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78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

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Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#41

Post by phil21 »

phtrivier wrote: post #39

Forza to the poor soul navigating this (not an insurmountable problem, especially on 2020's scale, but annoying for sure.) Anecdotally, it seems to me like this kind of horror stories only happens with ISP/Telco (to the point were I dread switching ISP for years) Is that just an impression ? Was there an industry as prone to mishandle basic customer service like this in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc... Before ISP came…

It started when vendor lock-in began, which was the late 90's/early 2000's when dial-up died and broadband took over.

Before that the phone company was the one with the poor customer service, but nothing at this level that I recall.

Dial-up days were the golden years for the ISP business. When every marginal NFL city had 30+ ISPs to choose from, and switching was simply changing a dial-in number you actually had decent competition. You had any choice you could think of - want a high quality ISP catering to highly technical users? Done. Want an uber-cheap ISP catering to the masses? Got you.

This all went away and service went greatly downhill once you had 1 or 2 options to choose from in the DSL/cable/fiber era.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#42

Post by phtrivier »

phil21 wrote: post #41
phtrivier wrote: post #39

Forza to the poor soul navigating this (not an insurmountable problem, especially on 2020's scale, but annoying for sure.) Anecdotally, it seems to me like this kind of horror stories only happens with ISP/Telco (to the point were I dread switching ISP for years) Is that just an impression ? Was there an industry as prone to mishandle basic customer service like this in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc... Before ISP came…

It started when vendor lock-in began, which was the late 90's/early 2000's when dial-up died and broadband took over. Before that the phone company was the one with the poor customer service, but nothing at this level that I recall. Dial-up days were the golden years for the ISP business. When every marginal NFL city had 30+ ISPs to choose from, and switching was simply changing a dial-in number you actually had dece…

So this is one of those situations were either "a single monopoly with great customer service and / or a sense of public mission" and "lots and lots of competition in a very fluid market" can be sweet spots, but anything in between is bound to fail ?

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#43

Post by defanor »

kawsper wrote: post #37
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zen were terrible when we used them at home. Having used Zen in the past I was expecting better. They eventually provided a service, but it took longer than it should have and there were a lot of unnecessary mistakes and support calls along the way. We were literally trying to get them to work through a set up procedure they had somehow forgotten to do - on Christmas Eve, which was at least a week later than it shoul…

Agreed about Zen, we experience random dropouts at night sometimes for hours, I don't know if they are doing unannounced infrastructure changes or what it is.

I've observed it from the other side (failing to connect to a Zen customer for more than an hour), and additionally the zen.co.uk website refused to serve me either directly or via Tor when I tried to check its status and/or a looking glass service (though not recalling finding those anyway, when I've finally connected via a private server).

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#44

Post by PaulKeeble »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23
jon-wood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to talk to ISPs that target themselves at business use, rather than consumer ISPs who are indeed all in a race to the bottom, with a side-serving of barely different custom routers. Zen Internet (zen.co.uk) have pricing comparable to consumer ISPs, but provide significantly better service, and have support staff who can actually fix your problems. Andrews & Arnold (aaisp.net.uk) are very much priced for busi…

Zen were terrible when we used them at home. Having used Zen in the past I was expecting better. They eventually provided a service, but it took longer than it should have and there were a lot of unnecessary mistakes and support calls along the way. We were literally trying to get them to work through a set up procedure they had somehow forgotten to do - on Christmas Eve, which was at least a week later than it shoul…

Zen used to be good, back in the early 2000s they had amazing support. But they like most of the other ISPs have been racing to the bottom and they are a shadow of their former self. Unlike Sky and Plus.net and such its not an acquisition issue it just seems to be the quality of what they do has dropped substantially over the years. They remain one of the better ones but that is only because the service is that bad at Sky/Plus.net/EE/BT that it is a low bar to pass.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#45

Post by michaelt »

1_player wrote: post #19
3dbrows wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAISP has an excellent product. Their sales team wasn't the easiest to deal with (pretty brusque in my experience), but in the ~15 months I've been with them, the connection has been rock-solid and never throttled. You do pay for it though (£45/month bottom line for ~75Mbps).

Sounds expensive, and looks like they have monthly download limits. I've been using Zen (though I explained my issues in a sibling comment) and I've never been throttled either, nor capped, with excellent latency round the clock. Miles ahead than any Virgin offering, that's for sure. What does AAISP do better to be so expensive compared to the competition?

> What does AAISP do better to be so expensive compared to the competition?

1. It's more expensive, but not that expensive considering I use the internet for 12+ hours per day, and I earn an IT professional's salary. At a £15/month premium over other ISPs, it's a far cheaper luxury than a fancy car, a foreign holiday, or a pet.

2. ISPs I've used in the past have had truly shitty support - no matter how often you have problems, they'll just tell you to restart your router and close your ticket. AAISP claims to have support that can actually investigate and solve problems. I wouldn't know, as I've never had to contact their support.

3. I respect their pro-privacy/anti-censorship stance.

4. Many ISPs that are "unlimited" do have limits, they just won't tell you what they are or if you're close to them. They'll be in small print like a "fair use policy". Having spent a month throttled by Zen (admittedly years ago) I'll take an explicit limit over a mystery one. And AAISP's limit is more than enough for my purposes.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#46

Post by qz2 »

lmb wrote: post #21
1_player wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was extremely happy with Zen, so happy I upgraded from 76 to 330 Mb in June. Which requires a G.Fast modem and having to deal with OpenReach. Since upgrading I've been having a couple 30-seconds long disconnections every day. Zen delegates any responsibility to OpenReach, and the latter has sent an engineer [1] which hasn't found anything wrong _on my end_ (of course), so I have to pay them 165+VAT for the call. An…

Total shot in the dark: I had a similar problem, it turned out the power supply for the router was faulty.

Same thing happened to me. I actually replaced the power supply with a 35 year old HP bench supply for a week to compare.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#47

Post by DanBC »

chrisseaton wrote: post #27
DanBC wrote: post #22

One of the mistakes people make in situations like this is to make all their communication (and complaints) via telephone. Start writing real letters, on paper, in an envelope, with a stamp. Get proof of posting (but not proof of delivery) and start building up a paper trail. This way you get to show them what they promised, and that they didn't deliver that when they said they would. Learn how to write a complaint l…

Why not proof of delivery?

In England proof of sending is enough for the courts, and proof of delivery gives the receiver chance to reject the post and then say they didn't get it.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#48

Post by jon-wood »

chrisseaton wrote: post #20
arethuza wrote: post #2

All ISPs I have dealt with in the UK seem to be in a race to the bottom to provide the worst possible customer service. We recently had a problem with BT Broadband and got the run around for a few weeks and only got any attention when I submitted an official complaint. Does anyone have any recommendations for UK ISPs that have decent customer service?

It must genuinely be extremely hard to provide good customer service. You must get a huge number of people phoning up with unfathomable problems related to their computer set ups that waste your time and aren't actually something that is your fault.

My favourite story from the support guys when I was working for an ISP was an old lady they’d been talking to for ages trying to work out the problem. Eventually they asked her to restart the router, she seemed utterly baffled as to what they were talking about, but eventually they managed to describe it in a way she understood.

Her response was “oh that thing, I took it out of the box”. She’d been paying for an internet connection for the previous two years, while never connecting to anything but her neighbour’s WiFi.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#49

Post by 3dbrows »

1_player wrote: post #19
3dbrows wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAISP has an excellent product. Their sales team wasn't the easiest to deal with (pretty brusque in my experience), but in the ~15 months I've been with them, the connection has been rock-solid and never throttled. You do pay for it though (£45/month bottom line for ~75Mbps).

Sounds expensive, and looks like they have monthly download limits. I've been using Zen (though I explained my issues in a sibling comment) and I've never been throttled either, nor capped, with excellent latency round the clock. Miles ahead than any Virgin offering, that's for sure. What does AAISP do better to be so expensive compared to the competition?

My only recent comparison is with Virgin Media, whom I'm sure we both agree has awful support.

Perhaps I should look into Zen. They are the other one I hear good things about. AAISP does have a 300GB monthly limit (extensible for a fee) but I've never exhausted it, even with two people WFH and nightly TV streaming.

AAISP have strong principles of privacy and not interfering in connections. (No NXDOMAIN web page injection, for example.) Also, exceptionally advanced line monitoring tooling and configuration - they let you see telecoms-engineer metrics and parameters about your line, for what that's worth.

The price I quoted includes line rental btw.

Re: 78 days, and still no broadband (Sky/Openreach, UK)

#50

Post by adamdoran »

As an update to yesterday: After emailing our local Member of Parliament (Rt Hon Dame Cheryl Gillian), and reaching out to Openreach CEO Clive Selley, we've finally been connected!

A member of the Chief Engineer Technical Escalation Team was put on the case, who arranged for a Senior Engineer to visit us today. The engineer arrived early this morning, and immediately set about finishing the copper run from several poles away to us. Before long he was back at our door to handle the internal wiring, which he quickly noted had an unnecessary route bridge (I don't know what this means, but it relates to internal copper wiring), which was degrading the signal. After the fix, he got us up and running at just under 30Mb/s (7Mb/s upload) - not stellar, but this will do until our longer term plans come to fruition (a joint FTTPoD order with many of our neighbours, using the Government's DCMS Gigabit Voucher Scheme to bring us 900Mb/s full-fibre).

My family and I are extremely grateful to Clive Selley and his team for taking a personal interest in our case, and local MP Cheryl Gillian's staff for playing their part. (sadly there was no response from Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch.)

The engineer who ultimately got us connected today told me he was in the process of studying for a masters in Nuclear Engineering, and I wish him the very best in that endeavour!

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