I want you to know I am pretty hot on computers. I want you to know I am a woman. I want you to know I am a little old lady. I want you to know not having the Internet is a serious event. But this has been the most frustrating problem I have ever encountered. My provider was simply determined it was ME and my equipment that was in error.
A few weeks ago, a salesman from our provider phoned me to say that as one of their very oldest customers, who had been with them from the beginning, they were “rewarding” me with a special offer on my account. It would cost me £30.19p monthly for all services that I already had, PLUS free 084 calls and free land line calls to overseas countries.
The new “product” (my reward for being an old, loyal customer) looks the same as any product being offered to anyone else and started on the 14th April 2013. On Thursday 18th April, my provider had a broadband outage in the UK because of a storm the night before. And I woke up with no broadband. My DSL connection was not authorised, disappeared, kapoof!, not there.
In my head, the above circumstances led to the logical assumptions that either the disappearing DSL is connected to switching to the new product or the storm, but not my equipment.
On Thursday 18th I spoke to broadband technical support in Calcutta. They patiently talked me through (for hours) the checking of my computer settings etc according to their guidelines. I knew my equipment was not faulty but, complied because I really need the broadband. I kept on pointing out it was THEM, not me at fault.
On the 19th I repeated the procedure with another technician. We removed all adaptors, extra wiring and I bought new splitters. No DSL connection. He supposedly checked the line. I then acquired one of my providers very own routers known to be working on one of their lines and installed it on my line, changing the password etc. The diagnostics said “no DSL connection” - I had removed all the telephone connections too. It HAD to be my provider or the BT exchange.
On 20th I spoke to Line faults and demanded that they do something! Someone said he had raised a ticket with BT – and I WAITED!
I have two jobs which need my presence on the Internet, I have a responsibilities to perform and I was powerless. And I am a woman. Women are assumed to know nothing about computers. And old women are assumed not even to be mouse literate.
I had been patient. I had been polite. But now I was even beyond being cross.
Not having the ability to get connected, I KNEW, was not anything to do with my equipment, but something to do with THEM, the provider or the BT exchange.
At last on the 23rd, the line was reported as having a fault and yesterday, the 24th, a whole week later, the BT engineer pulled finger and repaired the fault at the exchange.
He called in to my house (which is just around the corner) to make sure I could get online - as usual, he seemed confused that such a little old lady could know anything at all about computers.
Well - up yours. I TOLD you so!
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