So I spent a good chunk of today trying to get my DNS PTR record changed. First, I had to get the username for my account, which after calling one person he informed me that there’s a website to go to which lets you set that up. Went to the website, set it all up, he asks if there’s anything else he can do. I tell him about the reverse DNS question, and he said he has no idea how to do that. Fair enough, I’ll file a ticket online.
Oh wait. But you can’t file any trouble tickets online. You can view your tickets online, but you can’t create a new one. What kind of bass-ackwards system is that? Apparently, one that the Big Red Check uses. Loverly.
So, I call back. Spoke with a woman who had a somewhat thick accent (I don’t really care who you are, but if you’re working someplace and the majority of your callers or customers are English speaking, you should speak and understand it clearly – that goes for any profession or industry). She says, “So you want to change your email address?” No. “Oh, you want to change your account name?” No. “I’ll transfer you to billing then, they can change your home address for you.” No, no, NO! Too late. Call got dropped before anyone at billing picked up anyway.
Tried going to Broadband Reports’ “Big Red Check Direct” forum, where you can post a message which a customer support person from that company can see. I post a question. They reply that they are only able to help residential DSL customers, not business DSL customers, and I should call the same number I’d called before. *sigh*
In an act of desperation, I do a whois on my IP, and get the tech contact for the netblock and send them an email. I actually got a reply back while I was on the phone with the next person, and he gave me a different phone number and extension. He said he understands exactly what I want, and those people who answer that phone should know it too – and if not, to let him know and he’d find another number for me. Most excellent, I’ve found someone who at least groks the phrase “PTR record.”
Anyway, on the last phone call I speak with a nice southern woman, and I start with how I’m going to throw some terminology around, and if she doesn’t understand it she should feel free to either ask me to explain, or escalate the call to Tier 3, whichever she’d prefer. She says, “Okay, let’s try it.” I like her already. I explain the problem, she asks a couple questions, and finally says there’s another group which deals with business class DSL customers that have a static IP, and the issues that they may have with that address. Excellent, she’ll even transfer me, and gave me the number to call there direct in case it didn’t work. Wait on hold for a minute or two, and another woman answers whom I can barely hear. I explain the issue to her (went right into the TLAs that time, I got tired of pussyfooting around – figured if I got a blank stare over the phone, I’d ask for the next step up again). She asks a couple questions, and asks me to hold on a minute. Now all I can picture is that she dropped the phone, ran down a hallway, asked someone else a question, and came back; but either way, when she came back she said she hasn’t done a PTR record herself, but there’s someone she can put me through to who has (and this time, I said “reverse DNS”, not “PTR record”, so I figured either her or whomever she just spoke to knew it). Byron gets on the line, asks how he can help, I say I want my reverse DNS to resolve to my proper hostname, he asks me, “Is this the IP address for which you want the PTR record modified?” Rattles off my home IP, yep that’s the one. “Okay, what do you want it to point to?” I tell him, he reads it back, we verify once or twice more since it’s over a phone and can’t just be copied and pasted, then starts to tell me it could take 24 to 48 hours… I finish his words with, “Because the TTL is probably set to 86400 or something ungodly like that, right?” At that point he realized that I, too, knew what I was talking about :>
So finally, after I don’t know how many hours of web browsing, phone calls and frustration (all of which could have been handled by a single trouble ticket), my PTR record should be updated soon. At least I hope so anyway; we’ll see what happens. Either way, I’ve got two different phone numbers to try should it not be correct.