I ran across a problem a couple of weeks ago where I couldn’t get to 4 major internet sites (One was msnbc.com). It took me about an hour until I figured out that all the sites died when trying to contact a specific ad server. So I ran all the trace routes and had enough information to convince any sane person that there was an issue. I called and got a tech. I have done tech-support. I know what it is like. So before I called I dialed a long distance number and everything worked just fine.
I told the tech that he couldn’t resolve my issue and asked to speak to a supervisor. The tech then continued to question me. I told him what the issue was. This tech insisted that the problem was with my computer even when I told him that my issue was resolved when I dialed a different number. I finally got him off the phone by asking him to name all the parts of the TCP-IP stack and the packet sizes. By this time I was rather angry.
The supervisor got on the phone and repeated what the tech said. He said that my computer was the cause of all the problems. At this point I gave up.
The next day I had the same issue and called again. By this time someone appareantly put a note in my record that I should be handed off to a supervisor as soon as possible. That worked for me. The supervisor I got seemed to understand the issue and asked me to email him my trace routes. I sent him the stuff. I aslo told him what I thought the problem was, either the routing tables were hosed or the DNS was hosed.
After about a week I could get through to the sites. I emailed the supervisor letting him know that the problem seemed to be fixed. I also asked for a free month since a) I couldn’t get to some major sites for 3 weeks and b) I provided the info to resolve the problem. He said he would ask.
The next day, yesterday, it broke again. I emailed the supervisor and let him know. By this time I knew what the problem was and laid it out for him. The routing tables were updated then replaced by the old invalid routing tables.
So today I get an email from the supervisor. The supervisor has the balls to ask me to run traces again and send him the info. On top of that he wanted me to sign on using a specific IP address. The service uses DHCP so I cannot specify the IP and, on top of that, he wanted me to sign on using akamai.net IP. At this point I finally understand that this guy doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.
To top that off he wants me to fix his companies problem. He wanted me to run all kinds of trace routes when he could do the same if they dialed my POP.
This son of a bitch wants me to gather information to fix the ISP’s problems for free. I asked for a free month considering how much time and effort I put into this issue. The supervisor keeps claiming that he cannot give me a free month and that he will find out “in a couple weeks”.
Well, Mr. Supervisor. I give you a big fuck off and hope you die you useless son of a bitch.
Slee