Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bogof]

Well, your issue is worse than every other case so, hopefully?

It's worse than mine, but there was I'm sure one poster at TBB whose performance sounded like the OPs.

[spudgun]

Have Zen's engineers been able to make any progress with this?

[Alex Atkin UK]

[Jasonkruys]

Alex's assessment is accurate. No progress, still fobbing me off. Have said they've replaced all their kit in the exchange, and now trying to convince Openreach to do the same to theirs - they are now saying they believe the issue is in the OR Layer 2 switches and routing to the headend.

I've sent an email to complaints which was ignored, then when I chased it I got a reply from the Fault manager at the tech support address, so it has gone to them and basically been ignored. They said they'd address it after the issue is resolved, or they could ask their manager to escalate.it now. I asked for it to be escalated, and nothing.

Genuinely, I am now telling everyone not to touch Zen with a barge pole. I appreciate that issues happen, but 1. How you deal with it is important, and 2. This seems to be a fundamental problem.

I don't know how to progress this now. Every route I am being ignored.

Edit: Last 6 hours plot attached for interest.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Have said they've replaced all their kit in the exchange,

I fear this is true as its the only explanation of why Zen have never been able to figure this out after so long and why they have been able to do absolutely nothing to fix it.  Either that or there is some fundamental bug in the vendors equipment Zen are using that is incompatible with what OR are using.

You'd think Zen would be taking legal action against OR if it is indeed a problem their side that is not being dealt with.

[Jasonkruys]

Still no progress. Complaints not being escalated by the fault team, and no update for 5 days now. Have chased and just get a 'we've had no update'. I have never had a more frustrating experience in my life. It's like they are not even reading the emails, and picking a reply from a selection of standard 'sorry' replies. Last 6 hours attached for interest.

I posted on twitter, they quickly responded saying DM is and we'll look into it ASAP, and that's been ignored now too 

[Jasonkruys]

Zen have finally contacted me this morning and offered a migration back, or end contract. They've assured me if they migrate me back I won't be put back on the Zen GEA. It's just a shame it has taken being vocal on social media/review sites is what it has taken to break from the cycle of fobbing me off.

Perhaps foolishly, I've agreed to give them a second chance and agreed to go back onto wholesale GEA - I've been happy with the service up to this debacle, including a few issues previously that were resolved quickly and efficiently. I've been assured I won't get put back, but if I do, calling out this case number will get much quicker action next time.

Up to 10 days to enact the migration - let's see.

[bogof]

Zen have finally contacted me this morning and offered a migration back, or end contract. They've assured me if they migrate me back I won't be put back on the Zen GEA. It's just a shame it has taken being vocal on social media/review sites is what it has taken to break from the cycle of fobbing me off.

Perhaps foolishly, I've agreed to give them a second chance and agreed to go back onto wholesale GEA - I've been happy with the service up to this debacle, including a few issues previously that were resolved quickly and efficiently. I've been assured I won't get put back, but if I do, calling out this case number will get much quicker action next time.

Up to 10 days to enact the migration - let's see.

This makes me so sad.  It effectively writes Zen and any of their wholesale customers off more or less forever until they can identify where these issues are coming from and why they're not going to happen again.  Not because the performance isn't good for the majority - I'm sure it probably is - but because if you're unlucky you're going to have to basically jump through hoops for over a month before you maybe get a migration in 10 days time. 

Even IF you gave Zen maximum benefit of the doubt - that the problem is with some piece of BTW equipment they are connected to - it shows they have a totally ineffective system in place for dealing with issues with their supplier, which ultimately makes their network service untenable. 

There are so many things they could do if they were really interested to sort this.  Eg ; they could provision a second BTW service at your home via the FTTP system and provide a multi-port ONT, leaving your bad connection running while probably getting you a good connection, while carrying on working on fixing the issue with your current service.

I hope you get a good result.  Bear in mind Zen ultimately are trying to get everyone off BTW and onto Zen GEA, so i think unless they fix the issue behind the scene, you will always have the Sword of Damocles dangling overhead.  I was told that even if I was flagged for not being migrated, that eventually I would be.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Agreed.  It leaves me pondering what I will do when City Fibre roll out here, stay with Zen or move to AAISP.  Because while this problem does not appear to impact City Fibre (as its their own backhaul to Zen), its still concerning that their network is this fragile.

[spudgun]

Zen have finally contacted me this morning and offered a migration back, or end contract. They've assured me if they migrate me back I won't be put back on the Zen GEA. It's just a shame it has taken being vocal on social media/review sites is what it has taken to break from the cycle of fobbing me off.

Perhaps foolishly, I've agreed to give them a second chance and agreed to go back onto wholesale GEA - I've been happy with the service up to this debacle, including a few issues previously that were resolved quickly and efficiently. I've been assured I won't get put back, but if I do, calling out this case number will get much quicker action next time.

Up to 10 days to enact the migration - let's see.

Thank you for the continuing updates and I will follow this case with great interest.

Like you were, I am a very happy Zen FTTC customer and I've been a Zen customer since leaving Eclipse over 15 years ago. I've had the GEA migration on my FTTC line and there are no issues, but I have been very concerned about the individual cases of significant issues when using Zen's GEA after a switch to FTTP.

I'm hopeful of getting FTTP in the next 12 months here and I was wavering over sticking with Zen, but now I'm thinking I might have to find a bit of extra cash each month to go to someone like AAISP as Zen's approach to dealing with customers with issues after a FTTP GEA migration leaves a great deal to be desired in my opinion. I am aware that there are probably many Zen FTTP customers who don't have an issue, but for some peace of mind I am becoming less sure that I can risk it.

I also wonder at what point Zen GEA takes over your connection? In my case, my local exchange (SSBCL) doesn't have a ZEN LLU presence, so would I be correct in assuming that Zen takes over at a point further down the line (probably SSCMN in my case as there is Zen LLU there and I would imagine that is where my traffic is routed) as I am not quite sure how this kind of thing works?

Please can you let us know how this develops?

[Jasonkruys]

Will do. Migration request gone in, now I wait until they put me back onto Wholesale GEA. In the mean time it is still just as bad as ever. They'll probably take the full 10 days 

[bogof]

Will do. Migration request gone in, now I wait until they put me back onto Wholesale GEA. In the mean time it is still just as bad as ever. They'll probably take the full 10 days 

Finger's crossed it does the trick for you. 

[kitz]

I really hope this finally resolves the matter for you

>>  now trying to convince Openreach to do the same to theirs

It does seem weird that it only seems to be affecting Zen, and not just only at one location.

In some ways it has a weird almost congestion type feel to it.  Ive seen many situations where the ISP/SP has said no congestion but that did indeed turn out to be the case.  Way way to the dawn of adsl, > 2Mbps > maxdsl... and then the Plusnet congestion at the BTw MSILs.  That one dragged on for best part of a year and was a trigger to them moving from shared to dedicated WBMC and I'd been saying from early on I suspected the BTw MSILs.  BTw/Openreach isnt always very good at spotting congestion. Just saying monitoring isnt always effective.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Plusnet were a nightmare for some time, between that and them pioneering traffic shaping which was outright broken for me - it used to throttle my Usenet 24/7 when it was supposed to only kick in after a given amount of data per month.  Was a big reason I left them at the time, given they were my first ISP as I could pay cash on hand as I was unable to get a debit card back then.

[Jasonkruys]

For those following, an update with no update.

Still waiting for the reverse migration - have chased them today as today will be the 12th day since they put the request on the system. Perhaps they meant 10 working days......