A slow internet connection can ruin anyone’s day, but for one student, a faulty internet connection sparks a month-long saga of persistence and strategy.

When their internet provider dragged their feet in restoring their connection, the student decided to wage an all-out war on their support ticketing system.

Read on for the full story.

You’re not giving me an ETA for a fix? I’ll flood your ticketing system!

Back in 2012, I was a university student in a remote, rural place in Southern Europe.

I had just moved to a new apartment and, naturally, my first order of business was to make sure that I had a running Internet connection.

But this would prove trickier than they initially thought.

The problem was that, due to the place I was living in being so remote, there was only one ISP provider available.

You didn’t like the provider? Too bad.

Anyway, I signed the necessary paperwork in time, moved to the new place, set up the router and all, and thankfully my connection was fine.

That is until day 3 or 4 when out of nowhere my Internet connection died (but my phone line was working normally).

But they didn’t have much luck getting support with their issue.

Ok, no problem, I called the ISP to open a ticket.

The representative told me that they would get back to me soon.

A few days passed by, and I got nothing, so I decided to call them again.

The representative told me that they were still investigating the problem and that they would get back to me soon.

The student can’t figure out why only their internet was affected.

Now, this is the point where I’m starting to get frustrated.

I knew that the Internet in the area was fine, in fact, my next-door neighbor’s Internet connection was great, so the problem must be something that is easily fixable, right?

WRONG.

The internet company’s responses were less than satisfactory.

A week had passed by and I called them again.

This time the representative told me that they had investigated the issue and the problem was officially of “unknown origin,” which meant that they couldn’t give me an ETA for the fix.

I hung up the phone feeling sad and perplexed.

As I contemplated my internet-less existence, the representative’s words echoed in my mind: “unknown origin,” “we cannot give you an ETA.”

The student just got madder and madder.

Slowly, my sadness transformed into denial. How is this possible? My phone connection still worked, so the line was still there, and I knew for a fact that everyone in the area had a stable Internet connection.

This must be a simple bug that is easily fixable.

This can only mean one thing: Some person has not been doing his job correctly.

The denial became anger.

How dare they tell me that they can’t give me an ETA? This should be illegal! What if my job depends on my Internet connection?

It wasn’t just about the internet by this point.

Not to mention that Internet access is a basic human right! They are denying me my rights by not giving me an ETA!

At this point, the issue stops being the Internet connection – it’s about the principle of the matter.

As a human being and a customer, I am entitled to an ETA!

But then one agent said something that sparked a lightbulb moment for the student.

I called the ISP again and tried to explain my flawless reasoning.

No luck.

The poor representative who listened to my rant told me that the only thing I could do was to open a new ticket.

Shocked by my inability to define my fate, I accepted his offer and hung up.

And then… A magnificent idea was born.

Since the only thing that I could do was to open a new ticket, then this is exactly what I was going to do.

So day after day, they submitted ticket after ticket.

From that point on, I was calling my ISP provider two to five times per day.

Each time, I was telling the representative the same thing: “This is what has happened, I know that there are multiple tickets with my name on them already, but I want you to open a new one!”

Most of the representatives were pretty amused by my story.

Everyone complied.

Then the student got a call from one of the higher-ups at the company.

A month later – yes, a month passed without the issue having been fixed – I got a call from the regional tech executive of the ISP.

The call went like this:

Executive: “You must stop opening tickets, you’re flooding our ticketing system!”

The student’s confusion soon morphed into smug satisfaction.

At first, I was shocked at how aggressive the executive was. He was clearly one step away from starting to call me names, and I knew that the only reason this didn’t happen was that these calls were being recorded.

And then my shock transformed into a visible glorious feeling.

You see, my friends, this is the point when I realized that I was winning.

They continue to go back and forth.

Me: “Well, are you going to give me an ETA for a fix?”

Executive: “We cannot give you an ETA, the problem is of an unknown origin.”

Me: “Then I guess I’ll keep opening tickets.”

Executive: *hangs up*

So they kept on opening a barrage of tickets.

To cut a long story short, this exchange renewed my passion for crushing the souls of those who have wronged me, so I kept opening tickets at the same pace for another 30-40 days.

I estimate that in the course of the total ~70 days that this lasted, I must have opened more than 250 tickets.

Finally, victory came.

One day my phone rang.

I picked it up and it was an ISP representative who told me this:

“Mr. u/LexMeat, is this you? Your problem has been solved. Everyone at [ISP name] is talking about you!”

But the student had left out one very important part of the story.

Indeed, on that day my Internet connection was back.

The cool part about this, however, was that I had Internet all along.

Remember my next-door neighbor? She was kind enough to let me know her Wi-Fi password since day 1.

It was the principle of the thing.

Reddit is sure to get a kick out of this one!

In tough times like these, neighbors have to band together to support one another!

No internet connection can make people do some pretty crazy things.

This commenter hopes the company at least tried to make things right after the fact.

This user thinks most support centers would handle complaints like this quite differently.

All things are possible with a little persistence!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.