MIO oh my - Act 2
The day after the hotline operator called back. He confirmed, that it looks like a hardware problem and that I can come to the MIO service center to exchange the modem. This also was very necessary since the phone line stopped working this morning. It turns out, that the MIO service center is nowhere near any of the Singtel locations and I have to come to Playfair Road. This is an industrial area off any sensible public transport. In the building no sign about Singtel or a service center. Singtel actually has outsourced the handling of MIO modem hardware problems to a 3rd party. The sign (printed on A4 paper), that this would be the place was sensible pasted behind the open door (if the door is closed you could read it). A rather bored receptionist told me I had to fill a form and queue up.
Luckily the in-tray of the service was empty and I had to queue about 10 sec. The room where the service people were working is about the size of my study. With 4 engineers and 3 customers squeezing between shelfs and desks. Two engineers took care of me (maybe I looked scary <>). They were fast and friendly and I pitied them for the working mess. The engineer asked me if I had tried to disable the virus protection. So I explained that this is a rather bad idea to recommend such thing to a customer (how many systems stay switched off after such an advise) and that he probably is referring to the firewall. I explained that the problem is wireless and that I had confirmed the problem on Windows, Linux and Mac.
He then shrugged and reached for a replacement modem. He configured it (with WEP instead of WPA) and made sure it worked with the ThinkPad. Asking about the reliability of the modems he answered rather evasive, which I could interpret (but that is my guess), that they have a lot of "fun". On my question: will everything work including voice I got a nod. Well, it doesn't. Voice doesn't work. So no mother-in-law calls for the time being. - Over to the hotline
OK - that was fast, only 5 minutes in the queue and a quick setting. If Singtel's online help would have matched the real software I could have figured that out myself.
All in all: a disappointing experience. 25$ in Taxi bills. In total more than 2.5h of my time and the clear impression: support is an afterthought.
Luckily the in-tray of the service was empty and I had to queue about 10 sec. The room where the service people were working is about the size of my study. With 4 engineers and 3 customers squeezing between shelfs and desks. Two engineers took care of me (maybe I looked scary <>). They were fast and friendly and I pitied them for the working mess. The engineer asked me if I had tried to disable the virus protection. So I explained that this is a rather bad idea to recommend such thing to a customer (how many systems stay switched off after such an advise) and that he probably is referring to the firewall. I explained that the problem is wireless and that I had confirmed the problem on Windows, Linux and Mac.
He then shrugged and reached for a replacement modem. He configured it (with WEP instead of WPA) and made sure it worked with the ThinkPad. Asking about the reliability of the modems he answered rather evasive, which I could interpret (but that is my guess), that they have a lot of "fun". On my question: will everything work including voice I got a nod. Well, it doesn't. Voice doesn't work. So no mother-in-law calls for the time being. - Over to the hotline
OK - that was fast, only 5 minutes in the queue and a quick setting. If Singtel's online help would have matched the real software I could have figured that out myself.
All in all: a disappointing experience. 25$ in Taxi bills. In total more than 2.5h of my time and the clear impression: support is an afterthought.
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 15 October 2007 | Comments (0) | categories: Buying Broadband