Tech Support!!!! (not vanilla sky, more like tiscali)
Ahh so i thought id update something that aired on the technical side. Well kind of, and also showing off my supreme skills of being oblivious to the simple solution.
The problem occured was something so catastrophic, that it endangered the very fabric of my being….. My internet was down. No big deal you say, for me it is. Alone in a tiny village in an area of the country i dont want to be, the internet is my release from the mind-numbingly boring days “Up North”.
Back to the issue, so internet is down. Bit of a pickle as i thought i had been scuppered by the Fair Usage/ Download limit. Only to discover through terms and conditions, there was absolutely no download limit, just bandwidth throttling (whooppee).
Step one, check the connection ( as i could actually get a connection, just not display sites or operate programs such as MSN etc). Connection checked on my dad’s laptop, well that works….Maybe its the IP address, but i was assured by someone much smarter than me that it wasnt that. OK, double check the modem - reinstall software…fail, pulled out power cable by accident, start again… Software reinstalled. Start diagnostic tool on modem, DNS server error.
Whatever the hell that meant, so edited settings for a new DNS address and still nothing.
Next thing i thought was Windows update screwing me behind me back, as it has done before.
So i come to the last resort…Tiscali Tech Support, shock/horror. Its something i did with caution. I wrote down notes about my problem, what i tried/my IP address/other seemingly useless info. I find a mysterious, exotic voice on the other end of the line. You know when your on the phone to a girl you can tell there hot, Well i had the absolute opposite. I could not understand for the life of me why i was burdened with an indian call centre. The woman on the other end asked the stupid, but necessary questions (necessary my ass, i was expecting someone with a little more experience)…
” Are the two lights on the modem lit?”
” Have you deleted internet history/cookies?” (she didnt ask this, she told me to try internet options blah blah blah, which i tried all of this before i called. But i humoured her.
After 10 minutes of her telling me the obvious, granted there ARE n00bs out there, incapable of knowing what a cookie is (Les-Grill, what the heck is that?), she comes back to me and asks about the Firewall.
Of course how could i overlooked THAT! My assumptions was that i hadnt changed anything with zonealarm, so why would it fail by itself.
Back to earlier, after 10 minutes off useless help, she tells me that zonealarm firewalls have affected alot of customers within the past week. SO….. why didnt she ask me straight off the bat, have you got zonealarm? Bish Bash Bosh, fix that and im away, saving myself some time and money.
The advice offered to me from several thousand miles away, repeated several times due to language barrier,was to contact my computer vendor for settings information on zonealarm.
Or heres an idea, changed my Zonealarm settings to medium instead of Full.
So overall, due to supreme overlook i subjected myself to the dreaded tech support, where im normally such a bright bunny. It baffles me to think a n00b on the other end of the phone is giving me advice, whereas i cant get a 1st line support job to save my life. Anyway althought the language barrier, and my patience was woeful at times i give tiscali tech support a 6/10. Room for improvement.
