Saturday, 9:30pm here and the TV went dark. I came to the office room and sure enough the Internet (cable modem) is down as well.
I call TelstraClear and go through a lady on their call centre. I ask if there's an outage here in Wellington and she says "I don't know", and proceeds to "test" things.
She asked me to turn the TV devoded off and on. Of course it didn't work. I asked her why is she testing the TV decode, since the problem affects the Internet as well and one is not related to the other, except from the cable out. She says she has to follow the script.
And she does. She asks me to unplug my cable modem and plug again, and sure enough it won't work. I then ask if she's sure there's no outage in this region and she says she can't be sure. And proceed to book a technician to come around here in three days.
She still refused to check if there was an outage.