Sign 1 – not going on with having the nice ticket person at the OSU office handle my payment—–
Yesterday was just wonderful….NOT. It was an ok start. Got a few little things done, had a phone conference for work, and several more work contacts then it occurred to me to check on my season tickets. I had an email that they were out and I should go in and set up payment for them. BANG!… blocked out of Ticketmaster? (they handle all the tickets stuff for our season tickets here)… Called the ticket office (at the University) and they said no problem they can get to the site… ? I explained that’s ok I have a few weeks so will see why I can’t get in… I tried my work laptop and got in as it was hooked through the VPN of the work system… huh, seems that just my address is blocked?
Seems that was the only site I could not get to… spent several hours checking my computers , as all at home could not get there…. check 3 different browsers… no luck and check the router to make sure it didn’t have any odd filters or firewall set to blocks something by accident… couldn’t find it had anything different from last fall when we last was on the site… I attempted to call in and was disconnected from the ATT help desk when I told them I could not get to one site…
Sign 2 – Not seeing the answer was wait and not depend on the ATT help desk
Went to lunch and when I got back I started on the issues again… double checking everything I had checked… this time I found a number for Ticketmaster and called… the agent there said that “sometimes they block IP addresses and what was my address” so I gave it to him and sure enough it was blocked. I asked if he could unblock it, “well no not right away as it probably indicated abuse on our end”… What abuse? didn’t they want to get paid?… He didn’t seem to want to budge. Ok I guess I call ATT and try to get a new IP number… I got on the support chat and explained my problem… of course they wanted to go through checking my modem, my router… oh they are not ATT supported… “you should buy ATT supported equipment so we can help you”… but they went on to look at other items… I had to leave as it kept dragging out and I had a 4pm appt with the Dental Surgeon…
Sign 3 – having more than 1 dental appointment in any 6 months and for sure going to the surgeon
It seems the gums around my implant are too close and I have a really hard time cleaning out under it so they had to “laser-burn” out some of the gums… This trip the guy hit the nerve with the deadening needle and they had to pull me off the ceiling… I had never been hit in that nerve before and boy… it was like instant needles in the whole side of my head and poking out my chin… anyway, he got it dead… I had a fat feeling lip and hope I wasn’t drooling too much. He got the gums burnt and advised double up on Tylenol or pain killers tonight to stay in front of the pain and no hard food, only soft stuff… yea ok…
Sign 4 – having tooth implants for broken, missing teeth?
I got home from that ordeal with a numb side to my face and took the pain pill and felt, lets get back on the blocked IP thing… I have no idea why I was so intent on that as it was really obvious later that it was not going to be fixed anytime soon…but I get that way sometimes…
Sign 5 – having pain pills from other various procedures recently
Once more on chat and again explained the whole deal. They support said wait they were reading the file… ok after reading the file it was ”lets go back through the whole thing again”… what? I just gave you the issues, reason, and what about rotating my IP address? it is DNS right? but nooooo we had to go through the issue of router, modem, software all those things that could be blocking the address rather than just stating “we understand we are going to see what can be done”… they wanted me to hook up to the modem direct.. that is a chore in itself as it is hidden back in the basement closet but is accessible just not easy to hook a computer direct to it… I guess I need to set up a port so all I need is to swap one line out so one computer stations is direct to it? anyway, they realized that geee that would disconnect the chat help if I did that so maybe they would call back… right! been there before… but I unhooked and took laptop to basement got hooked to modem and hunted to remember how to hook up to it.., hell it has been 2 years since we put that new modem in and it runs through the router so you never hook direct… but I got that done and out to the internet direct… no luck with the website so that took the router out of the equation completely… At that point I reconnected to the “chat help”… we went through the whole damn process again of giving my vitals, they read the files, lets make sure it is not the router… DUH!… I just told you I am not going through that router… oh… well what modem do you have…, I told them and again… “that is not supported by ATT , you should get one that is supported so we can check it out”… I explained I could set it up for them to access but would not want to leave it that way… “oh that’s ok your issues has be raised to a higher support team”… ok what does that mean are they going to get me a new IP number? I don’t know it is just raised to a higher support team…
Sign 6 – not giving up and trying to explain reason and deduction to phone technicians…?
After another 2hours of dealing with “read-nitions” as they are not technicians by any stretch… I gave up and reset everything… when I could get back on I found I had a new IP number several hundred away from the last… yea… try the web site… NO! FORBIDDEN you are not allowed access to this server… well son of a B______…
Sign 7 – venting to younger more knowledgeable relatives that have their own life problems…
I vented to my SIL and he responded it happens a lot – Ticketmaster in it’s infinite wisdom is trying to prevent scalpers from getting hordes of tickets to things by blocking heavily used IP blocks… I can understand they need to block scalpers but let’s be real about how you do it… a little more justification on customers vs. scalpers and excessive users would be warranted here…
Sign 8 – not searching sufficiently on my own to find it was not going to help…
here are two links my SIL sent me about this… I am still wondering who in Stillwater on ATT is scalping tickets… ha! or are we all blocked cause we got the notice to pay our season tickets?
http://www.martinogawa.com/2012/02/ticketmaster-is-blocking-ips-403.html
https://twitter.com/TMforbidden
Sign 9 – having soft food for dinner.
Sign 10 – feeling ok after all cause I took the pain pills and let it drift away…
WD0AJG