The A-Z of TelCo excuses...

[GremlinSA]

After my Dial up Expences surpassed the cost of Fixed Line ADSL access, we decided to upgrade our connection...

After a Two month waiting period (New lines had to be installed was the reason given) we got a call from the TelCo saying the technition will come through on the 10th Jan to install our ADSL line...

Well today is the 15th and this is the list of excuses given since the 10

Tuesday 10th Jan - (A) - The technition had a Accident and is in hospital.
Wednesday 11th Jan - (B) - There's a Backlog of instalations, a technition will be past tommorow.
Thursday 12th Jan - (C) - Can not get through to the Telco on the Tollfree numbers.. Call is picked up and hungup imidiately..
Friday 13th Jan - (D) - Not too bad a day, against all superstition. The technition arrives, installs the ADSL line and Modem. But we cannot connect because, the ADSL Dialup system is offline for upgrading, The modem wont Sync....
Saturday 14 Jan - (E) - Get hold of the Helpdesk. our line now needs to be Escalated for ADSL. a technition at the exchange will do it within the next 24 hours.
Sunday 15 Jan - (F) - Forget it.. Its the weekend, even if I'm at work, i'm doing ALAP (As Little As Posible) so i can get payed double time to do my own thing. (Going into the exchange and changing a jumper for your line is just too much work)

Pray to God what G excuse i will get on Monday...

------ EDIT ----
Monday 16 Jan - (G) - Helpdesk says "We Got your Details on file for the Escalation, A technition will Get to it soon.."
------ EDIT -----

Has any one else experianced this sort of instalation Nightmare with there local TelCo..

Please share, So I may know what to expect....

Gremmy....

[GremlinSA]

Tuesday 17 Jan - (H) - Eventualy get Hold of someone on the Helpdesk who knows what to do. Does a test on the line, and tells me there some sort of line fault, thats causing a Holdup on the digital data. A technition will come over tomorow to fix it..

[Marc G]

I had no problem installing the ADSL stuff, but a year ago the modem started to behave weird. It would often lose sync for a bit and then work again. Over time, the outage times were getting longer and longer
I called lots and lots of times. They said the modem was broken. It's a Speedtouch Home modem which are known to work very well and are very robust. Anyway, I disconnected the modem, went to a friend and tried it there and it worked perfectly. I phoned them back several times, but they insisted that the modem should be replaced. So I went to a store and bought a new ADSL modem, connected it and of course it didn't work. Phoned them back again, then they said that my inhouse connections are bad. Yeah right Anyway, I disconnected the modem from its usual place and connected it straight at the connection where the line enters the house. I also disconnected all other devices connected to it. Of course the problems persisted.
Phoned back, now they said there was a problem with the landline. After some more calls they finally send a technician that would measure the landline. Everything seemed OK, so that was not the problem. Some more phone calls later, I suggested myself to the techinicians that maybe the modem at their end on our line was broken. After being a bit reluctant they finally would send a technician to check the modem on their end of my line and came to the conclusion that it was broken ... go figure. They replaced it and everything worked fine since then. In total, it took me several months to get it sorted out and to get ADSL without losing sync.
Of course I made an "not so friendly" telephone call after it was fixed stating that my ADSL connection was very unstable the previous few months. They were friendly enough to pay me those months back.

[GremlinSA]

Wednesday 18 Jan - (I) - ADSL Has Sync.. Jipeee... Now to get hold of the ISP to get my login details and have my account switched from dialup to ADSL..

[GremlinSA]

Thursday 19 Jan - (J) - Just in case your wondering about this... I'm online .... after 3 hours on hold with the different helpdesks... (And a final Call count of 45 Calls to 9 different helpdesks....)