Thursday, April 5, 2018

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Hello and welcome back.... So, after 4 months, i finally got my internet back to normal (for now)

Just after Christmas, we had a large thunder storm and just as i reached to turn off the modem , a large bolt of lightning struck just over the other side of the hill.

This instantly shunted the internet off and when it finally reboots, my internet is now crap. Slow speeds and constant dropouts, i'm talking around 25 dropouts a day.

At first i thought the modem had crapped itself it, so i replaced the modem, still the same problem so that ruled out the modem.

And so i turned to my trusty internet provider... Telstra

The thing that started to get on my nerves is that everytime you ring Telstra, you end up talking to someone new who goes through the motions of detecting the fact that yes, your internet is rubbish. (about an hour each time)

Then you get a technician to come out and straight away, they are in your house and testing various things. Some are really good and seem to know what they are talking about, others are arrogant and at times plain rude.

All up, i ended up with 7 technicians rocking up to my premises. One guy, after checking various ports in the house, wiring, changing modems, worked out that the problem lied further up the road.

Another came into my house, said that the problem was a filter i had on the phone, then proceeded to basically call me a liar when i pointed out that there was still a problem after changing it and it was still dropping.
He then press a button in his van as he drove off saying 'Problem solved" and charged me $145 for the call out which shows up on your next bill.
But the problem was not fixed, far from it.

Everytime the phone rang, the internet would also drop.

PROBLEM No1
The phone line and the internet line are 2 different divisions of Telstra.

The first mistake I was making was ringing a Telstra number and thinking one number can do everthing. I was ringing Telstra, telling them the problem over and over and they would send out a technician...for the phone line.. NOT THE INTERNET LINE.

But you see, the phone line and the internet line is the same right?

NO. its not

Finally after my 15th call to Telstra, a lovely lady from Malaysia worked out that the visits from the technicians were to check the phone line only, (normal call out is about 30mins at the premises). A Internet technician can take around 45 - 1 hour at the premises because more is involved.

I also found that Internet Technicians seem to know a bit more.

As it turns out the problem was up around the corner.

All along, i was saying to the people on the phone, "I Think The Problem Is In The Line Somewhere up The Road" but do they listen...No.

I was close to rewiring the whole house thinking something had gone wrong.

So, after 4 months, my internet is back to normal, but seriously, it should not take so long.

Why cant Telstra keep a list of what is happening at a premises. I eventually had to make a 'Formal Complaint" so that one person would handle the case and know what was happening (Case Manager)
but, I shouldn't have to.

I am still on ADSL and get the feeling that Telstra didn't seem to want to fix the problem because NBN will be rolled out in my area shortly.

Must say, Im not impressed, just the way you get treated. Im not stupid, i do know abit about how the Internet of things work and how to read a modem log which was displaying errors in the millions.

When the internet works ok, it works ok but when it runs into problems, you will need the patience of a saint to deal with the crap that you face from your service provider

End Of Rant



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