Hi,
Anyone from Australia will know about the largest ISP over here called Telstra. Here is one of my many stories about them.
Last year just before xmas, I had a task to installed ADSL modems at a very remote town, about 1000 miles from where I am based by 4wd.
The client had ordered 6 adsl services, 4 for houses, one for the local town council office and one for the general store.
The modems had been mis-delivered and I had only been able to locate them by going to the local post office and describing that size and shape of the 6 boxes.
I drove out to the town and was able to install 5/6 modems on the first attempt.
I then went to the office there and tried to do the same thing.
The ADSL light came up on the modem but the login details didn't work.
I did some basic trouble shooting, and found that another modem with alternate login details worked, and the modem assigned to the office would work at another site with other account details.
Then I spent 12 hours, yes no exageration, on the phone explaining to differenet sections like billing, accounts, tech support... what the problem was and got passed around.
The annoying thing is that some flunky would hardly listen to what i was saying, and would switch me to another department, but of course I would enter a queue at that section for 45mins to an hour.
I had a heated arguement with a women who was apparently a level 2 tech and team leader. She explained to me that the only modem that would work on the circuit was that one that they had assigned, and that no other modem would do the job. I told her that this was completly wrong and that I already had a working modem on the line and all that I needed was the account to be reactivated. She told me that this was impossible. I told her...look that only way I looked up your tech support numbers was using the modem you are telling me wont possibly work on your service.
She got really angry and told me that she was going to post me a new modem and immediatly cancelled the account on the line. this caused all sorts of administrative problems overs the next 6 hours as Bigpond can't seem to uncancel a cancelled service.
I ended up having to order a new adsl service on the line with no modem in the package.
Then after a few hours i was able to talk to a level 3 tech who fixed the problem in about 30 seconds.
I find that you get a sore ear and a crick in your neck from using a handset for that long.
Eventually I did get a replacement modem, about 3 weeks after xmas. Im glad i didnt wait on site for it!! I kept it as a spare to mail out to any client that had issues as a trouble shooting tool. I'm pretty sure they never billed me for it either.
