* on the Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 04:05:48PM +0100, Marc Ammann wrote:

[1] via your Helpdesk

My Helpdesk? _My_ Helpdesk knows Zilch; they turn to me "it does not work".

[2] try the website

To find no email, no (useful) phonenumber, but some formular, where I am supposed to choose between several variants of "services you have at cablecom" which all do not apply?

[3] via your account manager

My Account where? This was a (albeit small) inter-ISP problem; between entities with only technical- but not business-relationships.

That's what I really hate about swisscom, cablecom and several other "major players" -- they always seem to assume they are the only ones in the internet, and no other entity apart from their own customers might have a relationship with them. But you do have. You have daily doings with other ISPs, with Blacklist-services, with DNS-admins, with others who spam and attack you, with others who get spammed and attacked by your customers, with people whose emails get blocked, with people seeing their rights violated or want to turn in somebody for fraud or attacks or whatever. That's quite a lot, and too much to snotty ask for a "customer-ID" or THIS:

| I have a question or a request regarding the subject | o Product information | o Billing / Payment | o Contract / Subscription | o Technical support | o Feedback

Click on technical support, because technical might fit:

| It concerns your subcription | o cablecom hispeed internet | o cablecom hispeed office | o dial-up (SwissOnline) | o cablecom digital phone | o cablecom digital tv | o cablecom tv

Hello?

Guess what do I do if I get this? Right, write a message to the swinog-ML, with an aggressive subject.

[..] several other ways

I could call on the phone -- Oh no! They implemented the above menu into their phone-system!

[..] even some more ways

Like: Shall I write abuse, because maybe, if the abuse-contact isn't notoriously overworked and has a mailqueue of several dozens of problems, he might notice mine, and he most probably is a technician proficient to solve my problem? Or hostmaster? Does that exist or is it heavily filtered? postmaster? Nah, that one gets all the crap he doesn't read.

[664] inoc dba [665] RIPE [666] swinog mailing list

Precisly what the list is for, getting technical people together to solve problems. That, and drinking beer.

It actually helped in some sense. I found out myself, but I also had a useful answer from a person on this list within 15 minutes.

I really try to understand the problem and how to figure out i can help you.

Don't bother anymore. I managed to get one of your sysadmins onto the phone who solved the problem in no time. Turn out Cablecom uses SORBS, and our server most probably was on their list this morning. So in the future I'll even know that such a problem most probably is the SORBS (and our) one.

Cheers Seegras