ISP Frustration

A while ago my Internet stopped working and I had to call my Internet service provider's technical support. This wasn't the first time I'd had this problem. In fact, about a month earlier I also had to call for repair, but by the time a 'technician' came to my apartment, the Internet was working again.

This time was much different. I called and received support for over an hour the first time. We worked through all of the steps to make sure everything had been configured properly, and after trying several other fixes, the support technician was baffled. Shortly after consulting a few others in his office, my cell phone's signal faded. NO!!!!!!!! It was even more unfortunate that my ISP didn't have any phone number saved in their database by which to reach me.

I called again and went through many of the same steps with a new technician. Eventually, she seemed to give up. She told me that in my area there were only two people connected, so I wasn't the only customer with that problem.

Following that conversation, I called again to speak with someone else, who confirmed my suspicion that the last customer service rep. had fabricated the 'situation' my service area was experiencing. We repeated many of the same steps in order to diagnose my problem. This conversation, like the first, ended with the technician suspecting that my computer(s) were the issue. So, after all of the time I'd spent on the phone, nothing had been done.

I began to seriously consider canceling my service if my ISP continued to ignore the problem. I did some research on my own to determine that the modem shipped to me by my ISP probably wasn't configured properly anymore. I called again, repeated some diagnostic steps, told them what I thought was wrong, and they finally agreed to replace the modem.

Then someone else called the next morning to make sure I needed a new modem - this involved following the same steps I'd followed with all of the other technical support people. I'd certainly reached my boiling point - but I'm sure they were only doing their jobs. I tried to be kind to everyone and explain the situation well.

In the end the Internet returned, but it was a very long and frustrating phone quest.