Coastal Computers & Design
It doesn’t happen often, but when your broadband internet connection goes down for an extended period your first phone call is usually to your ISP (internet service provider). This morning I went through the same frustrating excercise as everyone else did who also noticed their internet was not working.
I had to make 4 phone calls before I finally got to talk to someone long enough to explain the problem (my ISP ‘help desk’ had problems of some kind or another that meant that after speaking to a tech the line either went back to the annoying ‘your call is important to us etc’ message or just went dead).
For some reason I decided to call a few customers during the frustrating process of contacting the helpdesk who I knew were on the same ISP and they all reported the same problem. One poor soul had spent over an hour with an idiot who finally told her that the problem must be with her modem and to call the modem manufacturer.
‘Ok’ I thought, ‘I’ll just call the helpdesk back and tell them that there are others affected inthe area’. Hmmm…I finally lucked onto one who was actually prepared to listen to me. Every other operator wasn’t interested in my revelations that it wasn’t just me – the standard line was ‘well, there are no reported issues in your area so it must be your modem or computer so let’s go through a painful hour together to prove that shall we?’ (or words to that effect…).
After explaining carefully to this helpful chap he actually rang my customers directly to check the situation (the word of a computer support business operator wasn’t sufficient apparently) and then finally acknowledged that there ‘may be a wider problem than you’ – uh-huh, you think so?!
Turns out that Bigpond (Telstra) customers actually knew about it for a lot longer than the rest of the ISP’s help desks did – a fault in the Nowra exchange had killed all broadband in a wide area I believe. For some reason they didn’t let their wholesale customers (most of the other ISPs) know.
So, in future – I’ll be calling my customers first, getting their ISP details and gathering more than the 2 or 3 that I did this time, BEFORE calling my ISP. Maybe 10 people with the same fault will convince them straightaway, who knows? I suggest you do the same!