I've been forced-offline the last two days, my ISP - bethere.co.uk seems to have had a problem in the SE london area, and that means no IP down the line for users.

Getting through to their customer services seems to be a challenge too - calling their special members hotine at 0808 101 3430 just results in a dropped call. No ringing, nothing to say lines are busy or anything, just a dropped call. After trying for about 30 min, I got through and guess what : their customer support people are only saying 'there is a problem, we dont know what the problem is and we dont know if and when its going to get resolved'.

One thing he did mention was that the status is being updated on the members website, so everyone should look there. It took me about 5 minutes to explain to the moron that getting to the website was a challenge if the isp is what was down. Where do they find these people ? Some eastern european guy sitting in what sounded like his kitchen with the blender on in the background.

I've now managed to get a dialup link mobilephone->mobilephone that I have in the DC to get into my servers if the main front link goes down - and at 4800bps its not the most usable link for much else - but I am able to get to the bethere website, and get into the members area. The funny thing is, they just seem to think the problem will get resolved in a few hours, then keep extending that time. It was at midday yesterday that the problem was expected to get resolved. Then it became evening, then late night, then early this morning, then just after two pm today, now its just before seven pm. Lets see when it really does get resolved.

Oh well, I guess thats the state of ISPs. And these guys are supposed to be one of the better ones. I wonder why competence is such an elusive trait in the business.