In the middle of searching yesterday the web went dead!
I thought I had gone over the MB allowance or some such, so I left it till today to check. Almost all day with no web! Had I not been watching the Arsenal game last night I may have started seeing spiders!
This morning it was still dead so I called the Pipex hotline, followed the instructions of the voice, chose the appropriate number, chose the next appropriate number and waited.
The cheery voice apologised and explained "... All our operators are busy and will be with you in a minute. Your call is important to us, please hold on" She forgot to add that at 5p a minute I knew how important 'holding on' actually was to Pipex. Music played, she came back, "We apologise for keeping you waiting, an operator will be with you shortly." She then added in a sickeningly cheery voice, "You are progressing in the queue. There are more than 9 people in front of you," as if this was encouraging!
Music (stolen from some bad 'new age' album) and she returned with her message, again and again - and again, "There are more than 9 people in front of you." I wonder if she heard me point out that I know! And I also know that if I am progressing HOW COME THERE ARE STILL MORE THAN 9 PEOPLE IN FRONT OF ME?" I hope she did not hear my comments when she returned for the fortieth time.....
I called at just after 8 am. I was answered, after she had informed me, eventually, that I was "7th in the queue" then "4th," then "2nd," as if I was meant to prepare myself to shout at the man awaiting me.
I did! He answered at 8:50!
Poor man must have started his day with caller after caller asking "WHY?" The reason "Why?" he claimedwas a flood in exchange which had halted all the servers. Then, somewhat sheepishly, and with his head under the desk, he added "They say it may take three or four days to fix."
"WHAT????????????"
I could die in that time without the web!
However the yelling down the phone from so many folk has worked and it has come on a short while ago. I am relieved. Have you any idea what it means to live without internet access? It is an impossibility today!
However it was indeed a problem with flooding. Most ISPs were affected by the flood and BT engineers worked very hard to restore the exchange as quickly as they did. A huge area must have been effected, and one mate has been without a phone for over a day and a half because of this. I was quite lucky. I was also lucky the nice doctor gave me pills to stop my heart fluttering and smelling salts for when the shock of losing the web returns.
6 comments:
What did we do in the days before t'interweb...?
Graham its actually a good job you don't live here, I sort of consider myself lucky if the Internet is actually working.
I long ago gave up phoning customer service in Bangkok- the recorded messages on the English language line are however quite funny-if you weren't waiting for an answer that is.
BTW its 5Baht(10p) a minute here to listen to even worse music!
Graham I panic if my internet slows down let alone packs up. I've been lucky in that my provider has so far kept things going to give me my daily dose of blogs, sport and news. Three to four days would leave me with one hell of a bar bill.
I know what you mean and how you feel. I was without for a couple days when some dolt construction digger dug through an optical cable, ignoring the telephone company signs. It makes you appreciate what you have.
Here's how to tame computer voices on your phone. (At least it works here in the U.S.)...
1. If given a list of numbers to choose from, always push the "O" button instead. Sometimes a human answers and if you make a big fuss, they will patch you to tech rep on their private in-house line.
2. If it is a cutsy system that instead asks you to speak your question or name or whatever, MUMBLE. The computer girl will tell you she is sorry she didn't understand and please repeat. MUMBLE AGAIN. Say "My car is red buduh buduh". You will then hear the sound of a phone ringing and a human will answer you. Talk slowly. Try to sound helpless. Explain you are an old man and just don't understand how these new things work. She or he will help you. If she instead tries to explain to you what to do, keep saying "What? What?" over and over again. Eventually she will help you.
Even if it doesn't work, it is more fun than listening to their bad music.
Incidentally, if there is a wide outage like the one you experienced which a lot of customers are sure to be calling about, there is no excuse for them not to have a general recording telling you what happened so you don't have to wait forever. Keep this in mind when contract renewal time comes around. Unless you are a captive of the only game in town, then smile and be nice.
No internet - then what would I do? Would I have to revert to face to face conversation? Scary...
Mike S, What did we do? I canny mind that far back!
Mike, I would not appreciate a service that bad! This is not great but rarely fails.
Martyn, I have ordered Valium for the next time!
Max, Good ideas! One problem here is many are 'outsourced' to India! This means while the folk are highly intelligent, their accents do not always match ours! They also fail to understand the UK properly. Satirical comments pass them by.
Boonsong, That was my real fear, so fearful was I it was omitted from my post! Imagine having to go outside and speak to a human.....?
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