WP

A large majority of these posts are down to an inflated sense of self-entitlement and unset expectations. This one is no different.

It is all well and good if you have had interruptions to service and are looking to get things resolved. Working with your ISP to get to the bottom of things is the quickest way about it.

The expectation here is if you are connected to "ADSL" or "ADSL2+" then you should be getting decent speeds and are able to do what you need to i.e "banking, email, cloud syncing like drop box, and other cloud drives services, basic browsing, and forget Skype or time sensitive gaming or remote viewing applications..."

So what's the missing piece here? Where are things getting dropped? What sets this expectation in the first place?

Marketing is definitely one of them. "Fast broadband! Get it now!" is certainly encouraging yet sales staff are (or should be) trained to set these expectations from the get go, based on the SQ on your address and/or PSTN number. They should be sitting you down and saying "Look man, you're 4KM away from the exchange. You'll be connected to an iiDSLAM but that won't mean much given that ADSL technology is affected greatly by distance..." to which you'll understand and acknowledge this potentially poor outcome. But FAST ADSL! It's worth a shot!

So you get read your contract, waive rights, sign contracts and the provisioning process gets underway. Then the day comes when you get a SMS saying that your new broadband is finally connected. Unlimited cat pictures and Youtube, here you come!

Your modem is set up, you're synced up and...wow...Google took longer than expected to load. Let's try a video on Youtube...yikes...that is buffering every 3-5 seconds...

"This can't be right!" you exclaim! I have ADSL! So you call support and wait in the queue with others like yourself until you get a rep who takes a look at things and assures you that, given your circumstances, your connection is fine.

Well, certainly not what you were hoping for. This "ADSL" gig isn't what it's cracked up to be. So you sort of just accept it for a bit until one night after a long and shitty day at work when you're trying to watch a cat surf on a Roomba on Youtube and it just won't load and you get fed up. It's time to take action!

So again! You call support! "Hours!" you cry, "Hours of my precious time wasted trying to get this fixed! Let me speak with your supervisor!"

So now you're speaking with a supervisor who understands and can see where you're coming from. Unfortunately, because you can't fathom the service you're getting for the amount of money you're paying regardless of the fact that you've been told multiple times now that you are effectively a dot on the horizon to your nearest exchange, things have gotten to a point where you're unhappy and out of pocket and have a supervisor on the other end who will, at the very best, give you a month's worth of credit to keep you happy and stop your incessant bitching.

From here it just gets worse. You hear of some crowd called the "TIO" and you decide to commission their services. "I'm a loyal consumer! I deserve better service than this!"

You then get assigned a case officer who tells you what you've been told yet don't want to hear. You threaten legal action although you don't realise the gravity of that very sentence and a churn away to Telstra as they're now the lesser of two evils, according to your consumer judgement.

Eventually this all comes to a stop and you're miserable. No cat pictures, no YouTube, just the exact product that you signed up for: ADSL 2+ on an iiDSLAM that's 4KM away and syncing at 1Mbps.

So you jump on Whirlpool, have a look at things, see others just like you who are also unsatisfied! "Oh man!" you say, "This injustice is everywhere!"

So you make a huge post planning to start a telecommunications revolution and save Australia from the same grief you've been through already! You can see a brighter future! You have beared the burden of this beast!

Little do you know that between the physical limitations of the technology that you're still very much unaware of and the people that understand it, along with the fact that you acknowledged and agreed to your experience and nothing was promised to you, you're a lonely man in a field of lost souls, still trying to sync at 24Mbps.