Posted: 06th Jan, 2010 By: MarkJ

Those seeking customer support from their ISP today should take heed, the extreme deluge of bitterly cold winter snow storms battering the country are impacting many businesses. Several broadband providers have reported that they are under-staffed or suffering other related problems due to the weather, much as almost all of us are today.
A Spokesperson for Zen Internet said:
"Due to the adverse weather conditions some of our staffing levels within Zen have been impacted and in particular our service areas are typically going to be hit. Technical support are currently short staffed resulting in increased wait times for customers trying to contact us via phone.
It is also worth noting that some of our suppliers field based support is likely going to be impacted as well, which would include BT Engineers, so again please be advised that we will try our very best where reasonably possible to support any customers impacted in this area."
A First City Telecom spokesperson added:"We're currently receiving around three times the number of support calls for number changes due to people not being able to use their offices. This is resulting in longer than normal waiting times when calling us and we apologise for the delay.
We aren't expecting any major disruption to customer service functions during the bad weather and we will post any information relating to BT or carrier faults caused by the snow and ice on our blog as soon as we are made aware of them."
The above two statements are just two examples of several we have seen, all echoing an identical sentiment. Delays are to be expected with weather like this so try to be patient with your ISP; if you need to contact them then you may have better luck via online methods (email, live chat etc.) because some staff are still able to remote work from home.