Rant AOL Cocksuckers

[WPKenny]

WTF is up with AOL?

My dad's internet has gone down. I've gone through all the diagnostics with him from wifi, router set up and even waggling cables and trying different phone sockets. Yet every time he phones up AOL he gets a new desk monkey who tells him to try a load of shit that I've already done despite my dad telling them this.
He's got a Netgear DG834GT adsl router, a VERY common router yet AOL say since they didn't provide it they're blaming the router and are unwilling to escalate the fault.

So now my dad's gone off to see if he can find his old AOL USB ADSL modem and plug that back in to prove once and for all that something outside of my parent's house has gone tits up.

Basically the router can't sync to the ADSL. Simple. The orange flashing light on the front tells you as much. My dad's told them exactly what I told him to say yet because their little computer screen says there's no physical faults reported in the area he has to spend 5p a min to an idiot getting him to jump through hoops and wasting my dad's time and mine.

ARGH!!!!!!

 

[Deebs]

Kenny,

Get your dad to logon to the router and go to the diags portion and see if he can see if the ADSL frequency is available. If not change the DSL filter and if that fails there is more than likely a fault at the exchange.

 

[Kryten]

Indeed, good advice - and if you still need to speak to someone at AOL, as soon as they answer:

"Hello, I need to speak to your supervisor as a matter of urgency, I'm unsatisfied with the support I have so far received from you and if it is not resolved the contract will be cancelled forthwith."

There are 2 things they can do from there.
1. They're probably foreign and don't quite understand your otherwise simple request.
2. They'll hopefully do as asked and put you through to someone more appropriately trained and ideally not reading from their script, or they will see you're a bit more serious than they'd otherwise believe and get something looked at.
And of course if all else fails, a bit of fabrication helps.

"I've had a good friend of mine bring his BT line diagnosis kit round and has confirmed the internal system and my router is in good working order - however only you are authorised to raise fault, he's unable to do anything further".

 

[WPKenny]

Kenny,

Get your dad to logon to the router and go to the diags portion and see if he can see if the ADSL frequency is available. If not change the DSL filter and if that fails there is more than likely a fault at the exchange.

It's not picking up anything of the sort Deebs.

He's managed to dig out his old AOL adsl modem and that's not showing any sync either so he's on the phone to them now and will give me a buzz back with the result.

My dad's not got a clue with these things and I can tell he's getting really frustrated being given the run around by AOL. If he can't sort it I'll have to head over to his house tomorrow and bitch at AOL to pull their finger out.

I don't think he has another filter to try but will ask him when he calls me back.

 

[Trem]

Sounds just like Virgin with me, they pick up on anything not supplied by them and blame that. I just lie my tits off now, if they ask if I have a router I just say no etc.

I also told them I was head of an IT department at the largest company in town to get them to take me seriously

 

[Nate]

Snip snip

 

[WPKenny]

Finally!

So I went over to my dad's today. Stopping to pick him up another AOL CD on the way. bleurgh.

I get to their house and see the modem's still not sync'd. So I check everything's as it should be. Log onto the router over wifi and see it's just not picking up any signal of the ADSL variety.

So I get my dad to call them and go through all the security question then he passes the phone to me.

It's an indian lady. I explain to her what the problem is and she asks me what the sync light on the front of the router is doing and literally the second she's finished speaking it turns solid green.
At this stage I hadn't touched a thing. Merely logged on to the router to check it's status.

So anyway I dash over to the computer and see it's sync'd a 2meg connection however it's yet to pick up it's IP etc.

The rest of the conversation went something like this...

her: ok can you plug in the yellow cable between your router and your pc please sir.
me: you mean the ethernet cable? It's ok I've already connected to and logged into the router over wifi.
her: yes sir but we need to establish that your computer is connecting to the router.
me: yes, I just said it already is. Not over ethernet but over wifi. I can see that the modem is sync'd it's just not allowing it to log on.
her: yes sir, but we need to establish that your computer is connecting to the router.

This part of the conversation looped a few more times with her completely ignoring what I was saying each time.
Eventually I gave in and said "ok hold on" then made some banging noises and told her I was now connected using "the yellow cable".

She talked me through logging on to the router. Something I'd told her I'd already done about 20 times previously. But instead of repeating myself I bit my tongue and just pretended to type stuff.

Eventually she got to the settings part.
This is the bit that really grates. AOL/Carphone warehouse had changed their login method at some point and not bothered to tell my dad. He assures me he got no post and no email about a change of login details.

So I put in these new login details and everything starts working.

I then try to explain to her that although her system says there was no fault on the line, without sync I could have put in a million different settings and login would have failed. But she talks to me like I'm a twat who's been biting through cables and then forgetting I did it. This was after I told her I work in IT support and also used to work in the telecoms industry.

One part of the conversation went something like this...
me: I know that unless your screen tells you there's been a fault on the line or part of the AOL network you have to tell the customer that there was no fault. But if the line is not getting sync and nothing has changed between it working, breaking and working again then there must have been a fault, yes?
her: No sir there was no fault.

She seemed to think that the line sync issue never existed and that I had put the wrong settings in to the router. These were settings that had been in the router and working for nearly a year previously. This also didn't seem to matter to her. I/my dad was just an idiot who'd broken his own internet and she'd fixed it.

This was when I lost it. I didn't swear but I ranted at her for about five minutes about how all this time and effort could have been saved if her engineers would update logs so she can tell a customer when something's broken and not have to spend hours trying settings that were never going to work cos the line wasn't sync'ing.
Also that if they were going to change any settings, it would be a good idea for their marketing department to let customers know either by mail or email, neither of which were methods used to contact my father.

Argh. It was one of the most frustrating conversations I've had with tech support.

Why is it so hard for them to deviate from the script? They must learn some familiarity with the systems that when someone talks to them on the same level they can relate like a human being and not some robot reading a script. When I was telling her about the fact I was already logged into the router via wifi she may as well have been replying "DOES NOT COMPUTE!".

bah. well AOL still suck arse but my dad will not change ISP. At least this little rant has got it out of my system. Well done for reading this far.

 

[Kryten]

lol!

Had a similar exchange with Tiscali regarding my mother's connection, after 5 minutes of the same sort of looping, I just calmly said "Look, before we continue with this pointless discussion, I am more qualified and experienced in doing your job than you, or any 10 of the most talented people you can think of in your entire company. You can either start dealing with me as such, or you can put me through to another more intelligent person who will no doubt be better at dealing with customers than you are."
I hate those people, there's only so long that the likes of us can bite our tongues before letting rip about their lack of intelligence and use of a script

At least it's sorted anyway - certainly worth keeping an eye on it though.

 

[inactionman]

I do similar to Kryts, I just turn around and say "look, I'm a CCIE (lies, I didn't take the final practical exam, and it's been a while) I know more about networking than probably anyone at your company does, apart from the guys that built your network. Put me through to a fully trained and qualified technical support person who isn't working from a script or I cancel my account and go to your competitor".

 

[ford prefect]

I've yet to come across an ISP that logs phone calls to the extent that you ring them up about a problem for the third time and they say "Ah, I see you have tried so and so, how about trying this instead?".

A friend of mine recently phoned talk talk to set up a connection. He has an ancient machine running Windows 98 se, but he only uses it to type the odd letter and write the occasional email, so it's fine. The nice lady at the indian call centre promptly told him he urgently needed to upgrade to XP as 98 doesn't support any kind of broadband. He explained five times that he had happily run broadband on it for the past seven years and she told him there was nothing she could do and then cut him off.

Later on he phoned to question the small print as he had been told by sales staff that the free anytiime calls on their phone service didn't have a time limit on them (they do, 70 minutes then you start being charged), he phoned to double check this and another nice lady told him that she couldn't believe that anyone would be on the phone that long anyway, so whats the problem? The nature of his work requires phone calls that can last hours sometimes when phoning patients. He tried complaining that he had been mis-sold the service and they said yeah we get that a lot, but usually over broadband, our 40 gig download limit is actually a usuage limit and includes uploads too. He is now looking for a new ISP / phone provider lol

 

[DaGaffer]

They're all the fucking same. BT have routinely ignored my online requests to fix a billing problem for about three months now, and on the occasions when I have enough patience to call them I get the "yes we see the problem and we'll get that fixed" spiel, and then...nothing. And this is so I can pay them! Now I've also got a problem with my BT Vision box, which looks like its going to require an engineer or a new box, oh how I'm looking forward to that.

 

[Mabs]

this is why i stick with Zen. only ever had 2 problems with it, and when you phone them up , they -TALK- to you, dont read it off a sheet, so much easier

 

[dysfunction]

Well Zen are quite pricey so you would expect a good service...if you offer cheap stuff you are more likely to cut corners.

Although saying that i have had no real issues with Be* and they are quite cheap...

 

[Kryten]

Aye, must admit O2 (same people) are also very good in support. Emailed them one sunday about connections problems, got a resync and a reply email with 20 minutes saying "We've tweaked something and will keep an eye for the next 48 hours, let us know if there's any more problems".
That's impressive by any ISP's standards

Although O2's customer service for their mobile phones are morons, their Broadband people seem to be right on the ball.

 

[Chilly]

surely "o2" broadband support is just be* bb support accessed via a different route ?

 

[nath]

surely "o2" broadband support is just be* bb support accessed via a different route ?

Although saying that i have had no real issues with Be* and they are quite cheap...

Aye, must admit O2 (same people)

Honestly Chilly, do try to keep up

 

[Tilda]

Be* support is utter crap when you have an issue their script monkeys dont know how to deal with.

 

[rynnor]

Sounds just like Virgin with me, they pick up on anything not supplied by them and blame that.

Funny - I quite like Virgin tho it could be the fact that they are providing me with free broadband nowadays - something to do with not transferring their old customer database over correctly I suspect but hey

 

[dysfunction]

Be* support is utter crap when you have an issue their script monkeys dont know how to deal with.

I must say I have never phoned their support desk. I have always used the online ticket system.

They answer those pretty quickly and get the problem sorted as well...

 

[ford prefect]

Funny - I quite like Virgin tho it could be the fact that they are providing me with free broadband nowadays - something to do with not transferring their old customer database over correctly I suspect but hey

Virgin managed to replicate my father-in-laws account four times when they took over NTL, it took fourteen months for them to sort it out (plus several letters threatening to pass the debt for the four extra accounts to be sent off to a debt collection agency).Plus an actual debt collection letter from a firm called wescott. He is still waiting for his credit record to be ammended.

 

[rynnor]

Virgin managed to replicate my father-in-laws account four times when they took over NTL, it took fourteen months for them to sort it out (plus several letters threatening to pass the debt for the four extra accounts to be sent off to a debt collection agency).Plus an actual debt collection letter from a firm called wescott. He is still waiting for his credit record to be ammended.

Thats harsh - did you try the data protection act angle on them if they are being slow to correct your Dads credit record?

Good info on it here - Correcting information - Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

Basically credit companies can be forced to correct your credit data and if neccesary you can obtain a court order (though I'd bet they change it real fast!).

Good Luck!

 

[ford prefect]

Thats harsh...

Good Luck!

Thanks, will pass on the info

 

[Helme]

Wow, UK support seems to made up of morons, if I say I restarted my router, connected all cables properly etc. here they'll take 2 seconds to look if they can reach my modem from their side and if they can't they start checking off problems on there side - if they are unable to find one, they give me a new IP etc. and asks me to restart everything(I've got a static IP). If that doesn't work, they excuse themselves and asks me to try again in an hour as it might be some temporary fault that they are unaware of, if this happens they usually compensate you with a free month or something along those ways Oo

 

[Kryten]

We can nearly always get compensation like that here too, it's just harder to get that far.
Most UK support centres for everyone from our phone providers to ISP's and energy suppliers are outsourced to India, and as a result you get someone who barely understands english reading from scripted answers. If you ask a question they don't have a script for, you're fucked and/or in for a long wait and a test of patience.
So, in a nutshelll : yes, they're morons

 

[Jupitus]

Not disagreeing with anything stated, but I not only get frustrated with situations like that, but I also feel sorry for the poor monkey being given instructions to follow, paid shit all for doing so, and then suffering torrents of abuse from angry users... I guess running a support desk myself gives me a degree of empathy with them

I usually bypass any outsourced support by immediately asking for the supervisor... then when the supervisor comes on the line I praise the operative purely on the grounds of them not having argued with me about putting me through

Oddly enough, spoke to a distant call centre about my Sky system a few days back and they were superb....

 

[rynnor]

but I also feel sorry for the poor monkey being given instructions to follow, paid shit all for doing so, and then suffering torrents of abuse from angry users... I guess running a support desk myself gives me a degree of empathy with them

Dont empathise with the enemy!

Actually I think you'll find that they are comparatively well paid in India (compared to the cost of living there) so that they can afford a pretty great lifestyle - they probably have servants so dont feel too sorry for em

 

[Kryten]

The trouble is, regardless of who they are or where they are from, I can only ever visualise that moronic indian exchange operator from Transformers when talking to them

"I'm sorry sir but that tone of voice is not going to get things done any quicker"

 

[Helme]

I prefer:

NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: TECH SUPPORT