| August 6, 2003 - Trouble with cable |
| Dear Friends, before I start in on my tirade about the lousy support I'm receiving from my cable company (TV and cable modem), let me just say that that movie I called "Afternoon of Jokes" was indeed an Ingmar Bergman film. According to various sources on the Internet, it was released in the U.S. under two different names: "Sawdust and Tinsel" and "A Clown's Evening". The amazing thing was, I happened to mention to a friend of mine the other day that I had seen a really odd Bergman film in Sweden and he immediately asked, "Was it 'Sawdust and Tinsel'? I absolutely love that movie!" Unfortunately, he couldn't remember why the ringmaster shot the dancing bear. Oh well! So the lousy support issue. My mother receives emails from me up to six hours later than they were sent. Her Internet service provider has spent quite some time trying to figure out what is wrong. They finally told her I should contact my service provider to see if there's anything wrong on this side. When I explained the situation to the technical support person, he said, "It can't be Fat Cat Provider's servers. We handle hundreds of thousands of emails a day without a problem. It must be either your computer or your mother's computer." So I asked him if there was anyone there he could refer the issue to who would be able to guide me through what my next step should be; you know, is there something on my computer I need to adjust, is there the possibility of a virus, whatever. His answer was, "Let me put it this way, if you were a network engineer, would you spend your time on this?" Can you believe that? I answered back that I work on a help desk supporting a software system for Big International Thingie and that we are expected to jump on any case no matter how trivial it might seem. I then thanked him for his time and told him that if I ever found out that the problem was indeed with Fat Cat Provider's servers, then I would be cancelling my service with them and going to their competitor, Offering Even More Channels provider. Needless to say, his attitude and my rapidly rising temper left me feeling the extreme opposite of fantabulous. I just hate it when people and their snotty attitudes interfere with my fantabulosity, don't you? So I came into work yesterday and asked one of our network engineers what the problem could possibly be. He said that it sounded like a DNS routing problem and that Fat Cat Provider should try sending an SMTP mail message to my mother's service provider. Fancy that! I get better advice from someone who's not paid to help me with my home computer issues than I do from the people who take my money each month! So I went to Fat Cat Provider's webpage, found their cable modem support email address and sent off a strongly worded letter asking them to do as our engineer suggested and admonishing them for their support person's attitude. Then I took that letter and cut and pasted it into the homepage's customer feedback form. If I haven't heard from them by Thursday, I'm tempted to write another email to them directing them to this entry in my fantabulous diary and telling them that I will reveal their true identity. Just because I'm fantabulous doesn't mean that I don't ever get ticked off about stuff! So you just remember that! Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |