So, I get a phone call from a home worker that her broadband is down. Internet Explorer is showing its usual unhelpful error message. She asks if I can login and sort it out. Once I have explained that I will need a working broadband at her end to be able to login, I suggest she speak to her service provider. I won’t mention any names but they have planes and balloons and space ships.
So the support guy says they have done the checks and the broadband line is good, it must be your router. The lady calls me back and tells me the good news, so can you access my router now as they say the line is good and it should be working. No I say, I still need your router connected to the internet, you need to speak to them and get them to confirm your username and password as something appears to have gone wrong with the connection.
She speaks to support again and they suggest she resets her router and re enters the account details, so thats what she did, she reset the router as requested, then asks the support guy, ok, now how do I re enter my details into the router, sorry madam came the reply, because we did not supply that router I cannot help you.
So there you go, the support guy gets her to reset the router and walks away, brilliant. Now back on the phone she is stuck. So what next you may ask.
Well she has a very understanding neighbour who allows her to use his broadband connection if her’s is down, so I suggest she uses that so I can get access to her laptop. Using a bit of remote access software I am able to access her machine, I ask her to connect her router to the laptop as well, via an ethernet cable, is it the blue one she asked!. I am 70 miles away from the cable in question, just in case you the reader hadn’t realised.
I gain access to the router enter her username and password as confirmed by the provider, although they did not confirm the case of the password, so had a bit of trial and error, but still no luck, then I check the ADSL VPI/VCI settings and they are incorrect. I change the values and boom we are connected to the internet.
Scripted broadband support is appalling, any deviation from their standard and they are stuck, and asking someone to reset their router without then staying around to help reconfigure it is a joke. Sometimes I just have to laugh otherwise I would go mad.
