Paul K
31-08-2004, 10:45
To set the scene..
My sister decided that she wanted her new PC hooked up to broadband so NTL were contacted to have the installation done and the STB enabled again since it was disconnected after I moved out.
No problem says helfpul NTL person on the phone who takes the account change order and processes it, "We'll enable the STB on Friday and the installer will be there to complete the installation for you. It will be all working for you on Friday :)"
(You must be able to hear my laughter at the thought of that ;) )
Fast forward to Friday...
NTL installation man arrived on Friday with the obigatory USB Dongle (not used), ethernet cable (used) and CDROM (No ta), he then proceeded to plug the cable into the STB and laid it against the skirting board round the room to the PC.
At this point the installation ends since the engineer decides his job here is done so he hands over the CD ROM and a little white box (dongle) and leaves.
Fast forward to Sunday when we travel up for a visit at which point I check the installation as my sister wants it actually working lol I hook up the ethernet to the onboard Ethernet Connection, power cycle the STB and power up the PC.
Ok, time to fire up IE and register the PC against the account....
Nothing
Mmmmm... check STB, what a suprise the box is not enabled, check other 2 STB's in house (there are 3 and last time they enabled the wrong one first time)....
Nothing, not a single STB in the house is enabled for the Broadband feed 2 days after it was supposed to be.
Now remember this is Sunday afternoon of the "Harmony" upgrade and no CS to call so I leave a sheet of instructions for them in regards to installing AV software and Firewall as soon as its working and tell them I will ring CS on Monday to ask them to ping the correct STB.
Early Monday morning a phone call drags me out of bed :mad: and it's my mum on the phone, my sister had followed my instructions and power cycled the STB that evening and checked for the tier information to be added to it only to find they had actually pinged the wrong STB and the one upstairs is now enabled :( Yay!
Hellllo Monday....
Phone call to CS goes well with the young man admitting that the right box hasn't been pinged (let's face it, how could it be since the installation bloke never wrote the STB number down while he was there ;) ) and since I have the number of the right box (I'm not as daft as the installer :p: ) he pings the STB there and then. Nice :)
One phone call home and instructions are given for my sister to follow the sheet of information I left to register the account etc when she gets home.....
Half an hour later my nephew is on the phone telling me the connection won't work, keeps 404'ing :mad:
"Have you rebooted the PC and STB?"
"Yes"
"Properly?"
"Yeah, I followed the instructions"
Another phone call to support to be told that the box is enabled and should be working fine..."Must be the computer settings"
"er nope those are ok ta, I'll ring them back and see what's going on"
So on the phone again....
"Try the browser, they say it should be working..."
"Nope"
"Type in the address manually and try again.."
"Oh hang on it's working now"
So an hour after it was pinged the STB finally gets it's config file and opens up. 2 mins later and we are up and running :)
And so the question...
So is this the current installation standard or did the bloke swing the lead since he knew that the people in the house didn't know anything about the installation process?
I'm only asking as
1. He never checked to make sure the STB was ready to go,
2. He only connected the cable to the STB so he was never going to know if a connection was available and working,
3. He didn't give them any information or instructions to follow to get it running and
4. He didn't even tell them what the Ethernet to USB adaptor or the CDROM was for :confused:
To me that is not good enough, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew what to look at and what to do my sister would have been stuck on the phone for ages today as she was at work on Monday :(
It seems a shame that there are installers like this out there as I know that there are a lot of good ones too, these ones just cause problems for everyone including CS who bear the brunt of the annoyance on the phones.
My sister decided that she wanted her new PC hooked up to broadband so NTL were contacted to have the installation done and the STB enabled again since it was disconnected after I moved out.
No problem says helfpul NTL person on the phone who takes the account change order and processes it, "We'll enable the STB on Friday and the installer will be there to complete the installation for you. It will be all working for you on Friday :)"
(You must be able to hear my laughter at the thought of that ;) )
Fast forward to Friday...
NTL installation man arrived on Friday with the obigatory USB Dongle (not used), ethernet cable (used) and CDROM (No ta), he then proceeded to plug the cable into the STB and laid it against the skirting board round the room to the PC.
At this point the installation ends since the engineer decides his job here is done so he hands over the CD ROM and a little white box (dongle) and leaves.
Fast forward to Sunday when we travel up for a visit at which point I check the installation as my sister wants it actually working lol I hook up the ethernet to the onboard Ethernet Connection, power cycle the STB and power up the PC.
Ok, time to fire up IE and register the PC against the account....
Nothing
Mmmmm... check STB, what a suprise the box is not enabled, check other 2 STB's in house (there are 3 and last time they enabled the wrong one first time)....
Nothing, not a single STB in the house is enabled for the Broadband feed 2 days after it was supposed to be.
Now remember this is Sunday afternoon of the "Harmony" upgrade and no CS to call so I leave a sheet of instructions for them in regards to installing AV software and Firewall as soon as its working and tell them I will ring CS on Monday to ask them to ping the correct STB.
Early Monday morning a phone call drags me out of bed :mad: and it's my mum on the phone, my sister had followed my instructions and power cycled the STB that evening and checked for the tier information to be added to it only to find they had actually pinged the wrong STB and the one upstairs is now enabled :( Yay!
Hellllo Monday....
Phone call to CS goes well with the young man admitting that the right box hasn't been pinged (let's face it, how could it be since the installation bloke never wrote the STB number down while he was there ;) ) and since I have the number of the right box (I'm not as daft as the installer :p: ) he pings the STB there and then. Nice :)
One phone call home and instructions are given for my sister to follow the sheet of information I left to register the account etc when she gets home.....
Half an hour later my nephew is on the phone telling me the connection won't work, keeps 404'ing :mad:
"Have you rebooted the PC and STB?"
"Yes"
"Properly?"
"Yeah, I followed the instructions"
Another phone call to support to be told that the box is enabled and should be working fine..."Must be the computer settings"
"er nope those are ok ta, I'll ring them back and see what's going on"
So on the phone again....
"Try the browser, they say it should be working..."
"Nope"
"Type in the address manually and try again.."
"Oh hang on it's working now"
So an hour after it was pinged the STB finally gets it's config file and opens up. 2 mins later and we are up and running :)
And so the question...
So is this the current installation standard or did the bloke swing the lead since he knew that the people in the house didn't know anything about the installation process?
I'm only asking as
1. He never checked to make sure the STB was ready to go,
2. He only connected the cable to the STB so he was never going to know if a connection was available and working,
3. He didn't give them any information or instructions to follow to get it running and
4. He didn't even tell them what the Ethernet to USB adaptor or the CDROM was for :confused:
To me that is not good enough, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew what to look at and what to do my sister would have been stuck on the phone for ages today as she was at work on Monday :(
It seems a shame that there are installers like this out there as I know that there are a lot of good ones too, these ones just cause problems for everyone including CS who bear the brunt of the annoyance on the phones.