The customer is always wrong
October 15, 2006
Here I was, travelling back to Oslo after a weekend on the coast and suddenly my internet connection started to work again, after a frustrating weekend of constantly abrupted or no connection. The lousy connection in that particular area contradicted my previous experiences, so while stuck in that area and unable to get online, I gave my mobile broadband provider, Netcom, a call to check: no, no, no problem on their side, it had to be my broadband card that had gone haywire, so I had to take the card to service.
Funny that, how it's always the hardware that's to blame, never Netcom, whenever my internet connection doesn't work. Of course it could be my mobile broadband card that is inclined to get regular breakdowns every day around 9am, in certain parts of Norway, and at some weekends, often those with bad weather. But then, after telling me some six months ago that my broadband card was one of the newest on the market, back when the company didn't have any direct technical support for their mobile broadband, the story now that they do have technical support, at least during office hours (hey, who in their right mind would work outside of those anyway), is that my mobile broadband is too old, but they can cut me a great deal on a new one – which incidentally will bind me to another 12month contract (and here I was wondering how to get out of my current 12month fix). Of course, this being weekend, I didn't even get through to technical support when I called Netcom today, just general 'customer service'. As the only possible solution that was offered on their end was the possibility that the problems were caused by my hardware I asked how come it was that whenever I call them the answer is always that problems are never their fault, but implicitly the customer's? The answer? Well, it's only me having these sort of problems, none of their other customers complain, which must be why it's so hard to get through to their techies...
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