Internet Down?

Steve · Feb 18, 2013, 22:26:23

Whilst I agree but is there any other option but the enhanced care package, that's the only way currently to get OpenReach to pull their finger out for the end user.

karvala · Feb 18, 2013, 23:13:00

Yes, and I'm strongly opposed to the existence of those care packages in principle. That's like me working on your car, and breaking it while working on it. If you want me to repair the damage I did in a timely fashion, then sorry, but you'll have to pay me some more money.

Talk about a conflict of interest. I wouldn't be surprised if Openreach actually employed people to break connections in order to sell enhanced care packages. It was the same at Liverpool airport. I travelled through there a couple of times after they'd started their security "fast lane". Looked like a conflict of interest to me, since the only reason people needed a fast lane was because the same people who were asking for the money were clearly doing an inadequate job in processing everyone else. Turns out later that's exactly what they were doing - they had been specifically instructed to let the queues build up in order to get people to pay to be fast-tracked.

I think the moment you allow incentives (aka bribes) for people to perform better, you inadvertently but inevitably create a situation where they will choose to perform worse for everyone who is unable or unwilling to pay the bribe.

karvala · Feb 19, 2013, 11:03:15

DAY FOUR

Still no internet connection. More than 24hrs after I spoke to them yesterday, had not heard a word from IDNet. Phoned them, and it turns out the reason for that was that they hadn't bothered checking the status of the ticket at all. I suspect if I hadn't phoned them I would still be sitting here with the same situation this time tomorrow. It used to be the case if someone was on day four with no functional internet connection, that Simon, Tim or Miriam would be bending over backwards to try and get it sorted. Now apparently even logging in and checking the status of a ticket once per day is too much to ask. This is certainly not the company I joined nearly ten years ago.

Openreach in fact had got back to them to say that they had changed their minds and there was no problem on their equipment after all, and so we have an engineer's visit tomorrow. I'm guessing that either faceplate or the Openreach modem are the prime candidates now, although the modem lights are all behaving entirely normally. What are the odds the engineer will check things here, find that they're fine and start a game of tennis with the guys who check the exchange? Rather high, I suspect.

pctech · Feb 19, 2013, 11:44:53

I don't disagree with you at all but alas until Ofcom start getting tough on BT (unlikely) the situation is not likely to change.

Not sure why the Customer Service has got worse.

If you are on ADSL could always ring and ask for your MAC.

miriam_idnet · Feb 19, 2013, 14:10:32

Hi Karvala,

Sorry to hear you are dissatisfied with the support you have received. In fairness we are monitoring tickets as regularly as possible to ensure a swift resolution to customers issues and will normally respond to customers as soon as an update is received from BT.

As mentioned, originally this was thought to be a problem on BTs side but following further diagnostics they rejected the case back to us for engineering appointment.

I can assure you you would have received an update today but due to the work load at present it did not come first thing as you might normally expect.

Hopefully the engineer will resolve your issue tomorrow but should the case continue be assured the team will do everything to have your case resolved in a timely manner.

Miriam
IDNet Support

karvala · Feb 19, 2013, 15:18:41

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for the reply. Firstly about customer service:-

(1) I appreciate you're busy, but I don't believe you're busier than I am (I worked 105 hours last week), and if I can find time to make a call, so can you guys. If it's really that much of a problem, employ more staff. I'm sure you agree that being busy isn't a good excuse for lowering standards.

(2) You assure me that I would have received an update today, but where is the evidence? BT had posted an update on the case (I don't know when; it could even have been yesterday for all I know), but I hadn't received any contact by gone 11am when I called. Furthermore, on Sunday when the ticket was first posted I was promised a return call within half an hour with the results of a line test, and the call never happened. A couple of hours later I called for the results myself, and was again promised a return call and again it didn't happen; I waited until the end of the day and there was no return call at all. The only evidence I have in this case so far is that not a single promised contact has actually happened, so you'll understand my scepticism. Perhaps you are being let down by your choice of out-of-hour service?

(3) You need to way less deferential towards Openreach, who are taking you guys for a ride. There are plenty of documented cases on here about that, but look at my update below if you want yet more evidence.

-------------------

UPDATE

So, about an hour after a BT engineer's appointment is scheduled for tomorrow, and without any changes whatsoever at my end or as far as I'm aware at IDNet's end, the connection mysteriously comes back online. Anyone reading poor Niall's long-running case won't be surprised to see that pattern. Openreach have not, however, posted any update on their system I am told, and deny having made any changes. So what is it? An act of God that just happens to coincide with an engineer appointment being booked? Do me a favour. It is clear that it WAS an Openreach problem and they clearly HAVE done something.

The one remaining problem is that my IP profile is set artificially low to around 47Mbps (you can see from my sig that I was previously connecting at around 77Mbps, with a 74Mbps real download capability), but I'm told that the DLM should update the profile within 72 hours.

So here is the customer service challenge for you, Miriam: I, as the customer who has paid for the connection and been without it since Saturday, would like an explanation as to (i) what went wrong, and (ii) who fixed it. Your support team have already been clearly lied to by Openreach who claim they didn't do anything, and the lie is passed on to me, and I find that unacceptable. Time to call Openreach to account and not take any more of their BS.

Steve · Feb 19, 2013, 15:41:05

Unless you know your sync which I assume you don't your IP profile on FTTC is around 88.9% of sync, there should be no playing 'catch up' like on old adslmax.

miriam_idnet · Feb 19, 2013, 16:14:46

Hi Karvala,

Re: Customer Service Challenge.

BT held on to the claim that they had taken no action to resolve the issue at this stage. They had completed diagnostics to rule out a BT network issue and offered an engineer. However, on further investigation I have found the following report from Openreach:
op03/AI/00684476 ORSA103: Configuration Issue
no previous field engineering work
Outcome Code : Fail
Description : DS SNR Margin has exceeded threshold from real time check
MFL : CI

This confirms the issue was firmly on BTs side and identified as a configuration issue. Although I cannot get anyone in BT (not even our account manager) to admit they have taken action and there is no record of anyone physically making any changes relating to your service, they have clearly reconfigured your circuit resulting is the restoration of your connection, albeit with the slower speeds which you are now monitoring. Should the speeds not restore I am to understand you will be contacting us so we can continue the investigation for you.

Re: Customer service

I sincerely apologise for the continued lack of response you have received. It is understandable from the past experiences that you mention in your post that you would have little faith in the Support Team managing your case effectively and responding in a timely manner.

There is no excuse for failed call backs when they are promised and I am certainly taking this feedback on board and ensuring the Team, out of hours included, understand this is absolutely unacceptable. Changes will be made to improve the customer service experience immediately.

Miriam
IDNet Support

karvala · Feb 19, 2013, 19:05:48

Quote from: Steve on Feb 19, 2013, 15:41:05
Unless you know your sync which I assume you don't your IP profile on FTTC is around 88.9% of sync, there should be no playing 'catch up' like on old adslmax.

Thanks Steve. To be honest that's what I thought too, but the support guy said that while it should change it immediately, sometimes it fails and then gets updated within 72 hours instead. I'm not entirely convinced, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until Friday afternoon to see.

cavillas · Feb 19, 2013, 19:25:10

Watch out support staff and BT Miriam is on a mission.

karvala · Feb 19, 2013, 20:42:13

Many thanks Miriam, that's an excellent response. I think it's appalling how BT blatantly lie to you, and good that you're not trying to protect them.

I will keep an eye on the speed and be in touch if it doesn't recover by Friday afternoon, but otherwise I think we say that I'm a satisfied customer again.

Best wishes.

karvala · Feb 22, 2013, 13:20:12

Just a brief update on this for information more than anything else, in case anyone else comes across a similar situation: the IP profile on my connection is apparently increasing incrementally across a period of days. It started out around 47Mbps, then upped to around 56Mbps, and at the moment is around 71Mbps (and I may have not noticed some steps in between those). This has been over a period of three days. I'm hoping that next week it will eventually find it's way back to the 77Mbps that it was before the connection went down, but in any case this seems to be evidence that IP profiles are not always instantly reset on FTTC, but do seem to follow an ADSL-like incremental path.

Niall · Feb 24, 2013, 15:44:39

Miriam is rather ace. She phoned me out of the blue the other day and Brian and herself are monitoring what's going on with my line and are trying to find out what/who is resetting my line before engineer visits so my fault never gets fixed. Every company should have a Miriam

Clive · Feb 24, 2013, 21:15:40

Amen to that! Miriam is the greatest!

pctech · Feb 24, 2013, 21:44:00

Creep

Clive · Feb 24, 2013, 23:09:01

I know!

I can't help myself.

karvala · Feb 26, 2013, 18:22:28

And here we go again. Last week I am told that if the IP Profile has not updated itself back to where it was before the fault, I should contact support and they will ask BT to reset it. So I give it plenty of time to reset itself, it fails to reach the pre-fault level so I contact support, and now I'm told "we have no way of resetting it". It looks as though the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

It has been suggested that I should instead reboot my router, and this will reset the IP Profile. I have a strong suspicion that this in fact not true, given that the profile was already updating itself without the router needing to be rebooted, and which raises the question of why I'm being told this, but would anybody care to comment?

Simon · Feb 26, 2013, 18:24:50

Have you spoken to Miriam direct? As she had taken it on, perhaps she'd be the best one to talk to?

Steve · Feb 26, 2013, 18:59:19

I do wonder whether the advice you been given is for VDSL, sounds ok for adsl but

karvala · Feb 26, 2013, 20:03:55

Quote from: Steve on Feb 26, 2013, 18:59:19
I do wonder whether the advice you been given is for VDSL, sounds ok for adsl but

Yes, that was might feeling as well. Anyway, I tried it just to humour them, and surprise surprise, it made no difference at all to the IP profile. Once again, a member of the IDNet support team have shown themselves completely incapable of doing their job, and given a response which amounts to "go away". How many more times are we supposed to put up with this before someone gets handed their P45? My direct debit is due in a couple of weeks, and if anyone at IDNet thinks for a moment that I'll be handing over the money while this shambolic situation remains ongoing, they can think again. This is a two-way business contract, not a charitable contribution.

karvala · Feb 26, 2013, 20:08:13

Quote from: Simon on Feb 26, 2013, 18:24:50
Have you spoken to Miriam direct? As she had taken it on, perhaps she'd be the best one to talk to?

I haven't, not because I don't have an e-mail address for her and I've been too busy at work to take time out to get through to support on the phone, but I certainly will be tomorrow, and I will asking to make an official complaint against Nick, because I'm sick and tired of being fobbed off by morons who think their number one job remit is to make customers go away as fast as possible. If he wants to mess me around and waste my time, he'd better be prepared to take the consequences.

andrue · Feb 26, 2013, 20:11:05

Quote from: karvala on Feb 26, 2013, 18:22:28It has been suggested that I should instead reboot my router, and this will reset the IP Profile.

Sort of correct. The IP profile on 21cn (aka WB(M)C) is linked to the PPP session. If the modem resync occurs fast enough the PPP session sometimes hangs on and the profile won't change. By rebooting the router you are ensuring that a new PPP session is established and it will then pick up the latest profile.

karvala · Feb 26, 2013, 20:20:36

Quote from: andrue on Feb 26, 2013, 20:11:05
Sort of correct. The IP profile on 21cn (aka WB(M)C) is linked to the PPP session. If the modem resync occurs fast enough the PPP session sometimes hangs on and the profile won't change. By rebooting the router you are ensuring that a new PPP session is established and it will then pick up the latest profile.

Many thanks for the info, but it leaves me confused about one thing: how has my IP profile updated at least three times during which time there was no modem resync?

andrue · Feb 26, 2013, 21:13:12

Quote from: karvala on Feb 26, 2013, 20:20:36Many thanks for the info, but it leaves me confused about one thing: how has my IP profile updated at least three times during which time there was no modem resync?

Dunno. That doesn't jibe with how everyone thinks it works. I can see how a profile might be out of whack once and need a router kick to get it back in touch. In effect there's two profiles in play.

The 'official' profile is what DLM wants you to have.
The 'active' profile is what your session currently has.

I assume there's logic that stops the active profile being higher than the official profile but otherwise I don't think BT's systems care. Some ISPs might also have their own profile (PlusNet used to).

But there's clearly more here than we know. My line for instance has a fault that means every 60 days there's a leap in latency for 4 to 5 days which is eventually cured by a router reset. This last time Support created a test login for me and the fault was still present on the new login. So we know it's not a line issue and we know it's not specific to my account (which I think rules out the BRAS) but it means there's something else most likely specific to my physical connection (ie; in the cabinet) that can have an impact.

It's all very mysterious and personally I find it fascinating. Then again I only suffer for 4 or 5 days so can afford to be sanguine

karvala · Feb 27, 2013, 00:37:20

Yes, it all sounds rather mysterious. A quick bit of googling revealed other people who also have reported that their IP profile updated without needing to reboot their modems or routers , so the conventional wisdom that this isn't possible without a modem resync, and that even with a modem resync a router reboot might also be necessary, may not be correct or applicable in all cases.

The whole thing would be a good deal less mysterious if I didn't have a locked ECI modem. I haven't the time or inclination to crack it open and start soldering on serial connections, and without that it seems like it's impossible to get any stats out of it, so while I can say that I certainly haven't rebooted the modem, and my TBBM doesn't show any downtime except when I manually rebooted it today at the request of IDNet support, it's hard to be definitive without access to the modem uptime stats.

The info about the official and active profiles is interesting. I don't think that's related to my problem, though, because as far as I understand it, you are there describing the situation where the active profile has dropped but the lack of a new PPP session means that the official profile still looks high, giving an apparently inexplicable drop in performance. I've come across such cases, and that makes sense, although of course resyncing in such a situation will not actually improve the speed, it will simply allow the official profile to catch up with the active profile.

Or alternatively, do you mean the official profile is some sort of long-term target profile? That would be an interesting possibility, but then it begs the question: how does one find out what the official profile for a particular line is? The IP profile from something like the BT speedtester under this definition would presumably give the active profile. I have a suspicion that my official/target profile has been set to a lower value than it was before the fault occurred, and that the active profile has reached this value and remained steady on it for the last 5-6 days now, but it would good to get that confirmed.

I read your thread about the 60 day problem, and it's certainly mysterious. I think, as others have said in that thread, that knowing whether or not your neighbours/others connected to the cabinet, suffer from the same problem would be very useful to know. If so, it might imply something in the vicinity, though I don't really buy interference as causing those types of symptoms; otherwise it implies something timed in the cabinet or the exchange. It's certainly not something from your equipment or local line; that seems very clear.