TT&T. Internet service providers, but without the service and a very loose interpretation of the word “provider”, such that they don’t think it means they will actually give you anything. Along with the Telephone Authority of Thailand (TOT), they also provide the messily arranged telephone wires that carry the wide wide world of web signals, and the telephone conversation that you have to make to them on a frequent basis to complain.
I have used TT&T for a couple of years. I had what was laughingly titled their “Premier” service at a speed which was optimistically pitched as being 5 Mbps, but was rarely more than 2 Mbps, and is frequently 0 Mpbs.
Calls to the misleadingly named Help Centre follow a similar pattern: You wait for a significant proportion of your lifetime for someone to pick up the phone. You tell them what is wrong. They clearly have no idea what to do, so they tell you to restart your router. You tell them you have already done that. Fresh out of any other ideas, they ask for your mobile phone number (which you have given them many times before, often on the same day), and then tell you someone will call you back.
Nobody calls you back.
You go through this cycle several times until finally they get sick of you interrupting their snack time, and then an engineer calls you and tells you he has tested the line and it is OK, so it must be your fault. If you are really unlucky he will come to your home, fuck up your router, block your toilet with something that shouldn’t really be emanating from a human, and steal some ornaments on the way out.
After several months of frequent disconnects and downtime, endless fruitless phone calls and a rapidly dwindling ornament collection; I gave up, cancelled TT&T, and signed up with J-Net.
Cheaper by 800 baht than TT&T but theoretically just a 2 Mbps service rather than a 5 Mbps service. But unlike TT&T whose service rarely reached 2 Mps, J-Net’s service has yet to dip below 2 Mbps. And it is much more stable.
But on Saturday evening it started to disconnect on a regular basis. So I sent an email to J-Net support, faintly hoping they might get back to me on the following Monday. I get a reply, almost immediately, asking for my phone number. I mail them back and, close to midnight, a lady calls me back. She speaks perfect English, she actually seems to know what she is talking about, and really seems to care that I have a problem. We spend ten minutes or so checking that my router is set up correctly and she runs checks on my line (which of course is running perfectly again, just to be awkward).
Sadly she concludes that there is a line problem, which means the phone engineer from TT&T must be contacted. On Monday morning J-Net send me an SMS saying they have reported the problem to TT&T. This morning the engineer calls me.
You telephone line is working OK, you can make phone calls?
You are talking to me on this line right now, so I think we can assume it is working.
Oh…… Well then, the line is OK and it must be your fault.
Would you like to come round and ruin my router, turn my toilet into a health hazard and nick the remaining figurine of a rampant shepherd with a floppy hat?
Eh? Never mind.
I am impressed with J-Net, but I am still stuck with useless bastards from TT&T who own the phone lines. There is no hope, although I am glad to be rid of those crappy ornaments.