Okay, so last night, I’m at one of my clients getting them set up with static IP addresses on their DSL account. Dynamic address configuration worked just fine, but they needed to have a static IP address on their server, as their software vendor periodically connects to the server to make sure their software is properly patched, etc. So, going forward, I went there last night to get this going. I ran into problems getting the DSL to connect to to “the net”. Here is a snippet of what I went through on the phone last night:
After telling the first technician that I couldn’t ping either of their DNS servers, by IP address, from a command line, he asked: “Did you delete your cookies and your Temporary Internet Files?” I told him that command line troubleshooting had nothing to do with the browser and that I was offended and needed to be transferred to someone who could actually answer my questions. “Transferring you to a level 2 technician, sorry for the inconvenience.”
Okay, so this “level 2” technician gets on the phone, and the first thing he asked me sent me into a frenzy. He asked: “Which model router did SBC Yahoo! send you?” I asked him if he had that information in front of him from the transferring technician. He said he did. So I asked him why he bothered asking me and he apologized. I told him that I felt no confidence that he was going to be able to help me with my connectivity problems. He said, “Piece of cake!” BEH! This guy sucked, too. We walked around in circles for about 45 minutes. Nothing good came out of it. We even called the person who emailed my client their IP address information and left him a message. My “level 2” technician even asked me a few scripted questions about browsers, which I quickly called him out on. He apologized. Again, I told this guy I was offended and that we should be beyond the scripted questions that he learned in training at this point. No luck. He offered a technician to make a visit. I passed. I don’t think that would help. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope not.