#3: Help from the Philippines

Murphy's law say "If anything can happen, it will". And it always happens on a monday.

Today as I was getting ready for work, I suddenly got frantic calls from three of our office locations. "Internet is down!!!" shouted one of our clinic manager. Great! I whispered as I whisked out of the shower, kiss my kids goodbye and grab my car keys as I got three more calls and a text message, which I choose to ignore.

As I was driving, my tech assistant finally called me up and started briefing me on the situation. "It's pretty bad, I restarted the firewall and the switch but nothing seems to be working", he said. "Do you want me to reset the T1 router?", he asked. I said NO, as I was sure it was something to do with our T1 provider (AT&T).

Arriving 10 minutes later in my office, I was confronted with some more co-workers throwing the same questions. "What wrong with the line?, is it gonna take long?" I have a deadline to meet". I ignored everyone as I slammed my door and start calling Technical Support.

After trying to navigate the complex Automated Voice Response, I finally heard a live person. "Thank you for calling AT&T, my name is Owen, how may I help you today?". It was a very pleasant voice that for a moment I amost forgot the reason for my call. As I was explaining the problem, I slowly realizing that am talking to a Filipino lady. How would I know? oh I know believe me.

She seems to know what she's doing as I heard the clicking on her keyboard. She put me on hold as she tries to determine the issue and got back a minute later. "Sorry for the inconvenience Eric, but there seems to be some error on the T1 line, we are trying to isolate the problem now and we should be able to fix your issue".

As I waited, I finally can't help but asked her, "Miss Owen nasa Pilipinas ka ba?". "Opo", she said. Wow! that's awesome, I said. "Yes sir, we are somewhere in Pasig", she continued.

Well back to the problem, she finally told me that it will take about 20 minutes to get some results back. She asked for my call back number and vigorously promised me that she will call me back.

Fifteen minutes later, the line when up and I can hear the whole office rejoicing! a few minutes later, Owen called me back and happily informed me that we are back online. I said yes we are. She finally asked me "Is there anything else I can do for you?". Well I said "pwede ba kitang ihatid?". "She laugh and said, "nakalimotan mo na yata, nasa Pilipinas ako". ooops.

This is a first time I ever encountered a tech support based in the Philippines. When we were just using a DSL line, I normally deal with techs in India. It seems that AT&T prefers the Philippines for the premium business customers like us. And they seems to get it right as my issue was resolved quickly.