ADSL Odyssey
Jul 7 2004
A company I refuse to call other than yellow bastards ruined my day again.
I have been using ADSL quite happily since 2003 using Czech On Line as my ISP. As all other providers they have to use phonelines provided by the yellow bastards. The phoneline in my flat was still set up on my dad’s name. My parents moved away long time ago, but I’ve been paying the bills in my dads name, because of all the paperwork involved. But I finally made the mistake to undergo the change and be Jakub Steiner and not Jiri Steiner. Everything went pretty smoothly except the phone. I had to cancel ADSL. Then they switched it.
And since I wanted to see if other ISPs have better latency so I could enjoy the best game ever as well, I wanted to switch ISP along. No problemo.
I woke up into a beautiful day today and started to do some work, since being off-line does help the productivity.
Then I received a phonecall from my new ISP, that they have activated my account and I should be getting my info by snail mail and email. So I grabbed my large amount of spam over a modem connection and got the info (in about an hour).
I wasn’t however able to connect and the modem looked very unhappy, blinking the modem sync LED. I didn’t know much what the problem was, but gave the helpline a shot. Not only was the lady on the other side nice, she was also very clueful and asked the right questions to get me explain my situation and eventually hit the nail on the head explaining that my ADSL modem is ANNEX A, and the yellow bastards changed my phoneline to ANNEX B when I switched. If I knew this that I’d never have done that and ramined Jiri Steiner in face of the yellow bastards, power & gas providers.
But the oddyssey was far from ending. I tried phoning their free line 800 123456, but after about 20 minutes listening to ads, typing through menus and listening to a cheesiest of tunes I jumped to a car and drove to town to a Telepoint shop. Who the hell needs a free phoneline when it’s all jammed up? I don’t mind paying, just give me a bloody technician in the town where I live. Why the hell does everything need to be governed from Prague??
In the shop there was a man, in a mental state that I was going to hit in in about an hour. Totally pissed off at a company who behaves worse than SCO and Microsoft together. I felt sorry for the man. I approached the woman at the counter who I tried to explain the situation and to which she repied that a) she doesn’t know a heck what I say and b) it’s ISP’s fault. If the ISP’s didn’t have to rely on their stupid monopolistic lines, there would be no hot potato situation in the first place. However she suggested phoning the support, and didn’t quite believe me I cannot get through. After about 30 minutes she did manage to hook up with a technician.
I spoke to a man, who surely must have made a mistake when applying for a job. He was nice and clueful. He said it’s absolutely a matter of seconds to change from ANNEX B to ANNEX A so that I didn’t have to throw away my modem. However he needed me to phone in from my home phone #. I made the mistake not to get his name and direct number.
When I got home, and after about 20 minutes waiting I did get though, explained everything again and got a “please hold”. After about 5 minutes I got a “no we cannot do that, we only do ANNEX A to ANNEX B”. Yes that makes your modem fucking useless because of us greedy bastards I know. She didn’t forget to offer me the latest and greatest USB modems that only work on Windows, thanks very bloody much.
I went desperately seeking for a place I could buy the ANNEX B ethernet modem. Of course everywhere was closed or had only the USB models. So I ended up buying overpriced one in the yellow hell outlet. How depressing.
Then I came back to find it doesn’t authenticate with the info provided by my ISP. So I gave them a call and they knew exactly whathe problem was. Yellow bastards again. So I was told to hold on and they would help me set it up, once they stop messing around with it. I went to pick up Iva and when I got back, I had a missed call, so I tried to connect and voila! Got my 1Mbps ADSL working just fine, using a modem I got from a company I hate, but have to use their services.
Oh and everyone having my cell nuber, you can delete it now, since I’m switching to an operator that isn’t owned by the yellow bastards.