Telstra / Bigpond - just plain arrogant.

Fred's computer was fine on Thursday, but on Friday, Fred had trouble with his email so he resorted to using webmail.  On Saturday, Fred could not access the internet.  Fred rang me.
On arrival I found there was an ADSL connection to the modem, but no Internet, so I asked the obvious question, "have you paid your bill", the answer was "yes, 3 days ago".
AVG was installed, but expired, but at this time I could not be sure if this status was simply because there was no internet access.  I checked the modem and found it appeared to be configured as a bridged connection - very unusual.  I rang Bigpond to ask what the correct settings should be, the message informed me they were busy and estimated 20 minutes to the availability of tech support - magically they came on the line at 20 minutes and 20 seconds.
Arrogance #1 Fred has a TP-Link modem - Bigpond refused to provide generic modem setup settings unless Fred paid for premium support
Fortunately others (found through Google) are quite generous in sharing their knowledge and I found the settings 8, 35, PPPoE LLC, username and login were all that was required.  But it still wouldn't work.
Call back to Bigpond to have them check that there was no problem on the line and that the password hadn't been changed.  After verifying what we could we were transferred to billing to ensure the account paid up, but after a number of lengthy delays and false attempts to transfer, Fred was told his account had been suspended and given a new number to call.
Arrogance #2 Fred was eventually told that he had been using his email account to send out spam, so Bigpond suspended his account. No phone call, no email warning, no restriction of smtp acces, just turned off the account.

Fred was told that the account would remain suspended until the PC was clean, I asked if they could re-enable the account as I had disconnected the PC (to be taken off-site for cleanup), NO!  I told them I had cleaned up the PC and removed the virus/s - the answer was NO - they would not re-enable the account unless the PC was connected and clean.  Fred was told to ring back when the PC returned and it would take 3 - 30 minutes to re-activate the account.
Sunday
After creating an image of Fred's HD for use in case of catastrophy, the HD was removed and scanned, multiple infections were found by both Avast & Malwarebytes.
Cleaned and with new anti-virus installed, the PC was to be returned, I rang Fred and had him ask Bigpond to re-activate the account, dropped the PC into the car and drove to Fred's.
Arrogance #3 When I arrived Fred had to ring again because they would not re-activate until the PC was there, they confirmed all was well and then refused to re-activate the account until Monday.  
Fred was amazingly calm as he rang tech support again. This time, no worries, the account was re-activated and the password supplied and put into the modem - now we just had to wait up to 30 minutes.
The internet never did connect, so Fred rang tech support, no they would not verify the modem settings were correct, yes they would re-send the password.
Bugger me dead the password was totally different, and when put into the modem we had internet.

The story goes on, but suffice to say Fred now has internet (2nd password supplied) and email (first password supplied) even though these passwords should be identical.

It probably would have been better if Bigpond hadn't asked me to do a short survey on what I thought of their service.....

Follow-up:
Last week (June 14) I had to visit yet another person simply to configure a netgear modem for Bigpond.  This person had been pushed from pillar to post for weeks as Telstra promised and then failed to connect ADSL, and then when it was connected (& being paid for) Telstra bluntly refused to provide the simple instructions necessary to insert the new username and password without charging "an unknown amount" for the priviledge.  Bloody rude if you ask me.