Last Straw. Camel's Back. Etc.

[Gareth Harper]

2009/10/1 David Cantrell <david at cantrell.org.uk>:
> Oh, I should also mention that the one time when stuff broke recently,
> the Nildram call centre understood things like "traceroute" and "your
> border with $fooISP" and didn't just ask me to reinstall Windows.
>
> The breakage was, of course, my fault.

It's cable of course, so it's not something you can migrate towards,
but I have to admit Virgin Medias tech support has gotten a LOT better
recently.

I had a recurring packet loss issue over a couple of years (It
happened, took a month or so to find the real issue to fix, then they
seemed to fix it with a new modem.  It came back a year or so later
and a new modem wouldn't fix it this time, they finally seemed to
track it down and despite telling me they'd need to provision new
hardware in the area which could take a month it was fixed inside 3
days).

The first time it happened I had to just ring and hang up if I got the
indian call centre, once I got through to the scottish centre I'd get
someone who didn't take me through a script.

The recent time it happened I'd ring up and no matter which call
centre I spoke to they'd listen to me, log into my modem, agree with
me and push forward either  a technician or a second level support
callback.  This may have been of course as I'd only rung them on the
occasions when I do have issues and they'd put a flag on my account.

(The final issue turned out to be extremely high usage in my area,
they needed to put a new card or something in my local box, which
apparently they did quite quickly, it's been fine since.  The issue
was somewhat clouded by the fact that they had cranked the line power
right up high in the area and I was right next to the box, which a lot
of the cable techs who came out thought would be causing the issue).