KPN - ISDN - It still does nothing

In Sweden it appears that ISDN lines will be discontinued from next year. In Holland, it often stands for "It Still Does Nothing" or the older joke - Integration Subscribers Don't Need. Two weeks ago, my ISDN line was downgraded from ISDN2 to ISDN1. With Voice over IP, no need for all that expensive bandwidth. The fax hardly ever goes these days.

Imagine my surprise when the analogue infrastructure connected to the ISDN box stopped working as a result. I make a call to the 24 hr technical helpline. "Its the ISDN-analogue box. Take it to a KPN Primafoon shop in the next town where they can test it and repair it".

Nope. In Bussum, these two sales assistants looked at me as though I was bringing an alien from another planet. They started to make jokes that this was junk from the last century. They didn't know what the box was, nor did they seem in the slightest bit interested in the problem or its solution. I pointed out that this "junk" was KPN infrastructure which I had bought and paid for. Truely, they were the most unhelpful idiots I've come across in a long time. Talk about customer service - they were simply a disgrace.

Later - 30 km away in a KPN Business Center, they also looked puzzled. I could phone the KPN service line again - the solution, "we will send a monteur to look at it - for 70 Euro, plus the costs of any apparatus that needs replacing. The guesstimate - 250 Euro". I pointed out that there were other options - like using the web for phone calls instead of their overpriced infrastructure.

It is no wonder the KPN fixed line services are hemorrhaging customers, escaping this outdated and overpriced monopoly and switching ASAP to VOIP solutions via cable or ADSL providers. I can dial emergency services on the mobile if needed. Time to chuck out the fixed line and all this outdated junk.