Monday, August 30, 2004

adsl fucktards

If you received this email from your isp a couple of days after signing up, what would you assume?

"Dear Amy

Please find below following username and available ADSL date

Username : jaymeekae
Install date : 30/08/2004

Thanks"

If you're anything like me, you'd assume that this meant that the install date for your adsl would be 30.08.04... but you'd be wrong.

You'd probably try to connect to adsl a few times on that date, and wonder what time it was gonna happen. And then eventually get through on their phone number where the tech support lackey would tell you something along the lines of:

"Yeah, I don't really know, I can't find any information about your connection date, i don't know where that date came from, and I don't know when you'll be connected. Ring back tomorrow, Bye."

You would have paid £50 set up fee for this, and would probably be a bit pissed off.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That said, you did point out that you weren't really expecting them to come on a bank holiday. I mean, just because it's one of the few days when you can expect a residential customer to be there doesn't mean they'll turn up, now, does it?

TBF, almost every single BB-related complaint I've ever heard relates to installation and activation; once you're through this phase it should just _work_ forever. And ever. Happily ever after. Or something.

Carl

jaymeekae said...

Well, they don't need to come to the house, they just have to switch it on somewhere.

But anyway, bank holiday has nothing to do with it as it's now 6.45pm on Tuesday and it's still not working.

The guy at tech support had no idea whether it had been connected (and I am doing something wrong) or it's not been connected, and if not, he has no idea when it will be.

His two bits of advice were 1) it's possible that the fact that i am using a 10m cable from phone to modem could be causing problems as he says adsl can't travel further than 3m from the wall, but he didn't seem very convinced about that, and told me 2) to phone back tomorrow.

pineapplecharm said...

MCSE includes a line about flyleads being no more than 3m from the wall but that's just because of noise; you'd get a connection, just a slow one. My modem is on a ludicrously long line but it doesn't seem to have any problems. The splitter is at the wall, though (yes, I run three wires for phone, dialup and adsl the length of my bedroom) which might make a difference. I can't really remember.