ISP Support

Though support may not be the correct name to use.

Over the years I have some to dread having to contact support desks, but ISP (Internet Service Provider) ones are always the worst. My experiences vary from the knowledgeable, tho those that really need a clue. But is it the individuals fault, or the company that didn’t train them?

"I have a problem connecting to your usenet server"

"I’m sorry we don’t carry Usenet."

"erm, yes you do but you may know it as newsgroups"

"Yes we have newsgroups, but we don’t have Usenet"

"Usenet is the correct terminology for what you call newsgroups, anyway I can’t see to download…"

"sorry, what is Usenet?"

Then of course you get to those that think they have a clue…

"I’m having problems with a specific newsgroup, when you added it to your feed you set it up incorrectly and made it moderated when it isn’t!"

"You’ll need to contact the person that created the group"

"Why?"

"Only they will be be able to set the group up correctly, or change its settings."

"No, the group is set up correctly, it is at your end that it is wrong"

"Oh I’m sorry, go to [link] and this will explain everything"

[aside: the link points to a page on how to create newsgroups (which wasn’t factually correct either)]

"Never mind, just ask the newsmaster to change it for me"

[eventually it was corrected]

Those examples happened several years ago, these next two happened this year

"I am having problem connecting to a site, everyone else from other ISP’s can get there with no problem it just seems to be via yourselves. I believe it is a DNS cache problem, could you look into it please."

"There is no problem with the DNS cache as we can see the site with no problems. It must be a problem with the website, try asking them."

[just in case I contacted the website owner, and traced every providor that the trace route hopped through to check where the error might lay, they all pointed back to my ISP]

"I’ve checked with everyone else and they all point back to problems with yourselves."

"There is no problem with the DNS cache as we can see the site with no problems. It must be a problem with the website, try asking them."

[and so it went on, magically about 5 weeks later it was all fixed…]

But this next one really surprised me, it happened this month but luckily not to me

"I would be grateful if you could help with the following.

I subscribe to the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup but I have found that on
your news server it is no longer being updated and seems to contain the
same posts as alt.fan.pratchett.announce which is a different
newsgroup.

Please could you make sure that alt.fan.pratchett is updated properly."

Here is the reply they received :

"Dear ******,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

We do not control or update that newsgroup. The newsgroup owners are responsible for that not *****.net. I would in your case contact the news group and ask them why they have not updated their newsgroup product.

Kind Regards

***** Internet Access Support Team"

I dread having to contact my ISP.