After a monumental fuck-around by Telstra, I have an internet connection. Whilst I was being fucked around the domain expired so you all saw that pretty page. Here’s a little rant I wrote when I didn’t have any internet:
On the 10th March, this year, I phoned up Adam Internet and signed up with them, and then gave TPG the required 4-weeks notification that I wanted to disconnect from them, which I thought was bullshit, but it needed to be done so I could get better internet speed: 24mbits from Adam compared with the 1.5mbits from TPG. So the 10th April rolled around nice and quickly, and kind of snuck up on me. I was under the impression that I cancelled it for the 11th and not the 10th. I only realised this when my internet was disconnected at about 8:45am on the 10th. Within minutes (or seconds?) I was bored out of my fucking mind. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't google how to make Ruby and MYOB play nicely, I couldn't even go to whitepages.com.au to look up the number for GameTraders. Fantastic. Then I remembered that, usually, when ISPs set up new connections for you that they send you out a router. Adam didn't do, and still hasn't done, this. I paid for the router ($199.95) so in legal terms I do believe that makes it mine, regardless of what they told me next when I phoned them on the Friday (11th). After a 10 minute wait on the phone listening to their awesome soundtrack selection and all the hyped up paid-to-tell-you-how-awesome-Adam-supposedly-is telling me how awesome Adam supposedly is, I get answered by a real person, Jarred. He tells me that "there are still codes on your line" and that "we don't send out routers until we make sure the connection works, so we don't have to chase up our routers". I'm drawn into a stupor. I ask him when the connection will be up and he tells me "5-10 business days from the day the codes are removed from your line". I paid for the router, it should've arrived a few days after I had paid for it, that is if I'm not mistaken about how the whole buying things over the internet works. I thank him for his time, hang up and get a little frustrated as I'm sure most of you would too, realising you had no internet for the next 5, possibly 10, business days. The internet is where I work, and without the internet I don't get any money because I simply cannot do a large portion of my work without it. On Monday I phoned up JustComputing to organise a server for SA Window Cleaning, the client that I'm currently working for. I give them the specifications and tell them that there's no rush on it. It was ready on Wednesday, and that's a good thing. It took them 2 days to source the parts, build the box, install Windows XP on it (I'll be removing this) and get me to come and pick it up. Now tell me why it takes a Goliath-sized organisation 9 days to move a cable from one box to another, which is probably all it takes in regards to my internet connection, yet a small 5-man computer store can make a new computer for me in two days. This is the strangeness of time, and I have a theory about it. The larger the company, the longer it takes for something to get done. Let's use Telstra as an example. They have the money, manpower and equipment to do a lot of things that they simply haven't done because they couldn't care less, and it is not critical to their survival in order to do these things. One of them is to roll out decent broadband (at least 256k) to the people living in the hills, such as my friend Joe who is still on dialup, in 2008. It's not critical to Telstra's survival to do this. It's also due to the levels of bureaucracy that a thing-to-do needs to go through. In Telstra you'll have the callcenter minion, and then his boss, her boss, his boss... and so on. Now lets take a small operation like JustComputing, where every customer is critical to their survival. They will get things done because if they don't get things done it means they don't get any money. They get things done quickly, efficiently and without fucking you around with bullshit excuses like "there are codes on your line". In JustComputing, if something needs approval there's one level of bureaucracy to go through, and that's just the one boss. Everyone reports to the same guy and most of the guys can operate independently of him. I don't know where or when a big business crosses this line of no longer caring, but it's crap. You should treat everyone equally, from your employees, right down to their minions and then the customers, the critical part of your business. Making them wait on the phone is only going to piss them off. They will not be reasonable when you pick up the phone. Do you have long wait times for your customers? Hire more people. The more customers walking out of your store with a smile on their face and nothing in their wallet means more in your wallet and a bigger smile on your face at the end of the day, partly due to you not having to deal with stressed out customers. Treat your last customer like you treated your first, and you'll succeed.
Whilst not having the internet for 12 days, I wrote some more of a tutorial, worked on SA Window Cleaning (mentioned above, and now at the point where I’m ready to give it to them) and got really, really, really good at Guitar Hero.
Oh, and the router still hasn’t arrived.