(Untitled)

[endlesslight]

I just spent half an hour to an hour on the phone with tech support for my internet. After spending three hours trying to repair it myself off and on. Two tech support people had to help me before it got fixed. And then the lady tried to tell me it was a problem with my wireless the whole time rather than a problem with my internet. But it was a

Comments

[elaboration]

I read somewhere that one of the first things Tech Support is supposed to ask customers is if the stuff is plugged in and other inane questions. Sadly, it's because most people are morons when it comes to technology.

Also, they'll usually blame the other side of the problem. One that has nothing to do with them because usually it means "I don't know." and they have to finish their call with you or their record will get bad.

[endlesslight]

At least in the end they were able to help me fix it. And the first guy I talked to was really nice. But the lady told me I wasn't supposed to turn off the modem, or reset it without being told to by a tech service person. O.o As far as I know we own that modem since we paid for it...so I don't see why I shouldn't do what I want with it.

[terrant]

They usually ask stupid questions like "Did you unplug it?" for 2 reasons.

1) Power cycling modems fixes a large majority of internet conneciton issues if done right. Seriously.
2) Most people lie about having done it themselves, or don't do it right.

Also, most ISPs still do not support networking, especially wireless networking, of any kind. Everyone and his inbred cousin has 3 PCs and an xbox, and they still won't catch up. So they won't talk to you until the router is out of the equation. You should see MY calls to Cox. I'm giving them my upstream Xmit levels at the modem diagnostic site and such while they're still trying to get me to unplug my Belkin. Lolz. They hate me.

[endlesslight]

But I said I had power cycled it twice, and she said I shouldn't have done that without being told to by them. I just didn't think to actually reset the modem. And resetting it became a problem later because I forgot that it resets all the settings on the thing (and she didn't mention that) and so I had to take the laptop back out there and connect it directly to change the wep key back to the one we use so I knew what it was.

Our modem is a wireless gateway thing too, which came FROM att, so I always think it's silly that they don't know more about it. XD

haha. I love how even when the person calling obviously has decent knowledge of what they're doing the tech support people still think they don't. But I bet they get a lot of calls from people who swear they know all about it and don't know a thing. Like most parents I see... I swear, they all think they know it all and then do really stupid stuff or can't figure out what's going on with their computer when it's something really basic. It's funny.

[terrant]

oh god, modem router combo....BURN IT WITH FIRE.

[endlesslight]

Actually it works surprisingly well. Much better than when I had a separate modem and router before. We rarely have any problems with it, whereas I used to have to struggle with my router and modem at least once a month before. :o The only thing I don't like is the firmware for it. It's a pain to thread stuff through the firewall and I just don't like the setup as much as I liked the linksys one.

[se_vens]

So you actually called tech support... and they didn't notice that it was a local issue? By which i mean based on comments from other people, there was a lot of internet problems last night.

[endlesslight]

Who else had internet problems last night? O.o The first guy I talked to said he checked their bulletin board thing twice and there wasn't any stuff about service or problems going on in our area.

[petzgirl]

I did. It was quite frustrating.

[endlesslight]

Weird. I wonder why at&t didn't know about it. O.o

[se_vens]

and typing home didnt work. liar.

[endlesslight]

It didn't? Weird. Do you have to type in the whole 192.168.1.1 or whatever your address thing is?