Molotov

So my ISP is TPG (I know some people will cringe at that, but out here in rural NSW it's actually pretty good service - higher ping than when I was with iiNet in Perth but just as reliable).
TPG has a habit of changing the pricings on their plans and not notifying anyone.
I am on Plan X (speed Y, limit Z) @ 59.95 a month.
I check their website and see that Plan X (speed Y, limit Z) is listed as 49.95 a month.
I log in to the website check my plan, and yes it's the same I'm just paying $10 a month more for it. I'm pissed off at this stage and go to change it to ensure we're not getting ripped off.
I check their Ts&Cs and see that an upgrade is free, a downgrade costs money ... I'm not changing the plan at all so I assume it costs nothing.
Then I get an invoice for $59 change of contract.
Their customer service department tells me that changing to a lower access fee plan is a downgrade despite the fact it is the same speed, the same plan name and the same download cap.
(What bugs me more is that ADSL2+ customers get 1 free change per 6 months, but because in the sticks we can only get ADSL apparently we have to pay).

So I did the mature thing, swore at the customer service rep when she wouldn't put me on to her supervisor and called the Telecommunications Ombudsman.
Hopefully i won't have to pay.
More importantly hopefully my internet won't get disconnected, if it does you know why.

Fuck em, being frank.... ombudsman will deal with it.

Now im glad i left those pricks for internode......

lol swearing at them is just ammo they need to tell you to sod off, when the ombudsman investigates the issue they will check your records and will find you to be "rude, aggressive, verbal abuse and difficult to deal with, in addtion, you terminated the call"

I feel for you man coz it sounds like you got ripped of, but it looks like you shot yourself in the foot somewhat.

Hopefully TPG cant be assed dealing with ombudsman for $10 per month contract/issue and will just write it off and give you your money back.

Fuck i hate call centres & customer service ._.

And I win. I got the $59 change of plan fee revoked but not back-credit for the months I'd been paying the $10 extra. Still it's better than nothing. Terrible customer service; might have to look into swapping ISPs before Cata launches.

Support/CS is never fun to deal with because the first port of call is getting past the dime a dozen pool known as first line support that know more about facebook than how a machine and the infrastructure it uses works.

My favourite is still trying to phone up bigpond to warn them that their DNS servers had lost contact with authoritive servers overseas (Could nslookup anything in Aus, but that was it). Was meant to be a polite call but he insisted to go through the script and so he got answers he really wasn't prepared to handle

Sadly, it's not just ISPs that are like this. I've trained many a helpdesk support staff in their own software because the crap they were spewing simply wasn't correct if you had spent any decent time with the products. My favourite there was being told quite firmly that Oracle needed to use Windows authentication to function...

Yeah, I'm going to stop before I pop a fuse.

At the company I used to work for, I was the only schmuck in charge of in-house web development, including our database containing employee and client info.

It was deemed "too dangerous" to allow a developer to have unfettered access to the live DB though, so whenever I needed to make changes, I had to call/submit a ticket to IT services to make the DB changes.

Until the one guy who knew how to work with that database was promoted up to development.

From then on, every time I needed to make a change, ITS would send a monkey up to log me into the database, where I would make the changes and he would then log out.

/sigh

Another great moment in tech support was when our communications and electrical engineer housemate phoned up iiNet to talk to them about the connection from our house to the exchange - it went much as Midi described for his, right up until the point where the kid on the other end realised he really should just handball this call onto someone who could understand and do something about it. Bam! Results. Took Blake about 5 seconds to explain what was wrong and we had net back in under 24 hours.