My first support call with Veracity

Our internet provider merged with another local provider a while back. Until today, my only interaction with them has been to send money at them. Last night our internet went down, or at least our ability to resolve DNS names... I called today, this is what is happening: (play by play because I figured out how to post from my phone)

2 minutes: (not bad) got someone on the line. He asked for my name, then put me on hold to check things out.

6 minutes: verifies address, back on hold.

10 minutes: off hold - not talking. Hear someone in background talking to supervisor about someone else's problem. Supervisor has to explain things multiple times to employee.

12 minutes: verifies phone number twice, back on hold.

18 minutes: 3 accounts w/ same name. He sees machine. I told him I get DNS timeouts. He had me enter DNS info manually, still getting timeouts. Back on hold, he explained he was having a hard time finding all my equipment.

31 minutes: DNS back to automatic. Asks for make and model of the wireless switch. Asked if I power cycled the thing. I let him know I did that just before I called.

34 minutes: back on hold for a minute. (Supervisor helping now.) Had me bypass the wireless. No go - reboot computer. Requested MAC address of wireless switch. Done rebooting. Still can't do lookups. They asked for MAC address of desktop, to verify they are seeing the right thing. Goes away for a minute, comes back, has me plug the wireless back in. Has me try to ping Yahoo, no dice. Tech goes away again. (I think he's muting at this point so he can talk to his supervisor.) He comes back and explains that they are getting a different MAC address for the wireless device than the one I am giving them. I get intot he setting of the wireless. (Surprised I can remember the password.) The WAN MAC address is the one they see, but it's not the one labeled on the device...

53 minutes - Decides this needs to go to level 2 support. Puts me on hold to log all the details into the call.

64 minutes - comes back, wants me to connect the desktop directly again. After a couple of release/renews, actually get a good DNS suffix. Things work. I end up getting rid of them to work on the wireless by myself.

I ended up having to release/renew the address on the wireless several times as well before the thing actually got a valid IP address and domain suffix. I guess they are really having DHCP issues of some sort, but I have gotten myself an address, and have everything reconnected, so I'm not going to worry about it until it happens again...