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Sorry, but to resolve this, I need a physical presence here and you live on the other side of the globe

Background: About 12 years ago, I was the director of a very small local genealogical non-profit that was a satellite location to a very large genealogical non-profit. I volunteered 2 evenings a week while working a day job, so my time was limited. In my position as volunteer director I also did all the IT work as I am quite computer savvy. I am also female and older.

In our little non-profit we had 5 WinXP computers and our local “ma bell” phone company provided the internet via business DSL internet account for about 35-40 Mbps. At the time, that was considered pretty good speed.

Unfortunately, we rarely got that speed. It was especially bad whenever we were using more than 2 computers at the same time. I assumed the issues were our computers or the Cisco firewall and I frequently called our “corporate” IT department who accessed our main computer remotely with attempts to resolve the issue and always doing the same things over without changing the results. I became quite familiar with the various procedures such as deleting browser cookies and history, defragmenting hard drives, clean up the hard drives, rebooting the computers, the Cisco firewall, the router, etc.)

I also called the phone company several times and after one long frustrating week over the holidays of me spending about 20 hours trouble shooting and nagging anyone and everyone who could possibley help, the phone company finally sent somebody out to check their wiring and connections. The man who came out stated that everything was fine on their end. But there was no change in the internet speed.

Several months go by and I finally have a bit more time and a lot more drive and I go out and purchase and replace the router, bypass the Cisco firewall, and use my laptop. I’ve changed everything, including cables. The only thing I have not changed out is the phone company’s own wiring. No change in the internet speed.

I call the phone company customer service again and get someone from India with an “American” name. And again, I explain the problem. And again, I grant computer remote access and watch as this customer service representative do everything that’s been done multiple times before. I had explained everything that had been done. But I’m an older woman and therefore, can’t possibly know anything about computers, right?

And then I politely but firmly demand that the issue be escalated and that a phone company lineman come out to check the phone lines in person. (This phone company provided our home landline service and those telephone wires’ connections between the substation and the homes do corrode and go bad over time and need to be fixed. I assumed that this was a possibility in this other situation.) There was no way this wonderfully helpful man in India could help us. Hence, the escalation. The poor man did everything in his power to explain that he could solve my problem and kept on trying to convince me for about 15 minutes. But no. He finally relented and the phone call was escalated.

To a woman in Canada. Who immediately understood my problem when I explained everything the first time. No mansplaining here!

Within a few days, the phone company sent an experienced repairman out who found and fixed the problem in very little time.

It turned out that the original installation of the service where it entered the building had been done incorrectly. The repairman who had been sent to check the service several months prior to this final visit was new, on his second day on the job and didn’t recognized that the original installation was not correct. There’s no way that the Indian customer service representative could help. I did feel just a little bit bad for him since he so desperately wanted to help. And he actually thought he could!

submitted by /u/makemusic25
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