I got a phone call this afternoon saying 2 technicians would be there in 15 minutes and they were - not sure if it was my email to the Malay Mail or the TM CEO but they seemed anxious to get it sorted out.

When they came in I pointed them to the modem and noticed the VOIP light had gone from red to green! Damn it - and I had left the LAN cable in port 4 of the BTU so as soon as they plugged it back into LAN1 it started working! They told me they hadn't done anything in the condo basement and didn't know of anyone doing any work at the exchange, but definitely the VOIP light was still red when I went to bed last night. I am guessing I will never find the real cause of the problem.

In any case, they upgraded the firmware on the BTU and then tried to do the same on the DIR-615 but found that they couldn't get into it even after a reset. So, they swapped it with a new DIR-615 with new firmware & I am now up & running again.

And I got a phone call about an hour later saying that the billing department would call me soon to arrange a rebate for me - no need for me to apply for it.

I am still pissed off that I have to escalate problems & make a fuss in order to get them fixed and still think that 8 days to fix the problem is a disgrace.