Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Who can you trust?
I'm happy today. A new router arrived this morning, and my broadband connection is working again. But what a saga it has been to get this sorted! And who can you trust to give you a straight answer?
First off, I don't trust BT 'Technical' support. They initially told me my broadband wasn't working because I had a firewall, and I had to turn it off so that my broadband would work again. I didn't even bother arguing with that, I just asked to speak to someone else (who told me the problem was my Sky box, even though it wasn't connected at the time).
Secondly, I don't trust Netgear, the people who made my router, because I had to spend half an hour on the phone to somewhere in India just to get them to give me permission to send my router back for a replacement, and when I sent it they denied having received it. Good job I had proof of delivery - I got them to fedEx me a new router by getting a guy in Southall to type my reference number into the Royal Mail web site.
And I don't trust the BT engineer who came to test my line. He said it was working fine, which it seems to be now with a new router, but he also said there was 'no way' my line would support 1Mbps. odd then that when I plugged in my new router this morning I find I have been upgraded to 1Mbps (as per BT's automatic upgrade programme), and it's working perfectly.
well we'll see if that continues. the lesson is: no-one really knows what they're talking about, especially the guy who told me to turn off my firewall.
I'm happy today. A new router arrived this morning, and my broadband connection is working again. But what a saga it has been to get this sorted! And who can you trust to give you a straight answer?
First off, I don't trust BT 'Technical' support. They initially told me my broadband wasn't working because I had a firewall, and I had to turn it off so that my broadband would work again. I didn't even bother arguing with that, I just asked to speak to someone else (who told me the problem was my Sky box, even though it wasn't connected at the time).
Secondly, I don't trust Netgear, the people who made my router, because I had to spend half an hour on the phone to somewhere in India just to get them to give me permission to send my router back for a replacement, and when I sent it they denied having received it. Good job I had proof of delivery - I got them to fedEx me a new router by getting a guy in Southall to type my reference number into the Royal Mail web site.
And I don't trust the BT engineer who came to test my line. He said it was working fine, which it seems to be now with a new router, but he also said there was 'no way' my line would support 1Mbps. odd then that when I plugged in my new router this morning I find I have been upgraded to 1Mbps (as per BT's automatic upgrade programme), and it's working perfectly.
well we'll see if that continues. the lesson is: no-one really knows what they're talking about, especially the guy who told me to turn off my firewall.
Comments:
Don't you just love `technical support.'
I've had my share of fun with BT (on multiple occassions). It turns out by ripping out all the additional cable in my house (including the sky box - which was messing things up) and just use the main BT point, I can get the net. Add anything else, it doesn't work.
And just for fun... the (Netgear) router has recently been subject to several thousand volts of lightning.
As for Netgear... getting a new box is a pain! But they will replace anything under warranty.
On the plus side of bad technical support... they once bought me a new PC (after putting up with one for a year). I notified tech support that my PC had a broken motherboard... tech support (very wisely) informed me that they were the ones that would tell me what was wrong with my system. They then proceeded to replace every part (excluding the motherboard) of my PC on numerous site visits. 30 days later I quoted their 30 day `repair it, or refund it' rule and received a credit note for the price I paid 12 months previously.
I generally build my own PCs now.
On a usability note, why is everything so damned difficult!
I've had my share of fun with BT (on multiple occassions). It turns out by ripping out all the additional cable in my house (including the sky box - which was messing things up) and just use the main BT point, I can get the net. Add anything else, it doesn't work.
And just for fun... the (Netgear) router has recently been subject to several thousand volts of lightning.
As for Netgear... getting a new box is a pain! But they will replace anything under warranty.
On the plus side of bad technical support... they once bought me a new PC (after putting up with one for a year). I notified tech support that my PC had a broken motherboard... tech support (very wisely) informed me that they were the ones that would tell me what was wrong with my system. They then proceeded to replace every part (excluding the motherboard) of my PC on numerous site visits. 30 days later I quoted their 30 day `repair it, or refund it' rule and received a credit note for the price I paid 12 months previously.
I generally build my own PCs now.
On a usability note, why is everything so damned difficult!
I should add.... My reference to getting a new box out of netgear doesn't refer to the box hit by lightning. It was a 8 port router I bought of eBay which arrived dead. I simply returned it to Netgear.
I had problems with a Sky box too, or rather the long extension cable that was needed to hook it up. One or both of these 2 things fixed the problem of interference on that extension: 1. a good quality (ferrite core) ADSL filter, and 2. I put one of those RF supressors (commonly found on modem cables) on the extension cable. no probs with it since.
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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