Campquake Senate

i started a new job on wed of last week (aug 31) working for a company called stream( maybe some of u have heard of it) they put me on the road runner contract so that means i get to fix internet connections, email, web mail, ez armor and account managing. mostly deal with the southern states, texas and what not... its funny.... everytime i have jacked into someones phone i make up my own episode of King of the hill. i swear i have heard every characters voice already, and i tell you.... boomhowers are the hardest to help

so if any of you have road runner and call for tech support and u hear " thank you for calling road runner national help desk this is jordan how can i help you today" (not likely u will get me though hahha) then i will jack up my call time for a friendly conversation and i WILL fix ur internet MAUHAHHAHA!!!!

after my training is done and i get out on the floor ill more then likely be posting more often caz ill be bored out of my skull.

ok take care all

national help desk? for residential or business customer accounts?
and what tier? when i had a residential RR account.. i would call and talk to 'tier 1' guys..and have to show them i know what i am talking about with regards to diagnosing my own problems, before they would escalate me.. but now, with a business rr account, i go right to tier 3. hehe

SBC pisses me off with that tier support crap.
My residential account went down last week and I sat on the phone with tier 1 support for over 2 hours before they would even transfer me to tier 2. Once I got to tier 2, I just told the guy "look, I'm an IT guy who's been doing this for a while, your tier 1 guy has tortured me through their entire troubleshooting crap just so I can speak to you. You have an outage in my neighborhood, please send someone to fix it!" he took 2 minutes, ran some tests on my line and said "Yep, there's an outage, I'm dispatching some repair techs right now".


I just had to ask, why couldn't the first guy do that?! Instead "Michael" so he says his name is, runs me through ten million completely unrelated troubleshooting steps. "May I please ask you to isolate your DSL modem so that it is at least 2ft away from any other electrical equipment?"

WTF! the things been working for a year in the same exact spot, I can't see that having a damn thing to do with my DSL light being red!!

And the best part is when they tell me to do stuff on my computer like turn off my firewall... I just reach over from my comfy chair make some noise on the keyboard and say "OK, thats done - still not working!" lol

DSL is straight forward, two issues usually:

No authentication (phone company issue) and no line synch (phone company issue). I call these directly into Bell for them to fix, as they are only ones able to do so. The wait happens at that point, as they have 48 hours to resolve it.

Not saying customer can't do something wrong, but there's really only two things to prevent a DSL connection from working. No line synch could result in customer not having a phone filtered (or stupid, and put filter on modem), or the modem is not plugged into jack.

Power cycle your modem. Reboot your computer. Turn off both the computer and dsl modem and keep them both off for a full two minutes before turning them both back on. Uninstall tcp/ip from your network card then reinstall it. I have heard it all, too. hehehe.... That is one of the reasons I went to cable instead of dsl - the HORRIBLE support and the people that actually THINK they know what they are doing or what they are talking about. It pisses me off to no end that even if you DO tell these people that you know what you are doing and you have done it for years (as I have been as well), they STILL walk you through the stupid troubleshooting guide, or whatever it is they have in front of them that they read step by step. lol

I never have customer reboot computer, only a power cycle of modem and/or router if necessary (usually router is what is not connected, and needs a kick in the butt). As for keeping them off for a duration, that's absurd. Quick power off and then on, that's all that's needed for modem.

im tier 2 support for the residential customers.
just went through the networking part of the training tonight.
tomorrow i get to write out tickets and shit for the people on the floor.
tier 1 support dont get that much training in the technical stuff because the are the local office and deal with account managing and software ( driver disks) and such. most of the ones i have heard are stupid and thats why the customers are pissed off, we are the ones that have to try and calm everyone down to get any information outta them besides ROAD RUNNER REPS ARE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS! its kinda fun though....

Akira wrote:I never have customer reboot computer, only a power cycle of modem and/or router if necessary (usually router is what is not connected, and needs a kick in the butt). As for keeping them off for a duration, that's absurd. Quick power off and then on, that's all that's needed for modem.

as far as rebooting a computer goes, i was told that dhcp 'hangs' and your mac address gets 'stuck' on the server *somehow* and rebooting your computer fixes it. heh.. (thats not a very nice way of wording it, as i just did, which is how i had it told to me.. but i did see it happen before.. and its a server problem...nothing to do with the computer... the ppl at tier 1 though, cant access the dhcp server to kill the lease, or something... me though, i just change nics... i have 3 in my pc. hehe )

Can you uncap my modem?

most ISP's (if not all) now have speed caps on their servers, so it does not matter what speed your modem asks for. they also limit the packet size you can send, so there's no way around the limits they set which I know of.

Our DSL, no caps on it at all. My boss briefly suggested doing so, and if the topic comes up again, I'll tell him "no frickin way!".

Problem with DSL is that the phone line company who activates the DSL service on the line, controls your speed. My home connection, is 4Mb service, my modem is capable up to 8Mb however. Bell periodically and gradually increases speed on customer lines, but still no where competes against speeds for cable. But with cable, cable providers cap your bandwidth. You may have faster speed, but you are screwed if you download more than your limit etc..

I hate SBC DSL support too! I called their business support after spending a few minutes isolating the problem back to a router that lost it's configuration. Some robot programed with india accent answered the phone:

Robot: Hello, this is SBC business DSL customer support how can I help you?
Me: Hello. I need the password for my client's DSL account, his router had reset and lost the password in its configuration.
Robot: I can help! Which opperating system do you have?
Me: Opperating System?! I only need the password please, I can't see how that would depend on the opperating system!!!
Robot: I understand. I should be able to help you fix the problem. Do you have Windows XP or maybe Windows 98?
Me: Well, actually, it's Linksys BEFRS81 router, and I need to enter the password so that I can connect to your DSL service.
Robot: Great! So is that Windows 2000?
Me: Ugh! Ok, Windows XP.
Robot: Very nice. Can you click the Start button?
Me: All ready did that.
Robot: What?
Me: Trouble shoot the network connection. Everythings fine on this end, except I don't have his password.
Robot: I can help you with that. Can you click the Start button?
Me: I mean, yes.
Robot: Ok, now do you see "Control Panel"??
Me: Oh, you're referring to the XP Theme eh? Actually, I have it in Classic.
Robot: What?
Me: I mean, yes. I see the Control Panel.
Robot: Excellent, we are almost finished fixing it. Just hang in there sir.
Me: ....
Robot: Can you click the Network and Internet connection?
Me: And this will show me the password?
Robot: I'm sorry?
Me: I still am waiting for you to give me the password so I can enter it back in to his router and be done with this call!
Robot: I can't help you with the password!
Me: You can't?!?!
Robot: No. It sounds like you have a connection problem. Maybe you need to reset the modem?
Me: Already did that too. I only need you to provide me the password or reset it!
Robot: Can you unplug the aDSL modem?
Me: No!!! It's in another building, in the attic, and I'm not going up there!
Robot: I'm sorry. But I can't help you...
Me: (waits 3 seconds) Ok, it's done!
Robot: Excellent! Now wait 1 minute and plug it back in.
Me: (plays Solitate)
Robot: Can you plug it back in now?
Me: (Does nothing.) Done!
Robot: That's great. Do you see the light son the modem?
Me: No, not really!
Robot: What?
Me: I mean, yes! They look very technical.
Robot: That's ok. Don't let them confuse you. Which lights are glowing?
Me: I can see the lights are on, but nobody's home!
Robot: I'm sorry, I didn't under stand that.
Me: Will the lights show me the password?
Robot: Excuse me?
Me: (lost my solitare game and shoved the keyboard away.) Nevermind.
Robot: Pardon?
Me: I found the password!
Robot: That wonderful, you may close the control panel, I'm glad that I could provide you assistance.
Me: You're the best! Keep up the good work.

LOL!!! I know how that is. I have called many times (when I had DSL) and simply asked for the same exact thing (becuase I usually opt for the business account over residential since they always offer 'better' support for those with higher paying accounts) and been told a lot of nothing.

LOL!!! that's the funniest thing I've read all day!
And it's dead on too!

best part about my job is i get paid 10 bux an hour to piss you all off with my stupid questions... then mute to curse you out! MUAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHA!
actually i probably wouldnt.. but thats what they do... today i double jacked with a guy that really shouldnt be working there. he hung up on the 2-3 people. it was horrible. its hard to learn off of someone that is actually incompitant and cant do thier job. i had to type the ticket out for him and he was actually on his desk laying down.
so i guess the lesson for today was. DONT DO WHAT THAT STUPID GUY DOES!!!!!!