Problems with Earthlinks PPP access

[Jason]

I wanted to see what would happen when I pushed "4 - for other
operating systems".

When they finally answered the phone, they asked if I had Windows 3.1,
95, 98, or ME. I told them I had Windows 95 (I do, honest. The CD is
somewhere in the closet. Swear to god. No one asked if I had it
installed on anything.), but that I was using a linux system to debug
EXACTLY what had gone wrong, and that their machine wasnt
authenticating because the IP it claimed to have was invalid
(0.0.0.0).

So the windows tech who answered the phone took down notes and passed
them along (I hope?).

Anyways, the point of this reply is that I imagine there really wasnt
a tech there as speculated, and that finally one of the windows guys
got sick and tired of hearing the little chirp reminder that someone
is on hold, and took the call anyways. Surely there are unix-literate
techs on the day staff somewhere, since they are an ISP... 

> \_ Hopefully the machine I connected and logged into will
> \_ be in their logs, and they can figure out what is wrong with that
> \_ sucker.
> 
> Which sucker?  The machine?  Or the one that sat on hold for more than
> an hour?
> 
> FWIW, as I understand call centers, the 15minutes is probably the
> average time to bail.  With you sitting up in the queue, you ran the
> accursed hotboard into an hour for them.
> 
> I'd also be somewhat suspicious that there auto answerer has times
> like
> 
> 30 seconds
> 1 minute
> 2 minutes
> 5 minutes
> 10 minutes
> 15 minutes
> ---oh darn, only 6 slots for times, guess we won't scare the customer
> more with how long the wait *really* is.



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