You may noticed I’m kinda offline these days, due to the recent change from our family OTE phone and DSL line to some double play greek provider. Which sucks.
I won’t go into speeds and bitrates and whatnot, I’m happy with my ‘net if it’s stable and relatively fast for browsing. What I can’t tolerate though is lack of proper documentation, awful interfaces that just don’t work and lack of proper support.
I’ve spent my first night as a Tellas Zisto customer trying to get my Internet to work, following the instructions on their leaflet obsessively, talking on the phone for half an hour trying to figure out what’s wrong. It turns out, nothing was wrong with my line. It was just that their leaflet had the wrong settings from my area, the modem they provided me with was wrongly set up, and the Siemens Speedstream stupid interface couldn’t work on the Mac, neither on Safari nor on the Firefox.
I’ve never seen something like this. Since the modem was pre-set up, I couldn’t select a different username than ‘admin’, which I had to choose from an one-choice select box. When I tried filling up the password and logging in, this nice interface would inform me that it needs a username. But, I just selected one.
Long story short, I managed to make it work through Windows.
Needless to say, the same settings just refuse to work with my (lovely) Linksys WAG200G. Complete fail. I’ll try again tomorrow with a different router to see if the problem is mine, but for now I’ve had to share my Ethernet through Airport throughout the house. And since the Windows machines around here have problems recognizing WEP passwords coming from the iMac, I had to leave my WiFi unsecured.
So now you know. If you happen to be around my house, hey, drop by! Free WiFi.
I hate it when things don’t work at once.
P.S. I think that most technical people that work on phone support talk in a very different manner to men and women. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get them to understand I’m not the usual clueless user, so they should spare me the shit and go on. Story of my life.
7 comments on this post
Panos Karageorgakis #1
23.Jan.09
Hope you sort things out soon! At least phone reps are more “eager” to talk to women (and they still treat men as if they’re laymen)
Svelon #2
23.Jan.09
Yeah, that modem-router (if you can call something with just one ethernet port a router) sucks, just like most of “free” routers all the relative companies provide. It’s slower than anything I’ve ever tried to adjust (even slower than that US robotics super-expensive router that required more than 3 minutes to reboot, on every change).
As for Tellas, although it sucks, at least it’s working and you were offline just a couple of days. Forthnet on the other hand has the bad habit of leaving it’s customers offline for more than 2 months.. so just be grateful for what you have. And check your mail, I’ve just sent you a solution to your LAN problems
stelios #3
23.Jan.09
I spent almost 2 hours trying to set up my OTEnet Connex. When I called them I found out why I couldn’t make it work. I had to use Internet Explorer and not Firefox. Whatever. Migrate
Stylianos #4
23.Jan.09
Ok… I heard that…linksys wag200g has a problem or something that only forthnet has solved. I dont know if that’s true….
I have forthnet double play….and it works fine…infact… they pay pack money to me…I don’t know why…Last month they gave me back 64 euros…and the seem to gave me free the december bill cause I went and they said my bill is paid… I guess I am very lucky!!!
But generally forthnet sucks too..!!!! I hear it from everyone… In the other hand I dont want to give my money to Ote anymore.
My connection works fine anyway sooo….
what can you say…..
Nikola #5
23.Jan.09
I just switched to Tellas and have the same router Linksys WAG300G that I can’t make get the DSL signal. Their “router” sees it, but I couldn’t make my see it with settings they gave me over the phone or with settings that worked for one other guy. Their ruter also ofers me just “admin” as user name and I can’t proceed with settings. I feel completely lost.
Sugar #6
23.Jan.09
@Nikola
Think it’s admin / admin for username / password. Don’t try to login in their control panel with Safari, won’t work.
I have yet to make the Linksys router work with the Tellas settings, even after half-an-hour sessions with their technicians.
I’ve used their router to connect to the Internet and the Linksys as a wireless access point.
Sadly, I know no other way to fix this.
Nikola #7
23.Jan.09
Turns out my router is ISDN and they removed my ISDN connection, that’s why it doesn’t work.
My roomy managed to get Tellas’ router to work, the problem was probably that I tried to set it from Linux using Opera.
What remains now is turning my WAG200G into an AP, I could use some help on that.