Kitz Forum
Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: broadstairs on July 13, 2016, 09:50:46 AM
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Posted here because it is not specific to one type of broadband.
I was chatting to a friend last night who happens to live in Thanet as well and the chat got round to broadband and I was explaining my frustration with the problems I have had recently. He then said 'Oh our broadband drops regularly maybe several times per day' so I aid 'Oh really have you complained' to which he replied 'No it always comes back in the end'. He is with Plusnet I believe.
Anyway it made me stop and think just how many people are like him, I suspect many thousands across the country. Those of us who frequent here see probably an unrepresentative sample of users. I'm sure ISPs are rubbing their hands with glee about this because if everyone like my friend complained about poor service then they would have so many complaints the process would grind to a halt.
Stuart
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Persistence and letter writing seems to help. I logged a complaint with both my isp and openreach. Look at amount of engineers I have had in the past with many just plugging in their tester to say no fault and telling me thats the best my line would support! Its taken 6 months and a lot of grief but finally have gone from 49mb when I started my 80/20 to my connection now at 77mb, I cant understand why it took so much effort when many an openreach engineer has been but not fixed anything. Seems like I was the only one that believed there was a problem. Duff tails in the cabinet in the end but this was never verified until yesterday... my setup/line/socket was never the issue.
I am thankfull it now appears to be resolved and for the resource put into it but it shouldnt be so dificult should it?
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The majority don't have a clue, I know someone who's often complained about his slow broadband, he gets about 8mbps and works from home. When I checked he could get the full 80/20 fttc. I told him this month's ago, may be even a year ago, he had phoned his ISP but they said he was on the fastest package his line supports :wall: So I told him to move ISP as his current one obviously doesn't have a clue! But alas he still hasn't done anything.
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This is the issue with all non-commercial end users, they have zero clout with their suppliers. When I worked (for a very large multi-national computer corporation) when asked by to jump by say one of the UK big Banks the only asnwer we could give was 'How High!', likewise if we asked BT to jump because we had an issue with a line they provided their only response was again 'How High!'.
The issue for us lowly private end users is to get enough people to complain which means as you have found and I am finding takes a lot of persistence and effort which probably 90% of EUs will not bother with. Even switching ISPs is no good if you have any issue with the bit OR own as the bug will move with you!
@ronski Yes there is a natural inertia with a lot of folks!
Stuart
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Yeap. Agreed. I think a lot of people move hoping problems will be resolved but I am sure there are more infastructure problems than end users are aware of potentially causing faults like I have experienced.
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The REIN technician who came last week and was talking about the two house's (owned by the same person/landlord !) who probably has used the same type of security camera's on them that's sending out lots of 'REIN' interference, because the houses around our lane are not close to each other, unless they have underground BT feeds like mine then they have a very long Aerial 'Drop Wire' feeds and this is sending out a lots of this REIN to other end users.
I said this would be affecting there broadband too, yes he said but they would just think because they live in the country side it normal to get poor broadband, they do not understand about broadband.
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Best thing to do if you have a line fault is raise it with the CEO of Openreach, that's what we did.
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No it's not. It's not the best thing at all.
If everyone doesn't exhaust the correct channels for reporting faults and elects to write the CEO, what do you think happens to the people with genuine faults and the bags of mails/letters they get? They get dumped to the normal support channels, diluting those with genuine escalations, that's what.
If you look at some of the examples above, it's people that don't KNOW (or care, in some instances) about the faults/issues - not that action hasn't been taken.
ISP is the first route of redress, not the CEO. That's just foolish.
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I partly agree and disagree with that statement, yes you may feel that reporting straight to the CEO is apparently foolish. But, I'm afraid when the line fault is quite a significant external one, the only way to report this is to the CEO when the normal channels don't have a clue what you're talking about. That's what the Openreach engineer I personally know advised us to do.
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You won't convince me otherwise.
If you KNOW that there is a full length issue, then you just need to report an issue. If it's faulty, then I'm sure the systems will detect as much. Failing that, the attending engineer can check and you can tell him why you think that and he can use that as part of his diagnosis.
Going straight to the CEO (or the teams they get passed down too, which are typically just a bunch of people within the normal channels anyway, but with a bit of followup and accountability) will just water down the route for people with actual faults.
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I also believe that you have to exhaust all the normal channels first otherwise all that will happen is that you get a 'black mark' against your name with the CEO. If it is a long term on going fault and you have exhausted all normal channels and still getting nowhere that is the correct time to start escalating the issue above the pay grade of normal mortals in the support chain.
Stuart
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Going straight to the CEO (or the teams they get passed down too, which are typically just a bunch of people within the normal channels anyway, but with a bit of followup and accountability) will just water down the route for people with actual faults.
Wait a minute, "actual faults", I had an "actual fault"!?
Oh, and Stuart, I'm not stupid, I did exhaust all the normal channels before we contacted the CEO of Openreach, why would I contact her/him straight away?
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Oh, and Stuart, I'm not stupid, I did exhaust all the normal channels before we contacted the CEO of Openreach, why would I contact her/him straight away?
Because you wrote:
Best thing to do if you have a line fault is raise it with the CEO of Openreach, that's what we did.
I didn't see that you suggested to exhaust ISP support first in your post. Apologies.
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Doesn't anyone think it could be a reasonable choice to not make a big fuss about a relatively minor issue that doesn't really bother you that much? As in, decide to just live with it.
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@ejs yes everyone has a choice and if your issue is a minor one which does not inconvenience you then that's fine, however I have also come across people who had serious problems and were moaning like mad but done nothing about it.
Stuart
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I'm not disputing there are people with faults out there who just 'put up with it'. But in my experience, both in Telecoms and the real world, peoples stories are usually enhanced for greater impact.
I particularly love the EU who will begin to tell me they haven't had a connection for weeks, when I politely interrupt them to explain I can see they've had a working PPP Session for the last 3 days (the maximum we engineers can see on WHOOSH). I will then go on to say that I can also see their circuit is 'erroring' far more than it should, or that their attenuation is wobbly (all put over in laymans terms of course).
This basically lets them know I know they're over-egging the situation, but rather than fully embarrass them, move the conversation onto the fact I can see something is amiss with their circuit from initial remote viewing of data-graphs.
What I'm trying to say is most folk will generally appease the guy doing the moaning, by trying to empathise with a similar story of great woe. When it boils down to it though, and when put on the spot ...... it will turn out it's nothing like the yarn they created down the pub over a pint.
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Because you wrote:
I didn't see that you suggested to exhaust ISP support first in your post. Apologies.
Don't apologise, it was my mistake. :)
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@BS I agree with you that this does happen sometimes, probably more than folks realise. However I do also believe that there are far more issues which go unreported than many think. Some folks simply have no idea what is happening to their connection simply because when they need it it works albeit slower than perhaps it should.
Take for example my neighbour across the street fed from the same pole as me, I happened to ask him a couple of weeks ago if he had had any issues with his broadband recently as I was as we know having problems, his response was 'OK I can only get about 30mbps which is a bit slow' so I said before I had my recent issues I was getting 64mbps pretty constantly, at which point he said he would complain to BT (his ISP) because he wanted faster speeds (I think he runs a business from home - although not absolutely sure about that). Now I have no idea if he complained or what if any outcome there was (apart from an OR van visited him a few days ago). However prior to our discussion he had no idea he ought to get significantly faster speeds than he was.
There is a huge amount of misinformation out there about broadband and a lot of misunderstanding as well. Many EUs have no idea what they should be getting in terms of speed or service and that I think is the main point. One which BT and other ISPs have no desire to rectify because it will hit their bottom line, and not one which OFCOM or anyone else feels is important enough to correct.
Stuart