How to: Deal with ISP technical support

Photo: www.gaia-tech.com

1. Don't talk like you know everything. You're obviously ringing a technical desk for support. If you knew it all, you wouldn't be phoning so don't go there – it makes you sound like an egotistic moron.
2. Don't lie. At the end of the day, technical support are there to help you fix something. If they suggest a resolution, don't lie and say you've already done it just because you don't think it will work. Remember point 1, you rang for support. This is exactly what you're getting. By lying you'll only delay a fix.
3. Explain your problem. In order to get the best possible support, you're going to need to explain the problem you're having quite well. Remember, the agent you are speaking to isn't in the house with you so they rely on your explanations to understand the issue.
4. Be nice. At the end of the day, you have called up for help. Would you honestly want to help someone who is shouting down the phone non stop, refusing to co-operate and demanding someone senior? No. You wouldn't. Don't treat the agent like crap and maybe they'll be more inclined to offer their best.
5. Use manners. Thank the agent for their help, it's nice and you might very well cheer them up and brighten their spirits after a previously difficult call (ie a customer who doesn't follow these steps).

Talking to technical support isn't brain surgery. All you need is a little common sense, some manners and a willingness to co-operate. Without these qualities you're not going to get very far. You will get your problem fixed, but it will sure as hell take a lot longer than you hoped for.

A key thing to remember is that you are speaking to another human being. A lot of people like to use the fact that they are talking over a telephone as a way to be downright rude. You wouldn't do it to someone in person, so why do it over the phone?

Also, you're not the only person who wants to speak to technical support. Don't be moaning about a queue the minute an agent picks up your call. This is how a queue works – you wait your god damn turn!

Following these simple steps will ensure you get the very best experience when phoning for support. 

Broadband help : try the test socket!

I am just about fed up of people reporting faults, and then as soon as I ask them to try in the test socket I get the following reply, "I am not touching my socket, that's an engineers job" - give me a break!

Firstly, the test socket has been implemented to save time and help both you and your ISP identify where a potential service fault may lie. By refusing to connect into the test socket, you are being uncooperative and rude. How am I supposed to help you fix your fault if you refuse to perform the basic diagnostic procedures that I ask?

Photo: www.hmmm.ip3.co.uk

The above image shows just how easy it is to access the test socket. Believe me, if it was only intended to be used by engineers then they would make it a lot harder to get into, and there would be signage all over it warning you not to touch it.

Furthermore, it is actually a BT recommended diagnostic. Do you know why? Because it eliminates your internal wiring as being at fault. If you have no fault in this test socket, but do with the faceplate connected, then your wiring is probably naff. On the contrary, if your fault still exists whilst connected to the test socket, there is a greater likelihood that the problem lies outside of your remit and requires further attention.

Do you see just how simple, yet effective, the test socket is.

Picture this scenario:

You experience a loss of dial tone. You immediately call your SP without checking the test socket, they are unable to locate a fault and so book an appointment for BT Openreach to attend in 3 days time.

3 days later, Mr BT Engineer turns up, tries the phone in the test socket and obtains dial tone. He'll be in and out within 10 minutes, and charge you for the privilege. As a result, you have been left without a dial tone for 3 days and been landed with an engineer call out charge of in excess of £115.

Now, the alternate scenario:

You experience a loss of dial tone. You take 5 measly minutes of, what you make out to be, your very busy schedule to remove 2 screws and try your phone in the test socket. You can get dial tone from the test socket.

Hey presto! you have found the fault is internal and does not require attention from BT. You have therefore saved yourself 3 days of waiting and a bill for over £115.

Which scenario would you prefer? I know which one I'd go for!

Broadband help : slow speeds

As promised, I have started writing up some DIY steps to helping your broadband connection - or at least help you understand what is going on anyway.

The majority of cases I deal with on a day to day basis, are those of slow connection speeds. Speed is a big deal with today's internet users - they want to avoid the dreaded video buffering and lengthy waits for page loading. This is all fine and dandy, your ISP should have no issues with helping improve your speeds.

However, before you ring your ISP, there are a few steps you can try yourself to ensure that the problem isn't being caused by something that you have complete control over. You can make your life so much easier by taking a little bit of time running through these checks before putting that call in to the techies - they'll ask you to go through them anyway, so save time.

Identify a pattern - if there is one

Do you only experience slower speeds at certain times of the day? If so, make a note of the times this performance reduction occurs. Please remember, however, that you are bound to experience some drop in speed during peak hours - this is an unfortunate fact that many people ignore. You are not the only person wanting to stream Eastenders from BBC iPlayer at 6.30pm on a Friday night. The internet gets congested, and you must deal with it.

A genuine pattern to make a note of, for example, would be if your performance rapidly reduces when it rains. There could be an exposed joint somewhere in BT's copper network that needs attention. Make sure you gather your evidence to prove the poor performance during this time or your ISP may shrug it off.

Check your internal setup

This is possibly the most important step you should take before contacting your ISP. I would say that in about 9/10 cases, connection problems are caused by either an incorrect setup or a piece of equipment gone bad.

I have included a rough diagram below of what an ideal home setup should look like - or at least, this is the setup you should adhere to before calling your ISP. As earlier, they will ask you to do this when you phone them so save the time and do it beforehand.

You will notice that the two setups are a little different. The NTE2000 socket already has a filter built into the faceplate. The advantage of this being you don't need to connect a micro-filter to any socket in your house. It does, however, mean your router must be connected to the NTE2000 socket - it won't work anywhere else.

On each of these sockets, you will find a line on the faceplate along with 2 screws. If you remove these screws, you will be able to pull the faceplate away from the socket - revealing the "test socket". Connecting your router into here, via a micro-filter, will bypass and therefore rule out your internal wiring causing the speed issues.

Gathering your evidence

So, you've checked your setup as outline above but your speeds are still suffering. Now is the time to contact your ISP. Don't be surprised if they don't believe you first off though, because they can "see your line is running at xMbps", whatever your speed is supposed to be.

If they say this, but your speeds are registering much lower than that, you have what we call a "throughput" problem. The only way to prove the fault is with your ISP's network, and not your PC, is to run a series of tests via the command prompt on your PC. You will need to run trace routes to see how the data is travelling across the internet. I will show you how to run these below.

Don't worry if you don't understand the results. You don't really need to. The only part you are concerned about is the time (ms) that each hop has taken. Generally speaking, any figure less than 100ms is considered highly acceptable. Most applications will not have any problem with this much latency.

In my example above, it shows that the network is operating very well and, if I was experiencing slow speeds, is not the cause of the problem.

Please be aware that these figures will be extremely higher if you are trace routing to a website or server that is in a different country - purely because the data has further to travel.

Speed tests

If your latency is consistently reading in excess of 120ms, from the 3rd hop onwards, you will seriously need to consider reporting the issue to your ISP. Run a couple of speedtests at different times of the day to make sure it isn't related to increased traffic during peak times and then give your ISP a call.

Once they have got through all the nitty gritty, request an email address to send your results into. Attach your trace routes and speed tests for reference.