Broadband internet outage - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2012, 02:04:53 pm
content: I have just been without broadband internet since mid day Thursday 12th Jan. The problem was at the exchange as the symptoms were exactly the same as I had last March and April I got onto the so called technical help line, which operates from India, and managed to convince them that they needed to get an engineer out to me and the exchange. The appointment was made for Monday between 0800 and 1300 hrs.despite 2 texs giving the times and job numbers there was no show, and at 1300 hrs I rang the unhelpful help line, to be told that the engineers system had a glitch and they would not be coming and they could not tell me when they could.After many phone calls and much haranguing of various people I managed to get an engineer for today Tuesday 17th, He arrived on time found that there was no problem at my end or up to the exchange so he went off to the exchange after about an hour he came back, the problem, some meddling moron had played about with the exchange settings and disconnected me from the WAN this is the third time in 3 years that this has occurred this time it was only for 5 days that I had no internet but last March it was six weeks and the time before that it was about 2 weeks, The meddling has on each instance be done remotely by the central control in London.Has any one else had similar experiance.

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2012, 05:26:57 pm
content: Your experience is fairly normal. This is standard behavior of teleco providers, carriers, ISPs all around the world. Outsourced help line, very few, if any, own field technicians on the payroll, most field service outsourced to independent contractors, and remote management of the system often outsourced, too.Filed service can't keep up with appointments, because the central dispatching system uses too tightly calculated time slots, isn't aware of local obstacles (traffic jams, etc.), and the fucking MBAs who planed the system anyhow have no clue how unpredictable fault finding and fixing can be.Then field service contracts go to the lowest bidders, not the best technicians. So the average clue level of the field technician decreases. Same for help line staff and remote management staff. They just have no clue and simply work through checklists, if they can work up enough neurons to actually remember their checklists.Your setup at the exchange is apparently not in line with some checklist, or exceeds the mental capability of someone working on it, so it gets reset to something that appears to be right from the limited point of view of the doofus working on it.Demand a refund, write some letter (on real paper) to the head office, and write another one to your local consumer protection agency. Not that it will really help now, but once there are too many complaints and the particular company shows up on some bad-guys list there might be some changes. And consider changing to another company. Not that another carrier is better, but you might be lucky and end up with someone currently a little bit less clueless.When you move to another carrier carefully check your current contract. Signing up is usually very easy, leaving usually requires cutting through a lot of red tape. These companies love you to force you to stay with them some more time. And once you successfully manage to cancel the contract they will suddenly change, becoming all nice and offer you some goodies if you stay with them. This is where you need to be strong and show them the finger.

author: nanofrog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2012, 04:08:35 am
content: Quote from: BoredAtWork on January 17, 2012, 05:26:57 pmI take it you work for AT&T then?Seriously though, this sort of thing has become all too common in general.

author: ndictu
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2012, 08:52:23 am
content: Yeah, you pay for support and availability and get neither... Few months back I didn't have net for 2 days. First day I kept calling them and they insisted it was a problem on my side, even though I didn't change anything. I then replaced the router with a backup one to prove to them that it wasn't a HW failure on my side either. They still kept telling me the same.The most annoying part was that every time I called I got a new techsupport drone that tried to tell me how to run ping and asking me what browser I was using. On several occasions I was told to restart my computer, never mind the fact I was staring at the router debug log, telling them it was failing connection to their servers.Finally, on the second day I managed to get through to a real tech guy that went over their logs at the times my router tried to connect and figured out what was wrong. I'll leave you to guess on which side the problem was ...

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2012, 09:12:26 am
content: When I was with AOL the tech support had you jump through all the hoops of restart ping etc every time you phoned them before they would even listen to anything else, even the service engineers had to do the same each time they phoned despite just having done all that before phoning. This is why I changed to my present supplier BT they own all the infrastructure in the UK or at least most of it they also have their own technicians who do all the work. When I had the problem with AOL I hired A guy from the local university with a first class degree in Networks and computer technology, I sent the bill to AOL. I never got paid in the end as every office address I sent the bill to was the wrong one or the office was no longer that of AOL, in fact they moved more often than a tramp living in a cardboard box, the company also seemed to change hands more often than marbles in a playground. But one thing is an industry standard in the communications company world, you can never communicate with them, Your internet goes down and you phone them and get told to go to a web site if the problem is with your phone call them that might be ok if you live in town but tough if you don't.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2012, 10:10:05 am
content: have had a single outage with iinet (aussie ISP)its kinda the same here, some of them are mindless, but atleast we are garenteed that new zealand is as outsourced as the support gets.once again, turned out to be there side, atleast they acknowledged my comments, and in the end i won over with evidence (actually link your problem case to your number so when you ring in they know what for)turned out to be a person at the exchange had thought we would like any line estimated over 6.5Km to be forced onto an obscure long line DSL varient, that my old reliable modem just so happened to chuck a fit at.