On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Tara Sutherland wrote:

> My installer was one of the most onto it guys I have met. he arrived before
> he was due, ensured everything he did was clean and tidy and took me on a
> huge spin of the product before i signed off the install.
> these guys are busy - often depending on one strong member of the team to
> carry everyone. May I suggest that you remain onsite if someone is going to
> be working near your network - surely then you could have assisted by
> plugging your own box in - and as for using a network cable - i'm assuming
> utp at about 3.00$ per metre ... jees
>
> "hay big spender ... "
>
> pea
>

ok, lets recap then shall we ?

in the first week of febuary i shifted houses, upon ringing up telecom to
inform them that i wanted my jetstream connection shut off and a new one
established i got shunted about different departments for near on a week,
a week after i had moved into the new place (actually, not quite a week,
it was the following wednesday - i moved on the friday) i ended up ringing
CTM (corporate trouble management) which we deal with at work a lot and
asked them how the &%^$% i was supposed to get my jetstream line
disconnected - they were nice and did it for me.

the thursday/friday before i moved in i rung telecom to find out if
jetstream was available at the new place, gave them the existing number
and they checked out the line and informed me that "no its not available"
upon further enquirey it came out that they didnt actually know why so
after a 15 min phone call to telecom i persuaded them that it just *might*
be a good idea to actually tell me *why* jetstream wasnt available.

they scheduled someone to go out monday to check the line over.

on tuesday this actually happened and they got back to me telling me that
the line would need to be upgraded before jetstream could be put into the
house. I asked them if this could be organised and they said "no, first
you will need to get a phone number associated with this line" - thinking
this was rather strange i argued a little - pointing out that last time i
had had jetstream installed it was a new line and the entire job had gone
through in one hit, not as a stage by stage install she was describing to
me. the telecom worker persisted however and 30 mins later i had basicly
given up in trying to get the job sorted out sensibly and just decided to
go with what the lady was saying..

I then tried to organise a line to be connected to the house - the process
was basicly supposed to be..

a) line turned on and phone number associated with it
b) line rechecked for jetstream incase it had amazingly upgraded itself
c) line upgraded to jetstream quality
d) line rechecked incase they had screwed up part c)
e) line provisioned for jetstream

all these were to be done as totaly seperate jobs - which to me made
pretty much no sense at all.

by the following monday we had the phone switched on - at this point we
had also found out the problem with the line quality - it was a 0+2 FDM
box which was used to serve 2 lines - one to the front section and one to
the back section - however we also found that there was a second line
through to the back section that the telecom lady had'nt bothered looking
at and that was suitable for jetstream, we got this one hooked up with a
phone number associated with it and then proceeded to step b) (tho they
managed to screw up which number was to be associated with which line into
the house, but you get that i guess)

the line was checked for the jetstream service and the computer came back
saying the line was "unsuitable" yet it still passed all the tests with
flying colours - telecom claimed that they didnt know why this was and
were looking into it this entire process consumed around another week and
a half - i was getting a little impatient.

once they decided they were going to attempt to put jetstream on it anyway
they then rang me friday afternoon at 5pm to tell me i needed to fill out
the ADSL application form and return it to them on monday so they could
organise an installer to come out - i told the lady that i just wanted the
external box and that last time i had just done the "form" thing over the
phone, apparently this must have changed because i ended up with another
brick wall and a faxed form that i filled out and sent back into them (boy
was i tempted to ask them to configure it for my network under the
"additional requirements" - yes Mr Installer, i would like you to setup a
GRE tunnel to our c7200 then route our /28 through it, and while yer at it
can you please configure my solaris box for use on this network and i'd
like the ipaddress of the m10 changed to 192.168.100.254)

I was told that i would be contacted within three working days and that an
installer would be allocated to me - think this was the case ? hell no,
that would be too easy ! i rung telecom back wednesday to ask when the
installer dude was gonna contact me - they were like "oops, we must have
lost your job" great stuff telecom, so another form was sent out to me to
fill in and fax back to them - by this point i was getting rather peeved.
the job was marked as "urgent" and e-mails were sent to the installer
dudes to contact me asap.

friday came and still no contact from the installer - i rung telecom and
quoted my job reference number i had obtained on wednesday (i was getting
wise to their tricks by now :) ) and the guy from telecom rung the
installer dudes to find out what the story was - no joy, they were not at
home.

Monday - I was rung by the installer dudes *YAY!* "hi, Mr Phillips - we
can come out tommorow if thats ok with you ?". I was a little miffed that
it had taken since last wednesday for them to contact me and voiced my
displeasure - after all, the job had been marked as "urgent" but what the
heck, it had already been 4 weeks, what was another day - right ??

Tuesday afternoon i got rung by the installer dude - "Hi, I'm at the
exchange but i wont get time to go out to your house to finish off the
installation - will this be ok ?" - silly question, wtf did he expect me
to respond ? but again, whats the point in argueing - and i had an m10 at
work i could take home and would at least have the DSL connection live
that evening - i asked the installer dude if this would work and i guess
this confused him..

he started to ask me questions like "does this mean you dont want an m10?"
and "so you dont need me to install a second wall plug ?" after explaining
to him at length that yes, i still needed him to complete the install but
that i was running behind in some projects and just needed the damn
connection working i think it finally sunk in and i hung up.

i took an m10 home from work and all was happy ! yay, i finally had
jetstream after 4.5 weeks of waiting - the installer guy rang me wednesday
saying he was at the house and had installed the new jackpoint, installd
the line filter and needed me to sign the job off - i *would* have been
there but sadly i actually work and with the reliability of the installer
dudes i wasnt prepared to take a week or so off work to sit at home
waiting for someone to turn up.

i asked the guy to just leave the new m10 in the room and left EXPLICIT
instructions (i.e - repeated two to three times) to *leave the current m10
plugged in and running because i was useing the connection remotely from
work as part of a project*. This to me seemed a simple enough request, and
the guy did actually do this - the problem wasnt crossover leads (hell, i
can make my own up at work if it comes to it but already had two of them
at home) the problem was that the braindead installer dude failed to *plug
the m10 into the power socket* after he had unplugged it (god only knows
why)

personally, the entire process was a nightmare that i dont really wish to
have to go through again - and while i can accept that your installer dude
was a little more clued, i am personally peeved that i had to go through
all this crap JUST to get a jetstream line installed.

btw, telecom have since informed me that the entire lot *should* have been
done as one entire job and the original person at telecom i spoke to was
*wrong* so if any of you run into similar problems just hang up, ring back
and talk to someone else.

--
Steve.
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