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How much does your ISP suck?

Discussion in 'Whatnots' started by chevalier, Oct 27, 2004.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Remove all ads!
    Well, mine has been and will be doing some maintenance since yesterday till tomorrow. When my connection started acting up yesterday, they told me to reset the modem and wait some time and didn't tell me anything about the repairs. Today, I woke up at 4 am. Went to shower soon after and when I came back by 4:40, there was no connection. The blasted modem lit the send and receive LEDs, but not the online one. Obviously, something sucked on the part of the ISP. Couldn't really phone them and get it solved because until 6 am there's no one competent on the helpdesk line. They don't even have the right progs to check things on their side. Heck, I even took a walk across the neighbourhood to kill some time until then. When I got that consultant, she told me about the works and said problems would last until 8 am. When 8 am finally came, all the LEDs lit up, but there was no internet, still. Yeah, couldn't get IP from ISP, so screwed. And, surprise, helpdesk line went deaf. I kept calling them until someone finally picked it up at almost 9 am. Told me to wait until 10 am. After 10 am, I finally got connected.

    I was in white rage and started fantasising about suing them hard. And I must confess, it was more exciting than most of dates I've had in my life...

    One day, I'll get their bloody contract and take it to the court. Their sneaky disclaimers shall fall at my feet, they shall tremble before my skill, they will bow to my name and I won't stop until they lie prostrate before my legal pwnage! :flaming: :evil: :bigeyes:

    So, how ugly a bastard is your ISP? Any stories to share?
     
    chevalier, Oct 27, 2004
    #1
  2. Arabwel

    Arabwel Screaming towards Apotheosis Veteran

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    *huggles Chev*

    I ordered my broadband in August. They delivered it last week. How's that?
     
    Arabwel, Oct 27, 2004
    #2

  3. Intentioner of the Damned Gems: 14/31
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    when i was on a 700k connection from my ISP it was pretty rubbish and always going wrong. But since upgrading to 1.5mbps connection it's been pretty good so far.

    /me hopes he hasn't now jinx'd his connection

    Edit: Oh yeah, and like Arabwel, i ordered in august 2003, they didnt install until near the end of October 2003. Not good.
     
    Intentioner of the Damned, Oct 27, 2004
    #3

  4. JSBB Gems: 31/31
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    About eight months ago my ISP made a big announcement about upgrading their residential service for my province. Sure enough my parents saw their connection speed double within a couple weeks of the announcement.

    I am still waiting. I called and they told me that they had no intention of upgrading the service for my area any time soon. After several minutes of badgering they confessed that they are only putting in the higher speed service for (1) new areas when they expand coverage/availability or (2) upper-class neighbourhoods.

    My parents live in one of the more prestigous (i.e. overpriced) neighbourhoods in my city so naturally they got the upgrade while I, in my more reasonable starter home/middle-class neighbourhood, have to put up with my brother constantly mocking my slower connection.
     
    JSBB, Oct 27, 2004
    #4

  5. Cúchulainn Gems: 28/31
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    I am with NTL and they have upgraded my broadband several times for free which is great, BUT I cannot still access my ntlworld.com email account and phoning up is futile.
     
    Cúchulainn, Oct 27, 2004
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  6. Wordplay Gems: 29/31
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    Some areas of Pohjanmaa have this fibre network with MINIMUM speeds of 15 Mb/s whereas my current ISP is "still" using 512/512 kb/s. Sucks to have 100x worse connection at the same price.
     
    Wordplay, Oct 27, 2004
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  7. Sarevok• Gems: 23/31
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    I have a 2mbit connection with telewest, no problem so far. Never had an ISP problem before. Hey, atleast in Finland the internet is dirt cheap.
     
    Sarevok•, Oct 27, 2004
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  8. Pac man Gems: 25/31
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    You stay in the shower for 40 minutes ???

    :D
     
    Pac man, Oct 27, 2004
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  9. Register Gems: 29/31
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    I hate mine, it never lets me download in a higher speed than 650kbs/s. :D

    Yes, I was bragging, but I DO download at that rate.
     
    Register, Oct 27, 2004
    #9
  10. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Overall I've had great success with my ISPs, but I do have a couple of stories about my connection.

    Way back, when only DSL was offered in my area for broadband I upgraded my dialup connection through my dialup ISP (which I had no trouble from whatsoever) who got their DSL connections through an intermediary with SBC (the local phone company).

    Well, one day, the intermediary goes bankrupt, so I lose my DSL connection until my ISP can make a deal with SBC directly. In the meantime my ISP gives me dialup for free; nice.

    So, my ISP works out the deal, but there's some problem with SBC hooking my DSL up, so my ISP says I'll have to deal with SBC if I want my DSL connection back, otherwise they'd be happy to continue the dialup service.

    So, I call SBC to find out what the problem was, since I had my DSL service and was extremely happy with it for a couple of years trouble free. They say my house is too far away from a central office to offer DSL to me. I say how can that possibly be when I had your DSL service and was completely happy with it; my house didn't get up and move itself further away from a central office. They say, well, that's just the way it is, the tech who came out to my house to hook it up determined my house it too far away. I say, look, I don't need a tech to come out to my house to do anything because I already had the service, all you need to do is reactivate it; all the wiring is already in place. They say nope, no can do, gotta have the tech come out there, and he won't approve the service because your house is too far away. I say, look, I HAD the service and had absolutely no problems with it, I was completely happy with it, do you want to lose a happy paying customer over this nonsense? Can't you just write a note somewhere saying that I had the service already, but that the intermediary went bankrupt? They say nope, sorry, no can do, there's no way to let the tech know about any of this; he'll just refuse to allow connection due to your house being to far away.

    I went round and round with those friggen SBC people for over half an hour and got nowhere. So they (and that ISP unfortunately) lost my $50 dollar a month business, for which I was very happy to pay them.

    So, I switch to a cable connection. The cable people come out and hook me up, but it's a no go. The cable guy swaps modems and checks all the signal strengths inside and outside the house; everything checks out OK. So he can't do anything; the cable company needs to handle the problem from their end. They let me know later that they've handled the problem, yet it's still a no go. They of course try to blame my end, I say no, no the guy checked everything here and even swapped out the modem already, it's on your end. They say, no it's not our end, we'll send a guy out. So I take another day off work and the guy swaps out the modem again and checks everything again, still no go. He says it must be at the other end (like I already told them) and writes it up and leaves. They let me know again that they've fixed it, but of course it's still a no go. They try to tell me AGAIN that it's on my end. I say, there is no way in hell I'm taking another day off work because you can't get your act together over there. I've already had three modems, and your guys have checked all the wiring and signal strengths twice; I'm telling you it's NOT MY END. Finally, after a couple of days they fix the problem ON THEIR END, and I've had pretty much trouble free service (there was a bit of a problem when my local cable company took over the internet services from the defunct @Home network, but it was just growing pains) ever since.

    Hard to believe how much incompetence there is out there in big companies.

    [ October 27, 2004, 21:21: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]
     
    Blackthorne TA, Oct 27, 2004
    #10
  11. joacqin

    joacqin Confused Jerk Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    At the moment my connection is working quite good, it is rather slow but I dont mind that much. In the beginning the problems were severe though, it stopped working every other week and a bunch of problems.

    They did something to annoy me now though, they added a 2$ billing charge on the most recent bill. Not much money but exceedingly annoying. All so that we wont take a piece of paper from them each month and use auto giro or electronic billing instead. A-holes.
     
    joacqin, Oct 27, 2004
    #11
  12. Barmy Army

    Barmy Army Simple mind, simple pleasures... Adored Veteran

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    Mine is ok. I use Pipex. Had no real problems.

    I sometimes get randomly cut off, for reasons beknown only to them. But overall, I'm pretty happy.
     
    Barmy Army, Oct 27, 2004
    #12
  13. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    I have Qwest DSL with MSN Premium...No problems ever!

    Well, there was this one time when I wasn't able to connect to the net, but then I remembered that I pulled my network cable out the night before...does that count? :rolling:
     
    Kitrax, Oct 27, 2004
    #13

  14. Rednik Gems: 21/31
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    I like my Verizon DSL. Max download rates never exceed 500kb/ps but it's quite solid.
     
    Rednik, Oct 28, 2004
    #14
  15. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I submitted a request for a fixed IP for my ADSL a couple of weeks ago, and once I got it, all my problems with the seemingly random disconnects (besides the more or less regular 24-hour ones) stopped. So now I'm quite happy. I wasn't as happy before since I usually had to crawl under the desk to reset the modem, and play around with the router before I could get the connection established again if it didn't reconnect by itself.

    The speed is hardly anything stellar, and I definitely could use more of it (especially when I'm backing up SP, which takes several hours to download), but I haven't decided yet if I want to pay more for the boost in speed... Most of the time, it's good enough.
     
    Taluntain, Oct 28, 2004
    #15
  16. Ziad

    Ziad I speak in rebuses Veteran

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    Chev, your complaints stem from a very single fact: your expectations are too high.

    Take my ISP for example. It's dial-up. 33 Kbps. When your connections is THAT slow, you adjust your expectations according, you simply learn to accept things, and are happy when you CAN connect at all :)
     
    Ziad, Oct 28, 2004
    #16
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