren't bad on the Tech Support side, they did try to make me go through the obvious troubleshooting steps but I didn't have any of it and I told them what I saw, what I thought the problem was, how I was going to make them deal with it and so on.

Granted the first idea I had didn't work but that's because there was actually maintenance work in the exchange that caused the problem but neither of us thought to check. In the end I sorted the problem out myself but that was because I had to reset the router in the end due to it sticking to a DNS registration whilst they were working on the exchange.

Good tech support, perfect english, understood what I meant by various things like "TCP is sending and receiving data, the WAN is active but the PPP refuses to connect. It stalls at DNS pinging" which is good to have with someone who's meant to help you. Usually I know more than the person whose giving me tech support, which dissolves into confusion on their part because I have a tendency to work that to my advantage.

[sethmahoney]

Most of my ISP support calls:

Support guy: "How can I help you?"
Me: "Hi, my internet isn't working. I just reset the modem, and it still isn't working."
Support guy: "Can you reset the modem?"
Me: "No, I just did that."
Support guy: "I need you to reset the modem."
Me: "No, really, I just did that. That's not the problem."
Support guy: "If you'll reset your modem, we can get on to checking other things."
Me: "I JUST RESET MY... Oh Jesus, fine."

Recent call to Compaq:

10 X = 1
20 Her: "What seems to be the problem?"
30 Me: "Well, I had to replace my motherboard, and now Windows isn't working." [I dual boot for games]
40 Her: "Windows will stop working if you replace the motherboard."
50 Me: "I know. That's what I just said. You need to send me a copy of Windows."
60 Her: "We don't do that. We only send recovery discs, which will only work with the original hardware."
70 Me: "I bought a computer that had Windows XP on it. It was not advertised as only having Windows XP until I changed the motherboard. You need to send me a copy of Windows XP."
80 X = X + 1
90 WHILE X < 20 GOTO 40
100 X = 1
110 Y = 1
120 Me: "I need to talk to your supervisor."
130 Her: "My supervisor can't send you a copy of Windows. We don't do that."
140 Y = Y + 1
150 WHILE Y < 5 GOTO 70
160 Her: "Okay, hold on a minute, I'll transfer you."
170 ...20 minutes of dead silence...
180 I hang up.

I heart tech support.

[airtonix]

Totally, i had to setup synergy in my mates three g7's (do they exist?)

in the process i removed his dns settings from each puter (stupidly) as they werent consistant. and promptly couldnt connect to any host. as he didnot have a local dns server running...
damn ...plus my mate had just steped out to the shop, half an hour away. damn cant ask him..

so i think ill just call bigpond help desk(his provider)...

BP : greetings blah blah can i have your user name and pasword sir?
me : i just need the dns server ip address for this connect here.
BP : sorry sir blah blah

this goes on he wouldnt give me the DNS ip address at all. internode does anyother decent ISP would

half way through my mate comes back. my veins bulging....and he gives the pendantic-operator the details...
then its back to extracting the DNS details from him.....

BP : sorry dir i do not understand what you mean by DNS....
me : uggghhh...
BP : I can give the hardbit server no...(he starts reading it out, its an ip address but not the dns i need)
me : hardbit? wtf? never heard of a hardbit server ... can i speak to someone else please?
BP : sorry i am the only person here who can help you.

in the end i worked him into admitting that even he doesnt have tha faintest clue what a hardbit server actually is nor did he know what a dns server was.

but i eventually got it working .... i logged into the router admin and there in teh config was the damn dns ip addresses....both of them!! zomg.

ok these are crap isp in adelaide :

ihug : low quality connection not aware of anything other than windows. expensive and support good enough ie all faults are the customers.
dodo : same as above. except worse.
chariot : same as a above, got busted for using pirated software....hehe see where getting addicted to cocaineXP will get you
bigpond : crap, phone support is hostile. dont ever try to ask for the dns server IP.
bigbutton : crap also, only ******* exists.

oh and of the above only ihug and chariot would accpet cash payments. and even then chariot made me walk all the way to their office on greenhill rd (in adelaide) twenty minute walk out of town plus a half hour bus ride just to give some ponce 20 dollars a month. the bastards couldnt even setup a bpay arrangement so we could use our internet banking to automate payments....geez bloody investment bankers. seesh

i used to use these ISP with great success :

camtech ( obscure out of business i think)
senet (proly still running, cash payments, friendly smiling knowledgable people)
airnet ( owned and destroyed out by chariot, airnet was the best dialup acces ever. these guys did anything for you for $15 au a month within reason of course.)

but now i use internode the best adsl provider in south australia.

never go with companies that require television advertising to promote their services, if their service is so great why do they need to advertise? answer becuase they have a huge customer turnover rate. and need to keep reeling in more suckers.

i pay the bill via bpay, hence i can use phone banking or internet banking with no extra charges....or i can take a bus ride to the city and hand over cash(or someone else can)

yeah the best....no smart arses no looking down their nose at you coz you dont look like a clone off neighbours or eastenders. as soon as i say something about linux the support sessions always get acclerated and fixed in wow times....im never left hagning on the phone they call me back. its totally awesome.

plus apart from being involved in the local wifi metro-wide-wlan(airstream (http://www.air-stream.org/)) they are providing free wifi access through out the city central. to anyone.

end pimp.