[corin_]

Not quite the same, but I was on the phone to BT (British ISP) a couple of years ago as my internet was down yet again, and they were telling me to reboot my router. I'd already does as much diagnosing myself as possible, and completely knew rebooting my router would do nothing, but of course they wouldn't budge. I was in a pretty bad mood at them, so I said I'd put them on hold to go do it, then I went and had a bath. Twenty-five minutes later they were still on the line, and I got back and said "OK it's rebooted, still not working" and the call went on...

[jiggy2011]

Yes, I've had similar experiences with Virgin Media. Internet goes off, so I reset router and modem and check all the cables are properly connected etc.

So I login to the router admin page and sure enough it tells me it's unable to establish a WAN connection, modem lights also indicate that it's not getting a connection either.

So I call technical support hoping that they will check and tell me if there is an issue with the service in my area.

They ask me to reset modem and router, so I say "yes, tried all that" they make me do it again anyway. Ok , well that doesn't work so I ask if there is any problem in my area.

Instead they want to dig around in my computer's network/firewall settings. So I tell them the problem is that my router can't get a connection out to the WAN. Lady on the other end doesn't really know what a WAN is but I've already told her that the modem light that should be on is off.

Still they insist on going through the troubleshooting steps on my PC and can't proceed until they've done that. The only computer in my house at the time is my Ubuntu box so they insist it must be that and I have to call them back from a Windows or Mac computer.

So I call back, pretending to have a Windows computer in front of me, pretend to go through all of their steps to no avail. About 45 minutes later she gives up and checks the service status. Sure enough, there is maintenance in my area which is why my internet doesn't work.

[rmc]

Us techies like to laugh about how the idiots in tech support always ask us to do stupid things like "Turn it off and on again".

But honestly, do you know the level of computer knowledge of 90% of callers to the tech support line of residental ISPs? Requests like "is it plugged in?" or "turn it off and on again" do help lots of people who don't know about these things.

What's worse is often people think they know about computers (and actually don't), and then ring up tech support. This is why "I know computers, I know it's not that" will never work with tech support. For every person who says that & knows computers, there's people who say it and think that (say) the IP address 192.168.1.2 must be on the 2nd port on their router (because the .2 means second port, see?).

Just accept that you have to go through the motions.

[eckyptang]

Better solution: tell them you're an ex OpenReach engineer - they let you right through to second line straight away. Repeat the story until you get what you want.

[sovande]

The joke might be on you. Support calls to your ISP typically have a price per minute.

[corin_]

Luckily I'm not dumb enough to not know whether a phone call is costing me an arm and a leg :)

[eckyptang]

It's BT - they own the phone network as well so it's free.