techrecovery | Stupid provider games... (Reply)

Two different issues, only related by the fact that they indicate the general level of customer service available from larger companies these days. Oh, and related by the fact that they're pissing me off!

I have a client who's got a Netgear Prosafe switch. Get a call from them telling me that they have no internet connectivity, and no connectivity to the server. Go onsite to troubleshoot, and find that the gigabit port that the server is plugged into is dead. Server also provides DNS and DHCP, which explains they had no internet connectivity. Move the server to a functioning gigabit port, and contact Netgear to get a warranty replacement, since they have a limited lifetime warranty for these switchs. Proceed to jump through many flaming hoops of bad phone tree, getting disconnected time after time. Eventually, call the corporate office and say "why the hell can't I get ahold of someone in tech support without getting disconnected?" and get a technician. Explain the situation, who says "Oh, I can issue an RMA and send out a new switch." Problem solved, right?

The Netgear switch that I eventually got Netgear to replace under warranty? It blew out two ports in two days, both about a week after the switch was installed. Now I need to get back on the phone with Netgear. So I do. And the game starts ALL OVER AGAIN! This time at least I didn't get hung up on. This time, I didn't actually get to talk to anyone who could help me, but got the opportunity to leave a voicemail on their pro-series tech support line, asking for a return call. I made this call on Thursday. Oddly enough... I haven't heard back.
(sarcasm)And I've got all the time in the world to sit on the damn phone trying to fight my way through their phone tree.(/sarcasm)
Might be better to tell the client that they should just pay for a new switch... from a different company.

In other news, some script kiddie tried to hack one of my client sites last night, using a brute force password attack against the administrator, guest, and info accounts. The administrator account has a very secure password, the guest account is disabled, and there IS no info account, so he had no luck. But when I tried to contact XO Communications to get the attack stopped at the router level, I was told by the technician on duty that he couldn't do that, and that I would have to talk to someone in the fraud or abuse departments. Which were (of course) closed at 11pm when I was speaking to the tech. He opened a trouble ticket for next level support and told me that they would have to call me back, which of course, they never did.

So, since I couldn't get the ISP to do anything, I stepped in with a bad and temporary fix. Behind the XO router, we have a small (home model) Netgear router, primarily used for the purpose of running NAT. I reconfigured the router so that it wouldn't talk to the XO router, blocking the attacks. Of course, this also killed internet connectivity for the client, but since it was at midnight, I didn't think that would be a significant issue. I went in early this morning (as soon as they opened) and re-configured the Netgear router to talk to the XO router again. I started checking logs to see if the attack was still ongoing, but it looks like the script kiddie gave up sometime over night.

Now I'm on the phone with XO, getting bounced from department to department as they try and figure out which group should be handling this. So far, I've been to the DS1 repair group and the Abuse group. The DS1 repair group supervisor has been trying to help, and tried to get me to the Operations Support group, but apparently has no clue as to the inner workings of his company, and neither he nor the Abuse rep (who I spoke to in place of the Operations Support ret, and who doesn't actually have access to the routers) have been able to help me thus far. The Abuse rep mentioned the Network Security group, but apparently neither one of them have any contact information for that group (probably for "security" reasons). So the supervisor that I've been working with is now trying to contact someone he knows who "can do all this stuff. He's not at work,but let me call him on his cell phone."

And that's where I'm at so far today. Instead of being at another client site entirely, configuring the workstation that I was originally scheduled to set up. Fortunately, they're being very understanding, and have told me not to kill myself to get there.

GAAAAAHHHH!!!! THIS is precisely why we don't recommend XO as an Internet Service Provider.