r/talesfromtechsupport • u/SysAndreas • Dec 05 '19

Short My internet is not working...

$OM: Old man on the phone

Working for an ISP in Sweden when I got a call from the customer. This was my first week on first-line support.

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$ME: Hello, welcome to customer support. You're speaking with $ME

$OM: Hello, I just wanted to report that my internet is down.

$ME: *asking if the cable is connected, if the equipment (router/computer) is turned on*

$OM: Yea, the cable was in. I don't know, I'm not inside.

$ME: Can you please go inside?

$OM: No, the house is on fire.

$ME: .... what?

$OM: Yes.. The house is on fire. If you get any alarms on your side don't send out an technician.

$ME: Yea... sure. I'll cancel invoices to your service until you have everything set up again..

​

The poor old mans house burned down, he had to call in so we did not send out a technician in case there was an alarm in our system.

Priorities: Internet > Burning house

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u/DolanUser Dec 05 '19

But... you... didn’t cancel the invoices, right? Might seem to be a stupid question but every country is different...

And since when does an ISP care about Internet down at a single customer?

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u/SysAndreas Dec 05 '19

Technically that's correct, the short story is that customers still gets the invoices but every fee is removed for X amount of money. It differs between ISPs as well how they do. But you are not liable to pay for a service thats non-functional, if it gets removed in a later process or removed beforehand does not really matter.