I just had to write this post!
We’ve been loyal (and well paying) customers of TPG for just over 2 years now. That’s after some 8 years of hassle free Optus Cable service. Until very recently, TPG was the model provider. We were connected within 3 days, and although we don’t get the full 24Mbps bandwidth, we do get a healthy 13Mbps. And the real reason I moved from cable to ADSL2+ was to get a static IP address and 1.5Mbps upstream.
But since I changed my plan from the $90/50GB to the $60/70GB (I know, go figure – why did I leave it so long). We’ve had nothing but problems.
Of course, for the most part, our ISP only fails when I’m not at home. This invariably involves some form of remote support, me in a cab on the mobile ph
one “No, no, I – P – THAT’S P FOR PAPA – CONFIG! NO! CONFIG” etc. you get the picture. In fact, Lu has become quite adept at network troubleshooting, and is oft heard letting the helpdesk operator know exactly what they can do with their “you have too many icons in the system tray” advice.
So tonight, yet again, our modem has green lights. The DSL connection is working, the modem is authenticated, the PPoE and IP settings are all green, but we have no access.
Phone TPG and there are “no known system outages.” The immediate next recording is “Due to the large influx of calls there are no operators to respond to you. Please call again shortly” and the line goes dead!! I mean, you get cut off!! At least with other providers they leave you listening to last years Eurovision losers on hold for 45 mins.
I actually bypassed our problems a couple of weeks ago by changing my DNS servers to http://www.opendns.org. I figured that DNS requests were not resolving. Changed the server for our network and bang! We were up again.
But alas, not tonight. Tonight I just wait patiently for the National Broadband Network and hope that not only is it quicker, but it’s reliable, and has better support.
PS I posted this by plugging in my Three 3G USB modem.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been gradually swapping accounts from TPG to Internode (four so far) for the same reason. It’s just worth it to me to pay a bit extra to be able to talk to someone (and within a reasonable time) who doesn’t treat you like an idiot.
IMHO the TPG staff I’ve spoken with often do it because they know less about their network than you do.
I went from TPG to Internode too because of their worthless customer service, but as you might recall from my recent rants, even the best-ranked ISP has its fair share of technical and service issues.
I can’t wait for the NBN either.