In this entry I’d like to enlighten you as to how straight forward (NOT) it is to have your broadband account upgraded. The ISP won’t be named for embarrassment, oh what the hell it’s PIPEX, a UK ISP, and the call centre is in India. No offence to anybody from India or Philippines, as that’s where the tech support centres are, but I encountered 2 problems, firstly language, in some instances there was a poor grasp of English (how many UK citizens can speak in any of the Indian or Philipono native languages), and secondly there was either (in most cases, not all) a general lack of technical competence, or general unwillingness to help using the “I can’t help here, I’ll pass it onto someone else” excuse.
Day 1: Received a call from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) selling an upgrade to my account. Now here’s the good bit, I would get a faster connection (well not really as the connection is already at the maximum a poor 1.5Mbps on a good day) and an increase in the data transfer limit, and due to the price restructuring it wouldn’t cost any more.
Day 2: Now the bad bit, after the upgrade the telephone line went down, no internet, no telephone, nothing.
Day 3: British Telecom got the phone line got repaired, just as they promised, and on time, telephone fully working, ADSL signal back, just in time for 2 weeks holiday in the sun. Check email before setting off, can’t connect through local router, or the ISP supplied ADSL modem, oh shit the broadband is still not working! No time to report this, the support centre is CLOSED anyhow, got to get to the airport.
Day 18: So a break in the sun, relaxed, then checked the internet connection again, no joy. Can’t report the fault, the tech support is CLOSED. Not so relaxed now.
Day 19: This time the fault reported to the ISP. The tech support is half way round the world, where English is a second or third language, not pleasant for a native English speaker in an English speaking nation. The first line support technician was unable to resolve, and passed to the 2nd line support.
Day 20: A call from the 2nd line support proved fruitless too.
Day 22: A second call from the 2nd line support was diabolical, the level of English was so poor, and she kept repeating herself, and I couldn’t even take the call at the time as I was involved in something that couldn’t be left, but a time to call back was then set, but the call never materialised. Why did they not call yesterday, tech support CLOSED!! STRESSED OUT NOW.
Day 23: The next day, it’s time to find out what’s happening. There had been no record of the rearranged call, and according to the technician the telephone provider was now testing the lines, this should be complete tomorrow, but how come one of the few things I was told was that this was already completed.
Day 24: Getting withdrawal symptoms, still no connection. Still getting the following error message reported “Error 678: The remote computer did not respond.” How long have we been down now? 23 days.
Day 25: No response from ISP, so gave them a call (AGAIN). “It’s work in progress” is the response, “I’ll escalate this again”. This has now become a ridiculous situation and there’s no sensible outcome here. Still no internet link yet!! I’m unable to access my online bank accounts (hey I could be bankrupt or worth a fortune) but it’s still a little inconvenience for the call centre. Requested to be updated today.
Day 26: Oh guess what, the tech support didn’t call, oh surprise surprise!! Called again where the same story happened, but this time got through to a supervisor who I explained the issues to yet again and gave time before I would be requesting my migration authentication code. At this she perked up and would talk directly to the 2nd line engineers and I should expect a response within the next hours, let’s wait and see shall we??
Day 27: Tech support called to check the status early morning (woke me up to be honest). Checked the ADSL modem was connecting, and the router, both connecting to the broadband, but the signals not being relayed to the ISP. Telco provider to be informed again, looks as if they may be connecting through the wrong port.
Day 28: Tech support called again, not quite as early fortunately I’d just got out of the shower. Telco had made some changes. Test showed that I still had a connection but was unable to log on. Subsequent test using the virtual circuit number supplied showed that I could connect to the ISP, but returned an error 721, which means I was unable to log on. Telco think the fault is in the line up to the premises, or maybe in the premises, but nothing changed until the ISP tried to upgrade the broadband account. Telco to make visit tomorrow to investigate.
Day 29: Call from Telco. It would appear that an order had been placed for a change to the telephone line, this carried out, which resulted in the telephone being disconnected and the broadband being routed to a redundant line that has absolutely no connection with my ISP. Fault fixed, at long last. Now to check emails, all 800 of them, next post probably in weeks after catching up with emails.
Ah bliss back online again.
