Free Software Stuff

The suckage of duopoly

Warning: this is a rant. I’m pissed off and now I feel like pissing on others.

I’ve moved to a new apartment in a new city. Apart from the usual issues people encounter when embarking on such an enterprise, I was also plagued by a practically complete-loss of ‘net connectivity for a week, which only proved that I’m addicted to the Internet. I basically stared at the computer(s), not interested to even boot them, because for virtually everything I’d do with them I needed ‘net. After a few days I’ve installed some older game, and played a bit with it…
And the blame for this I lay at VIP’s feet. VIP, which is a Vodafone subsidiary in Croatia, has recently made a deal with CARNet, in which students can use VMC (edge / umts) for 50% of the normal price. They also recently introduced a new, 1GB quota deal. Since my girlfriend is a student, she used VMC (128MB quota deal), and we thought it would be ok to switch to 1GB, while we get ADSL installed in the new appartment.

So, she went to the local VIP centre, signed the needed papers and happily went home. The next day, the connection didn’t work (at all). We thought maybe they’re a bit slow switching to the new deal, and decided to wait. The day after, it didn’t work. On the fourth day, after several unsuccessfull attempts at calling the helpdesk, I went to VIP centre to ask around. After the initial shock and panic after not seeing windows, the guy at the centre told me that he can’t help me since Linux is not supported. I managed to persuade him to “just check if the configuration on their side is ok”, which he did. It wasn’t. Some confused clerk totally mistyped the data in some internal form, and screwed the connection. Ok, tough luck, but happens. The guy told me it’d be solved in under 24 hours. So I went home.

The next day, it still didn’t work. The next, again. Though, the error was a bit different now. Not wanting to visit the centre again, I was more determined to call the helpdesk. And you really need determination and plenty of time if you want to call VIP helpdesk. First, you’ve got to go listen through an epic novel telling you how much your call is important to them, where to get more info, would you please select what you want, would you please be more specific, would you please wait you will be relayed, again slowly informed that you’re being relayed, then waited for someone to answer while listening to a music playback that seems to break after a few minutes, and then being told that there are no available agents, and would you please wait some more or call later. (Does that remind you about a start of the certain Douglas Adams novel or what?)
So, after some 15-20 minutes of waiting on the phone, this guy answers the phone and asks where the problem is.

- “I’ve got an error connecting, it seems that the system doesn’t accept my username/password, or the APN is mistyped.” (I did make sure that the username, password and APN info are correct).

- “What’s the error number that Windows gives you?”

- “I’m not using Windows, I use Linu…”

- “We support only Windows. Sorry, we can’t help you. Good day to you sir…”

- “Wait, wait, wait, could you just check that the account parameters are correct in your DB?”

- “We don’t support Linux, maybe [some other guys] will know more. Good day.”

After 20 mins of waiting, this guy just puts me off like I’ve just interrupted his favorite movie, or something. WTF? What’s that customer service? Can it be called a service at all?

So I call these other guys at some other helpdesk (which is not a toll-free number, btw), and they’re also clueless, but at least they try to look up the records, and they find it screwed up again. The person that entered the new data used VIP customer’s APN, instead of CARNet one, which made it impossible to authenticate to the network. After apologises and assurances that everything will be corrected in the next 24hrs, I didn’t feel any better.

The next, it didn’t work (the error did change though, so I knew they’ve changed something). The next, again nothing. On the third day (and about after a week after the problems started), it finally worked! Yay! With so long off hook, I didn’t know what to do now, I was lost like a baby in front of a huge cake..:)

Afterwards, my gf and I have learned that our case wasn’t isolated, seems there was a major technical, screwup with that 1GB deal. But more than this, what outraged me is the attitude of the helpdesk guys, which really gave the impression that VIP doesn’t give a f*** about me - which is definitely not a way to treat a customer. Put together with my previous bad experiences with VMC (used in roaming, produced a big bill, which made VIP immediately (snail) mail the notice to the house address, and demanded an immediate payement, which is ludicrous, since the bill was made in roaming), this really makes me hate the company.

Why does this happen? Where’s the customer protection which a free market should offer? We do have more than 2 mobile providers, after all. But, the two that are biggest (Deutsche Telecom T-Com and Vodafone VIP) are in a stalemate position, each holding about 45% of the market, and none of the small ones have the resources to match them. And the customers? Well, screw them!