In this case it was an voice-over-IP service provider that themselves discovered in their logs that I was using asterisk.

Perhaps your real problem is that the first line scripts are not good enough. Apart from “frobnitz”, how would you change them?

I tried to get another DSL provider, but they are locked out of this area somehow (even though I don’t understand it all.) No cable provider here, so it is Verizon or dial-up.

I discovered by talking to telco people that Verizon will never let you talk to a technician, but if you pay more per month you can get a better phone monkey. That is just the way it is. I also discovered that the phone monkeys can only escalate two complaints out of their office, “connection slow,” or “connection down.” Last time I called I cut them off right when they started the script, by saying “No, we are not doing that. I know my basic DSL troubleshooting, and my connection is down. I want you to tell me that you have logged this and are escalating it.” To this the reply was “yes, sir,” and the connection was up in two hours.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/customer_service

• You reply “What’s that?” they move to “Have you turned it off and on aga…” in the tree, or

• You reply “192.168.2.1″ they move straight to the “Can you ping …” part of the ‘dialogue’ tree, or

• You reply with “Which one, my local router address, my dsl address, or the address of your shit dns server?” they throw away the script and start up a conversation.

At this point tier 1 chap usually crumbles, puts me on hold, talks to manager and puts me through to someone else, who almost always asks me put put them back on to the client, who is told a new cable modem is on its way.

Fight the script by pre-empting it seems to be the answer AFAICS.

Another factor in ADSL pricing Simon didn’t mention is the widespread use of traffic shaping/DPI to manage traffic down. We don’t do that.

Brandon (Bogons)

One of the key drivers we find drives cost up for tech-friendly ISPs such as ourselves is that tech-savvy users also tend to be heavy bandwidth users. If you look at the likes of BT, for every 1 heavy user, they’ve probably got 50-100 other users that barely use their broadband at all. That averages out the costs really well, which is why they can drop their prices so low.

Almost every ISP works on the basis of hoping that people don’t heavily use their broadband service. One exception to this is AAISP as mentioned in one of the other comments. If you look at their charging structure, you soon get a feel for what it costs to run a ADSL service – particularly if you’re dependent on BT Wholesale to provide your ADSL tails.

Without trying to promote ourselves, I will point out that the costs on the front page of our website (as you mention in the podcast) are for exchanges where we can only offer BT. Where we are able to offer LLU based DSL, our prices suddenly become a lot more competitive.

Another big problem is that pretty much every wholesale DSL provider also has a consumer retail product on the same platform. They don’t really want to undercut their own product, so it’s not uncommon to see wholesale pricing the same as, or even more than, their own retail pricing.

Simon (Bogons)

Best thing would be for the ISP to include a copy of their script in your welcome pack so that you can walk through the steps before you sit for 30 minutes on hold…

Anyway their tech support was always rather not dumb, but if you dialed in and told them the magic word – which incidently is “I’m using Linux” – you immediately get someone very smart to talk with (relatively to ISP tech support obviously).

So why am I describing Actcom in a past sense? because they were never very big but they had a following in the tech community which probably appealed to commercial entities (educated people with disposabe income, etc.) and in the last round of consolidaions in the Israeli telecom market they were bought and absorbed by one of the larger, most annoying and clueless service provider.

That is probably the main problem with a clueless ISP – they can’t compete with the larger ISPs on the Average Joe market (not without dumbing down considerably) and they can’t survive independently.

Its a couple of years ago now but I had the situation whit a large UK ISP that when I said I was using Linux they said that was not supported and they couldn’t fix the problem with their network until I connected a windows PC directly to the modem.

I phoned back and just lied to them till they accepted the fault.

Ok, so cable rarely fails. But when it does, what kind of response can you expect? The last time I had to call comcast, it was obviously an area wide outage. So what does the phone monkey do? They schedule a dispatch to my house with the stern warning that if it is my fault, I could be charged. I patiently explained that it was an outage in the neighborhood or more, and I half expected the support person to start asking me for my neighbors’ names and phone numbers so he could schedule dispatches to all of their houses…

That said, I think an ISP catering to tech-savvy people is a great idea. It would be nice not to have to start conversations with the support line by saying “I am a sysadmin/security engineer/network engineer/etc” and still having them walk me through basic troubleshooting that I did before calling them…

As a technical user I do feel the frustration when contacting support but I would rather the network was monitored more closely and problems fixed without my assistance.

Could the next generation of cable/DSL modems have GSM/HDPA modems built in to 1) immediately report outages – so if they are at a street/exchange level an engineer can be sent out to fix it. 2) provide (a slow) backup service As ISPs want to be in the triple/quad play market then they probably already have good relations with mobile telcos – they pay for the data because it is their fault that the main service has failed.

Just because you’re a wizzkid when it comes to computers doesn’t mean you know anything about networks. If you really want to get past first tier as quick as possible, answer their questions quickly and clearly, and be polite! Within a couple of minutes, you’ll be where you need to be.

Without a doubt, though, you’ll get the best service via email. It gives people a chance to look into things and not worry whether your call has been going on too long.

Don’t use the telephone support.

Basically, those who know how to diagnose the fault (be it sync, common PVC errors, PPP screwups or whatever) will find the root cause of the error and drop someone an email with as much relevant technical information they can cram in, with a suggested solution. Phone support just sucks – you can’t get through in one “magic” word that you know what you’re talking about, because some management executive is going to find out about the practice and use it themselves – and go insane when people get pissed off with him because they’ve bypassed the levels of cannon-fodder they’d built up in the Tier-1 support.

Having said all that, in my opinion the most clueful ISP I’ve seen are Andrews and Arnold (aaisp.net.uk) and if you take a Be line rather than a BT, you’re able to play with the remote side settings yourself. The staff are very knowledgeable, and process information quickly, concisely, and speak to you like a human being rather than a featureless blob on the end of the line.

I use Virgin Media myself, never had a problem – but I tend not to use it that much because I’m quite happy sitting on a 1Gbit stub at the office, and downloading my evil iTunes movie rentals at jiggabytes a second. Mwah hah hah.

Seriously though – if you have trouble with an ISP, it’s almost certainly not their fault, it’ll be a fault with BT’s network, or a temporary hickup on the ISP’s end. These are usually few and far between. Stick it out. Or pay hundreds of pounds a month for a leased line

Now If I need to call up I have to lie and say I am running windows, go through all of their stupid checks to see if the problem is in my computer before they will pass it up the line and accept that their network has a problem.

With regards to ISP’s, I am with Tiscali who i have only had the misfortune of calling once, and very nearly voted with my feet. But then I realised that they haven’t been taking my Diret Debit, hence free internets which have only gone down once in 2 years. I call that #win.