B10[mg]

Last night my dad called me to inform me my server was not functioning correctly. Funny, 'cause I was working on it as he called, so I asked him to explain his problems in a little more detail. The problem, or so it turned out, was that he couldn't send any emails and the Ziggo helpdesk told him it was my server.

Quite strange, for he does indeed uses my IMAP/POP3 server, but SMTP is handled by his ISP, Ziggo. And since he can't send any mail the problem is most likely to be at their end. So after explaining the difference between incoming and outgoing mail, I told my father to call the helpdesk again and demand some help, not some ignorant answer.

After a while, he called me again. The helpdesk this time deemed it necessary to reset his password. My dad had to wait for half an hour and login to the webmail of ziggo to see if he could send mail from there. Again a rather odd reply in my humble opinion, but hey, it might be a known workaround of ziggo. In the meanwhile I asked my dad what error message he did get and the answer to that question made a lot of things clear. The error was (translated, the original error was in Dutch):

550 - this is unwanted email and will not be delivered.

Nice, right? I had no clue how a password reset was going to help, but I wished my dad good luck with the spamfilter that was obviously too strict.

A little later the phone rang again and my dad was getting more and more annoyed. He waited for 30 minutes, logged into the webmail, did send a test message and all that went fine. However, his mail still couldn't be sent from Outlook and now he had a new phone number that he was going to call tomorrow. The phone number of the Microsoft helpdesk.

I literally was in shock when I heard they send him to Microsoft. Did Outlook create the 550-SMTP reply? Nope. Why on earth didn't these moronic hell-desk employees simply tell him to reformat the mail and try again? So I had to call them myself and asked them for a motivation for sending my dad of to Microsoft. The explanation was rather simple according to the friendly but completely clueless guy. "Webmail works fine, but Outlook gives an error, so it must be an Outlook problem and thus Microsoft.". I asked him what part of the error message he didn't understand, if he looked the '550'-code up, why he didn't simply send my father to the 2nd line support if he couldn't solve the problems and what the email address was to complain to.

He kept mumbling and even wouldn't agree on the spam filter being too strict. Apparently, false positives are completely acceptable to him. I asked him why three helpdesk employees who get training (I hope) and money for helping people weren't able to help my dad, while I could help him over the phone in less than two minutes. That he didn't know either.

So I drafted a fine mail to the complaints department of ziggo to complain about the competency of the helpdesk. Not even do they not help, the even don't call in the 2nd/3rd line support and I'm fairly sure that would be procedure. Fire the guys, give them a decent training, do something about it, SickoZiggo!

Update I: I don't seem to be the only one who didn't like ziggo's customer service ;-)

Update II: I just read that Ziggo lost 265.000.000 euro last year. Well, try to improve your customer service instead of scaring people away!

clueless, helpdesk, ziggo, athome, @home

Wacken Open Air has just ended for this year's edition and of course I was there (again).

This year, W:O:A offered us Iron Maiden, At the Gates and Watain (my personal favorites) and I was impressed by all three of them again. Of the first two, I managed to make (horrible quality) videos that I'd like to share.

At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul

Iron Maiden - Wasted Years

Let's buy tickets for W:O:A 2009 now!

woa, wacken open air, at the gates, iron maiden, festival

Everything that the US of A comes up with, is introduced in the Netherlands very soon after. There's a complete smoking ban in Schiphol, the Dutch airport, and security measures are annoyingly similar to the US.

My recent vacation to the far east made me long for the simpler times, when we, in the Netherlands, weren't so paranoid and weren't constantly wagging our tails when daddy Bush and his friends come up with annoying new rules.

By the time the rude Dutch security officials allow me to pass the check point, I've crawled through the scanner at least three times. Holding my pants up, because my belt could be a potential terrorist weapon, barefoot and fairly annoyed, they inform me that my half empty deodorant bottle is not allowed for it contains slightly more fluid (when full) than is allowed and think of all the horrible things I might do with deodorant!

Back in the day, smoking was not allowed in the common waiting areas, but the small pubs still had smoking sections, to make the mandatory 3 hour wait a little less painful, but hey, smoking probably supports terrorism as well, so let's make the entire building smoke free. Poor transit people that are stuck on the horrific airport that used to be so nice...

In Asia, I had to pass the airport security of both Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur and I must say I truly adore those airports. Granted, Schiphol looks better (although Kuala Lumpur is state of the art as well), but the people are friendly, smoking areas are provided for the poor addicts that are stuck and if a plane is a little delayed, meals are promptly provided for the waiting souls.

Sure, there are scanners that you'll have to pass, but heck, I carry too much that'll trigger the darn thing, so I simply pass it and have the friendly official use his hand scanner to find out I'm wearing a belt, carry a lighter, keys, watch, ring, glasses etc.

God bless the far east!

airport, security, schiphol, jakarta, kuala lumpur

Last Sunday I went to 013, Tilburg to see Ministry in concert. Joffie was kind enough to accompany me and like predicted. It was awesome!

I tried to smuggle my Canon IXUS in there, but since they have fairly strict rules banning cameras (and they search anyone going in), I left it in the car and had to use my Nokia N95 instead.

The pictures are up at Flickr and I even had a chance to take two clips (crappy quality):

metal, ministry, gig, tilburg, 013, netherlands

I like Y! movies' recommendation system, for it usually turns out quite ok. If they say I like a certain movie, a lot of times, it's true. But ermm, either their system is way off here, or I have a seriously bad taste.

52 people have rated this movie with an average of "dreadful", yet Yahoo happily informs me that I'll probably like this movie. Yay!

movies