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Saturday 12 June 2004

Broad patience = broad band [am]

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that I've moved to a new place on the coast. I have.
Now as a fully paid up member of the crosshatch, games player (dying breed) and all 'round addict of the net, clearly my internet connection was of some not inconsiderable interest to me.
Of course when you move you can't get everything sorted or planned fast enough, oh no, you have to wait until the line's in, which I did, and in the meantime I had to surf the net via gprs or work, working out what I could get. Unfortunately cable is out (too far out to be of interest to the clones hoovin' up the M4 corridor towns) so bang went that. Never mind, looked up the BT postcode checker and vavavoom we have dsl up to 2meg enabled.
I place order with Nildram who used to provide a dsl service to the previous owners and who have a not inconsiderable pick-up from the crosshatch due to their low number of hops and understanding of the gaming mind. This was when that sort of thing used to be important to us, in the last geological era you see.
Order goes in for 1meg as the best placed compromise between wonga and performance. Thankee kindly says bod of the telephone. No problem young man I said, get it in fast and send me the husky sounding receptionist to celebrate.
Now after a while I get an email which is kind of engagingly amateurish for a big ISP which says 'BT have found a service on the line which means that broadband ADSL cannot be installed. Please call 150 to have it removed'. So I call 150 and say 'what's up pe0n, what service do I have' to which they say 'nothing'. So I phone up Nildram and say 'what you talking about fool?' to which the bod there says 'well sometimes it's not that at all' to which I say 'so why not mention that in the email or would that like be too close to being of some fucking use to your customers or what?' to which he says 'my name is Darren and I don't know'. Also he's calling me by my first name which always irritates me. It's the familiarity that gets on my wick rather than 'I'm not a fucking student or some other lower species call me sir' inferiority complex / rank pulling syndrome.
Anyway he says 'your line quality may not be good enough, that could be it' to which I say 'don't think so because you yourselves used to provide broadband to the previous owners'. Oh sez teh pe0n and sticks the order for 1meg dsl in again.
Some more time passes and then some more. I eventually phone up and say 'when's it going in' to which new pe0n, let's call it Darren2 or bDarren, says 'installation date is Friday'. Friday comes and friday goes with of course nairy a shout and on tuesday I get an email that says 'this is to confirm that we have now placed your order'. So I phone up tertiarydarren and say 'What in the holy name of seven shades of flying bat shit is this about?' to which he says 'My name is Darren da Turd and I don't know the answer'. So I give up. And then I phone back on a week friday and say to QuadDarren 'what's going on' to which he says 'oh yes it failed the line test' to which I say 'no that was in the jurassic period, what about now' and he says 'no I mean now, it failed it yesterday' to which I say 'and you were going to tell me about it when?' to which he says 'my name is Darren Quattrone and I don't know the answer'. He then said 'why don't you tr! y ordering it through OpenWorld'.
FUCKING HELL READERS
One quick rant on the crosshatch later and it becomes clear, with the help of the Lurker, that this could be because of the 1meg request and that maybe a 512 service will be better because it can avail itself through RADSL of up to 10km reach from exchange instead of adsl's usual 5km max. I phone Nildram back, I am a patient man, and say 'why don't we try 512 because that may be better over the distance with RADSL and shit' to which CinqueDarren says 'yeah that sometimes works' to which I do a nose-stand on the telephone receiver and yell 'SO WHY DIDN'T YOU RECOMMEND THAT TO ME, YOU AND YOUR FELLOW DARRENS, AND WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THAT I HAVE TO RELY ON THE GOOD LUCK TO BE SO STAGGERINGLY LEET THAT I QUALIFY TO BE IN THE MOST FAMOUS CLAN IN THE WORLD WITH EPOC BREAKING TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWHOW TO DO MY OWN BROADBAND DEDUCTIVE REASONING AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT IN THE NAME OF JEBUS TELL ME'. To which he says 'My name is Darren5 and I don't know the answer'.
Today I got my confirmation that the new service is tested and is going live soon enough. I guess it'll finally rock until some Darren fucks it up. The service culture eh?

3 comments:

  1. Hmmm, shame indeed. Nildram it appears have shafted me too recently (thought nothing as bad as Am). I pay £3.50 a month for a static IP so I can use various IP based firewall hidden stuffs around the country, and have been doing for 10 months. Now our line disconns only one every few weeks, sometimes less and we often get the same IP (Nildys web panel allows you to view this log, quite nice) so I didnt NOTICE that since our DSL was installed we haven't had a static IP, until I told them and the tech peon noticed it was on dynamic IP.Anyways, a quick transfer to customer service and bish bash bosh a refund is coming my way for a touch over thirty squids, and static IP has been enabled. Nice to hear, at last!
    Incidentally, for an incredibly tale of BT DSL fuckery, witness the company I just left. Last january I ordered DSL 2Mb, biz class and they were paying a whopping £140 or so a month for it... all is fine until March this year, 2 months after I leave, and suddenly it stops working for days. Then weeks - the ultimate explanation is that the company is 'too far from the exchange for DSL'. It's 300 yards away and ran 2Mb DSL for over a year withot a hitch. BT claim to have done NOTHING in the Exchange around the date it failed, yet curiously a few dozen people in the area who had DSL now no longer have it... Way to go BT!

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  2. Start a campaign to get the line upgraded - I've got some spare leaflets!

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  3. 710 "Upgradin? Would that work? My issue is my gaff is 6km from the exchange and the signal degrades as a natural result of the distance to the extent that only RADSL is viable. Normal ADSL ain't and I think that's protocol related not quality of line. But if you've got any other info I'd welcome you with an open arse. I mean arms"Oi this is a call going out to the shaved-chest massive. What you talkin' about Willis?

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