How Do You Feel About Your ISP's Customer Support?

[turbo]

This morning, I called TDS to report an outage. The guy that I spoke to denied that there was any outage in my area and demanded that I unplug my modem, restart my PC, and auto-reconfigure the modem, among other things. After over 1/2 hour of that nonsense, he said that I would have to call Actiontec to "fix" my modem because the problem was not on their end. To make a long story short, he bumped the situation up to a senior tech, and lo and behold the local switch had experienced a massive failure. Not just an easily replaced card, but a whole rack of electronics. I hate dealing with script-monkeys that treat you like you are an idiot. I have set up and maintained networks, so I do have a clue.

Unfortunately, there are no other ISPs available on this rural road, and no cable companies either. I got much better customer support at our last residence. We moved out here to get some privacy and reduce my exposures to fragrances from dryer-vents, etc, but there are trade-offs.

 

[phylotree]

This morning, I called TDS to report an outage. The guy that I spoke to denied that there was any outage in my area and demanded that I unplug my modem, restart my PC, and auto-reconfigure the modem, among other things. After over 1/2 hour of that nonsense, he said that I would have to call Actiontec to "fix" my modem because the problem was not on their end. To make a long story short, he bumped the situation up to a senior tech, and lo and behold the local switch had experienced a massive failure. Not just an easily replaced card, but a whole rack of electronics.

The guy may be trying to create demands, well I guess.

I hate dealing with script-monkeys that treat you like you are an idiot. I have set up and maintained networks, so I do have a clue.

I don't like anyone who is having such an attitude also. That is so good of you.

Unfortunately, there are no other ISPs available on this rural road, and no cable companies either. I got much better customer support at our last residence. We moved out here to get some privacy and reduce my exposures to fragrances from dryer-vents, etc, but there are trade-offs.

I used to deal with my ISP before when my air-link became broken, he offered lots of instructions on command prompt commands such that I could get him the information on the connection I was using. My English wasn't that good (only was about beginner~intermediate level) to understand what he was actually telling me. That was just a bad time I had too in my life. Thank you turbo so much for your story.

 

[Borek]

Have you tried to say "shibboleet"?

 

[phylotree]

Have you tried to say "shibboleet"?

I don't know how people think about your image, but it's a very informative and enlightening hint to me. Thank you for your "clarification".

 

[russ_watters]

I'm happy with my ISP, but this issue is universal. I bet the techs working on problems I have would be surprised by how fast my hardware reboots if they really thought about it.

 

[Borek]

if they really thought about it.

Thinking is not part of the script, so there is no risk.

Somehow it reminded me of how Feynman was repairing radios by thinking.

 

[turbo]

That cartoon mirrored my experience almost to a T. Except for the 12+ hour loss of broad-band.