Wednesday 31 August 2005

Pic of the day: Typical customer support person, spontaneously making up stories. (Actually screenshot from the anime Damekko Doubutsu.) And in case you don't know me, yes I am a support person myself... ^_^*

DSL error found (?)

Today late in the workday my mobile phone rang. I was at the toilet right then, of course. But that's beside the point. It was Eltel, the tech company that actually does the on-site work for my ISP Telenor (and, judging from their letters, also for almost all the competitors). I took off from work early and was home by 16:30 (half past four PM). By then the techie was already checking the lines where they go into the house, and soon found them to be OK. I let him in, and we tried once again with the other modem. None of them worked, only gave a blinking light. His modem, however, worked fine.

Then again, his modem was much newer. What seems to have happened is that Telenor has indeed upgraded the lines ... to the point where their old DSL modems cannot follow. Nobody thought about that. It seems strange that I should be the only remaining customer with the old modems. Then again, I got DSL pretty much as soon as it was available, so I guess it makes sense.

The techie did not have any spare modem for me. He recommended I call Telenor and tell them what we had found out. I did soon after he was gone. They sounded as surprised as ever, and told me that they would write a message to the techies to bring me a newer modem, a Thomson Speedtouch.

I have every reason to believe that they did not actually do this, or that Eltel doesn't reliably pick up the messages. Because the techie told me that he had not heard from Telenor since before he last was here, on Friday when I was at work. Meanwhile Telenor has told me twice in that time that they have contacted them, and once even that they had made an appointment for the techie to be here on Monday between noon and 4 PM. It seems that they just made that up to get the phone call finished. Or perhaps the techie was lying out his teeth, who knows? A useful trait for anyone working with customers, to be able to just make up something on the spot.

If I had the brain of a roasted monkey, I would have ordered a DSL modem from an independent source as soon as possible, rather than waiting until nothing happens again. But my brain once again succumbed to pointless optimism.

But I am still alive! Which is good.