Dodo Tech Support: A Good reason why the Dodo is extinct

Dodo would have to have one of THE most frustrating customer support and technical support services in the industry. I'm sure other customers of Dodo know exactly what I'm talking about. Today an idiot technician from Telstra stopped at the phone exchange in front of my house to set up the line for a house around the street apparently and in the process he's disconnected OUR line. I know pathetic right? Sarah even went out and told him and he just denied it, what a freak'in jackass.

So I've run up dodo to get the line sorted out, but instead of going, ok we'll get in touch with telstra and sort the whole thing out within the hour. Instead after explaining the situation to the girl on the other end she went to check the "backend" which took her about 10 minutes (I was on a mobile by the way, because well my line is dead), anyway she comes back and says ok we need to do some trouble shooting. Fine I said reluctantly. So she starts asking me how long my phone line is. 10 Meters I said, but that's not the problem.

It was at that point she started a great big spiel about how a line longer than 3 meters is going to cause problems and blah blah blah. That I have to use a longer ether cable instead of a longer phone line and blah blah blah. Annoying stuff that wasn't even relevant, which I pointed out to her, as well as the fact that I had, had this set-up for the entire term of the account without problems, and again explained that I was happily working away ordering new stock on the internet when the telstra guy turned up did whatever he did and our line died. She started going on about how they don't know what the technician was doing so they have to go through these trouble shooting steps.

Next she asked me to cycle my modem, which I had already done, 3 times before I called her, which I told her and she made me cycle it again anyway. Next was, check you check if there is a dial tone on the line. Sure I said, I already have, there isn't one, it's dead. It was at this point she decided she should reconfigure the ports associated to my account and put me on hold. :lol: lmao. Another 15 minutes later she came back and said ok please cycle your modem to see if that affected anything, and started saying how she said she doesn't think it will because of the length of my phone line. I said I don't think it will work either, because I don't have a line out, and thus the ports won't affect anything. Of course it didn't work.

It was at this point she informed me they were unable to go any further unless I had a 3m or shorter phone line connected to my modem, otherwise the extended trouble shooting steps wouldn't have an affect on anything. I informed her for a second time that my phone line is in the lounge room and that I don't have a shorter phone line. She asked about the phone line I used to see if the line had a dial tone, I said that line is about 4 inches long. She said use that then, so I asked if I use a power extension cable with the modem will that affect things? Yes she said :lol: well I said the closest power socket to my phone plug is too far away to power the modem, I'd need to use a power extension cord. She was stumped and tried repeating back to me that a phone cable over 3m in length wasn't going to work and would cause problems.

It was at this point I'd had enough and said, "look I understand and know full well that a longer cable can cause speed reductions, I'm sure it does so on my line but I am happy with the connection speed I get, it's not an issue. There is no excess noise on my line, the cable is kept in perfect order, everything is perfect here. That cable isn't effecting anything. This isn't a problem at dodo's end, you guys are doing things fine, this isn't a problem at my end, this is a problem because an idiot telstra technician pulled out my line and now it's dead"

Ok well we'll continue with the trouble shooting with your phone cable then. she replied :lol: She asked me if I knew how to get to the administration screen for my modem, I'm already there I said. She asked if I could tell her what the upstream and downstream was. "Zero" I replied. "Oh, you really don't have any connection there at all do you?" she asked. ROFLMAO That's what I've been trying to tell you for OVER AN HOUR I confirmed.

Well let me try reprogramming your line first :lol: Another pointless trouble shooting step, that doesn't relate to this in any way. Fine I sighed and she put me on hold. 15 Minutes later she's back and says ok, cycle your modem again. Fine I said, which is about where my mobile ran out of battery and I was disconnected. lol Of course reprogramming the line did nothing, because for it to have an effect I'd need to actually be connected to the telco network, which as it so happens, because of the idiot telstra technician I'm not.

So I ring dodo back, the wait time wasn't as bad this time and I'm connected to a guy this time, who after getting my account up said hold on I just need to check something for you and put me on hold. By this time I'm starting to wonder how much of my credit they're going to use up. So the guy comes back and of course the problem with having to a support line back is that you have to explain the problem all over again. He asked me a bunch of questions that I'd already answered that don't have anything to do with much of anything, had a slight disagreement with me about the length of my phone cable and put me back on hold. After a few minutes, he comes back and decides he's going to do a line test and puts me on hold. At this point I'm wondering what he's been doing all this time. So I'm on hold for another few minutes when he comes back, asks me to disconnect my modem from the socket, which I do and then puts me on hold again. :lol:

Appalling that this happened at 12:30 today, it's now 3:18pm and they still haven't started proceedings to actually fix the problem, which of course is on the street in front of my house. So he comes back from on hold, realises that the line test showed nothing, asks if I have another modem I can try, to which I of course said no. He then decides we've finally exhausted all trouble shooting steps and will send someone out. He tells me if the fault lies within my premises or with my equipment I will be charged $220 for a call-out fee. Fine I said, I know what the problem is. So back on hold I go.