I have an internet service which will run perfectly for weeks and then collapse into a non-functioning mess for days. Just like a woman really.
Sometimes it resolves itself without any input from me, but on occasion I am forced to call the “help desk”.
Yesterday I was greeted with a message that my ADSL was down. I vaguely know what ADSL means, but I have no idea what I can do, if anything, if it goes down. She who must be obeyed was not concerned, in times of no internet, she gives me a withering look and hooks into the unprotected wi-fi service of the guy upstairs. Sadly, my computer, being two metres away from hers, has a problem picking up a signal from the neigbour, so I am stuffed.
This morning the ADSL thingie was still absent, so with a heavy heart I called up the TT&T help desk. The conversation is always the same.
Good morning, TT&T, how can I frustrate your life today?
My internet is not working, no ADSL
What is your service number?
I slowly read out the 57* digit service number
And your name is (spends an age mispronouncing my name)?
Yes. Hold the line please.
I hold the line and fifty percent of the time they decide it is all too difficult and just hang up. But sometimes:
Can you give you your mobile phone number and an engineer will call you back.
I give them my number. If this is the sixth time I have called on the same day, I do make the observation that it might be useful to store my mobile phone number on their bloody computer; but all I get in response to that is ten seconds silence and then “please give me your mobile phone number”.
So I do.
An engineer will call you back. Goodbye.
The engineer doesn’t call you back, so you have to call again. On average you have to call three times and give your 57 digit service number and mobile phone number before an engineer calls you; by which time you are at the shops and have no idea whether or not your internet has woken up again.
In a year of calling I have never actually managed to get to the point where I can talk to an engineer when I am at home and my internet is down. If I ever achieve that, the next step will get him to come here and actually fix something, but I expect my life expectancy is too short for that to happen.
This little post has taken all day and has been interspersed with four phone calls and hours of outage. I agree, hardly worth the effort.
*Slight exaggeration.
Comments 🔗
2009-01-19| Billy saysHah!!! ….. hahaha!!!!
The Netherlands has its drawbacks, like the weather etc etc, however, it has wonderful Asynchronous Dial-up Service Lines or whatever … had mine six years, only ever had one fault caused by a five year old ADSL modem … current speed 16Gb/sec …. eat your heart out Spike …..
2009-01-20| Spike saysBastard.
Still, what on earth do you do with all that porn?
2009-01-20| todd saysmmmm from living and moving office all around pattaya all trying to get a good internet connection, i would say it comes down to location. As it is now, my office is on sukumvit and it’s the most reliable internet we’ve had - anywhere else in pattaya away from sukumvit it deteriorates. I think it’s because the main lines run down sukuvmit, then as the lines travel off the main road into the general areas the line quality drops and drops…
another issue we found is the line quality from wall connection to the lines on the street, get someone who does telco work to bring around a line meter to test the line strength, if it’s low, re-do the lines from the street to the building / wall…
easier said then done when living in an apartment! living in thailand, need to take the good with the bad… the tricky part is finding lots of good to counter the abundance of bad!
2009-01-20| Spike saysI am sure you are right. I will have to come and live on the central reservation on Sukhumvit!
2009-01-20| Billy saysI was going to answer “read it” of course, however, as most of it is on video these days, I realise that that would be an inappropriate answer ..
2009-01-20| Spike saysReally? I didn’t know that. Clearly you have some expertise in this area.