Fran's Blog

I just moved home about 2 weeks ago now. It’s lovely, we’re having a smashing time. In typical “that is so Francis” fashion I had the broadband installed as we moved in. “Fantastic” I thought. But alas the line is noisy etc. and giving me about a 50th of the speed. “No worries” I thought as I started a conversation with my trusty ISP. We tried a few things, none really worked, so I decided to call them. And so the story begins.

It was 12am, I thought “best get this sorted sooner rather than later”, so, slightly drunk, I decided to call. The young lad took me through the steps. He reeled them out “Is the box plugged in and switched on?”, “is the phone line plugged in?”. I closed my eyes and patiently waited until he got through the list of stock questions before getting to the advanced stuff.

Through the easy questions my mind harked back to Scott Hanselmann’s suggestion of Fizzbin. The idea is that it is a Tech Support handshake. Like saying “I know tech, I have checked the obvious problems like the unit being on,I know the lingo”. The conversation could go something more like:

“Hi, Internet Tech Support…what’s your issue?”
“Fizzbin.”
“You have an IP?”
“No. Your DHCP isn’t passing out IPs. Am I banned?”
“Looks like your MAC is xxxx, you’ve been running a torrent?”
“Yes, I’ll stop.”
“Cool. You’re un-banned. Fizzbin.”
“Sweet. Catch you later.”

(Courtesy of Scott H)

Though I fear my technical support guy had no clue about technical stuff. It’s now been elevated to his superiors, whatever that means.