Internet/Computer palaver... it's back!

OK, now I have no internet connection of any kind at home. The BB debacle goes on with seemingly no end in sight. They gave me dial-up which worked once and still connects to the internet but goes very slow (not just dial-up slow, but 30mins to open a webpage slow), after looking at it they tell me it's something on my computer slowing it down or interferring with it and have said i must reinstall windows. I turned the firewall and virus checker off, did deep scans of the computer which came back with nothing, so what could it be? And why would it work once and not again?

Grant, Wyseyes, anyone?? I can go into the long version if anyone is having trouble sleeping [}]

Does your phone work, and are phonecalls clear and not noisy?

Oh, and when anyone but an expert says to reload windows, (especially when they can't get their own allocated task to work), ignore them.
Can you borrow a laptop or another computer and try dialup from it on your phone line? That will indicate if it is your computer or not.

Yep, the phone is fine, some background noise but certainly not like noise dial up makes...

good plan, might have to get mum over with her computer....

the guy said it must be a virus or something, but like i pointed out to him the computer was logged out and turned off in the 5 hours between the dial up working and it not working, and then he said that windows must be corrupt, sorry, internet explorer and outlook express must be corrupt and that is why they needed reloading. basically he couldn't be arsed helping me any more.

quote:Originally posted by oskatd

the guy said it must be a virus or something,...then he said that ...internet explorer and outlook express must be corrupt and that is why they needed reloading...

Yeah, it's a load of bollocks, very disappointing. Which ISP is this [?]

Another suggestion is that you take your PC somewhere else and try dial-up from there. So long as you use a residential line, there is no charge.

What is happening with your Broadband Oskatd [?]
Where did you get to with that [?]

Those were my thoughts precisely too - it's telstra, who in the past have been great. They are easy to get hold of, which is one blessing, and you get to talk to a person who has kiwi as their first language. but over the last week they have lied to me, been terribly nice, but absolutely no use....

Yes, might be easier to lug CPU to neighbours rather than get mum to come all way over with her laptop.

Arh, the BB Grant. Well, trying to summarise. On my daily chat with telstra help on Friday, I got a guy who promised me that there would be a telecom technician at my place on Saturday morning to check everything from our end. Waited til lunch time, decided to go to town (leaving hubby at home), saw telecom technician outside telecom box down road (one there almost permanently it seems). stopped to ask him if he was coming to my house on his travels, he checks with telecom, there is no fault reported. he also went on to say he lives at te puna and is 6.1km from an exchange and gets speeds of 1600 whatever it is - and that although they recommend you be less than 5km from an exchange, as long as it you are less than 7km you should be OK, although speed suffers. anyhoo, went home and rang telstra, who proceeded to tell me that i wouldn't be getting a technician at home, they don't do that, and given that i am 5.6km from exchange i shouldn't have been given BB. Now given that Telstra have been taking my $$ for BB for the last 18months, and the majority of that time it has worked well, at low speeds, but I accept that, I was a tad annoyed at this. He basically said that was it, did i want dial up - to which i said yes, being slightly desperate after a week without internet. So who knows what answer I will get on my daily call today. Frankly all I want is my BB connection back. dial up sucks the big one.

If i lived a couple more metres up the hill, I'd have line of sight for EOL and i could tell telstra what to do with their BB.....

So, what to do?? thoughts or suggestions, polite please!

I had friends who had exactly that kind of Bovine Excrement from the folks at Telstra, and so they switched ISP. He got his accounts together, figured out what he paid each month to Telstra (internet, home phone, cellphones, tolls) etc, and went and asked IHUG what they could do. They gave him a better deal, he couldn't be happier.
He moved house last week, and his home phone and broadband got to the new house before he did. No waiting 6 weeks like my last shift. (admittedly he only moved to the house next door, but he did move).

As to the "I don't want to move email addresses" argument, think about which is less hassle? - sending a short email to all your contacts saying "here is my new email address", or wallowing in the murk of Connection Failed?

I got a gmail account the other day. Was pleasantly surprised that one option was to forward every mail to another address. So I set it to send mail to my current address. If my current address changes, one change in gmail will redirect it for good. Now I will only give out my gmail address.

quote:Originally posted by oskatd

So, what to do?? thoughts or suggestions, polite please!

Are you willing to look at a move to Xnet Oskatd [?]

Last I heard, they have a waiting list for new connections until about this Wednesday 23rd Jan, but if you are interested, I will contact their Operations Manager and ensure that you get top priority given the bad run you have had with Telstra.

If you decide to go this way, there won't be any need to deal with Telstra again. Xnet will inform them that your connection has been switched and you will need to keep an eye out to make sure that Telstra stop billing you.

There is NO Connection Fee and NO Minimum Term with Xnet, so you have nothing to lose by giving them a try.

What do you think [?]

I think I will try anything, Grant, I am a loyal person, but am not prepared to be treated like an idiot and fed sh*t....

The only problem I have, is that because we are so far from the exchange I think that some people won't even consider giving me BB....

Before I make any rash decisions, will take a look at Xnet - i take it they have a website.....

PS, all our phone stuff is with telstra, will that matter?

quote:Originally posted by oskatd

Before I make any rash decisions, will take a look at Xnet - i take it they have a website.....

Details on Xnet's Broadband plans are here:

http://www.xnet.co.nz/hsi/

Regarding the phone line:

You have 3 choices:

1) Leave your phone line rental with Telstra
2) Move it back to Telecom
3) Sign up for Xnet Fusion which uses VoIP for your phone calls and no separate phone line rental at all

Given that you are so far from the exchange, option (3) might not be the best idea.

Option (2) will cost $50 to get "re-connected" to Telecom -- what a joke, you are already connected for goodness sake. Even though you pay your line rental to Telstra, it is still a Telecom line. It is so stupid of Telecom to insist on this $50 fee.

So I would recommend Option (1). This is what I did. Just left my phone line rental with Telstra and everything else goes through Xnet now.

So would my seemingly dodgy connection and distance from th exchange not count against me? I guess I need to buy a modem too...

What kind of modem? I though you already had a broadband and a dialup modem?

quote:Originally posted by oskatd

So would my seemingly dodgy connection and distance from th exchange not count against me? I guess I need to buy a modem too...

Hopefully it won't, given that you had Broadband installed and working for 18 months. If it worked for that long, why won't it work now [?]

quote:Originally posted by oskatd

If i lived a couple more metres up the hill, I'd have line of sight for EOL and i could tell telstra what to do with their BB.....

Just another thought: Why can't you put an aerial on a 2 metre high mast on the top of your house [?]

This would definitely be more reliable than wired broadband.

No one seems to know.... I said a number of times to the so called help(less) people that the only times I have ever had trouble with the connection was when it was either very wet or very dry (like it is at the moment) - our phone lines are underground, so who knows, they put a new connection thingy at the exchange, but it made no difference....