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View Full Version : what is a reasonable expectation?


berkut
07-06-2010, 18:04
sorry for the monologue but here goes

I have been a customer for 8 years. Originally had TV, BB and phone but got so fed up with the issues I had with the TV service (box freezing and needing rebooted several times per day) that I went to Sky about 5-6 years ago but kept BB and phone with NTL (VM).

Every 6-8 months or so I suffer a problem with BB and it goes wonky, I complain and get an engineer who replaces the modem and everything is OK for another 6-8 months or so.

About 2-3 years ago same cycle and the engineer arrived, I told my tale of woe he tested and the signals were OK. He tested again this time for analogue frequencies and hey presto one of those was down. He said this indicated a possible fault on the cable or the cable is losing too much signal due to distance from cab as it is RG6 cable (approx 110m-120m taking into consideration the internal cable) and that I would probably benefit from a re-pull putting in RG11 cable instead. He called his manager and got told no replace the modem.

The cycle continues and I am now on my 3 modem since then.

Over the last while I have been having to reboot my cable modem once or twice a week or my firewall (IPCop) to get connectivity going again. I accepted this as an inconvenience as most of the time the BB is fine and put it down to either engineering work or something being done to kick cloned modems (the sooner these are stopped the better IMO)

Over the last 3 weeks or so my connection has been almost unusable sometimes going off from 30mins to hours at a time (last Wed was 6 hours the week before 10 hours) with upstream power registering 55.2 to as high as 58.

I had an engineer out 2 weeks ago, he tested my levels and all were OK he change the connector in the street cabinet and also the isolator in the house and the drop cable. All was OK for 2 days or so on the Friday I was offline most of the day again.

I called on the Saturday morning ( 1 week ago) and spoke to support in Liverpool the guy i spoke to said he couldn't see anything wrong with the modem at that time, I said the connection was working but had been off and that the ready light was flashing (been a lot of this lately), this gave him an idea and he checked my upstream SNR and it was 20db he said this needed to be more than 28db and was most likely the cause of my problems and he booked an engineer for the Wed again 9-1.

Wed morning internet went down at 09:45 I called and spoke to someone else in Liverpool (I refuse to speak to India) and they added my upstream power level to the call (68) and confirmed I had an engineer that day. 2pm no engineer I called again and got told that no engineer was booked for me and none were available until Friday. I was not happy but after a long discussion it was decided as I was having V+ fitted on Saturday it was best to have this guy sort the problems.

Saturday the guy comes to fit the V+ and is not best pleased because it is not a simple swap out as my cable modem is in the upstairs bedroom and there is no split in the cable or drop in to the living room. Oh and also there is nothing he can do about my upstream... that is networks. He fits the V+ box and jiggles my connection in the cabinet and my upstream seems to settle at 53 and all seems stable.

Monday - today - internet down again and V+ menus hanging (one of the reasons for ditching TV years ago) I call again. The girl I spoke to in Liverpool watches my modem go offline and online for no apparent reason, I suggested checking the upstream SNR... it is 18db... she has booked the lead tech for the area to visit on Wednesday 4-7 to have a look at all this.

The street cabinet has 3 x 24db taps in it the engineer last week said one of these could be doing with getting changed to 15db to boost the signal and maybe I could be doing with a re-pull (a few support people have mentioned this now) but you guessed it at the time there was nothing he could do about it

I have a big issue here and am wondering what is a reasonable expectation/course of action to have this fixed to my satisfaction...

I should add a couple of my neighbours are having problems with internet too.

And my internet connection has been down all of today again (no access from work to my e-mail server)

:mad:

Berkut

Chrysalis
07-06-2010, 20:24
first thing I would suggest if neighbours also have problems they should also ring.

after that give this 2nd visit a chance but if that then doesnt fix it then CEO office time.

pip08456
07-06-2010, 20:53
A look at the modem stats would be of help.

berkut
08-06-2010, 09:37
Modem is rebooting constantly again this morning...

There is not really much to tell on the modem stats other than what I have said already. Downstream power and SNR are fine and well within limits. The problem is upstream power and SNR

Upstream power at the moment is at 55.2 and upstream SNR can only be checked from the UBR but I would like to bet it is fluctuating like mad.

As I said also 2-3 years ago the engineer at that time was recommending a re-pull on my cable and the area tech manager vetoed it and only authorised a replacement modem as I only had phone and BB he stated it was not cost effective to do a re-pull for someone with only 1 service.

I am a reasonable person and do not expect to have perfect 100% availability and understand that things can go wrong. My main expectation is for the underlying issue to be resolved to minimise my issues.

What is angering me is that I have been putting up with this on an off for several years but it has been really bad over the last few weeks with internet being down for hours at a time and now after all these years they are saying maybe you need a re-pull on your cable...

I deliberately had V+ installed for a couple of reasons

1. ultimately it will save me money by ditching Sky (£23pm if I keep Sky movies and another £19 if I ditch them)
2. now that I have more than 1 service to the house (XL TV and XL BB... XL phone is not counted) they need to take my problem seriously

My main question is what is a reasonable expectation for some sort of compensation for not just 3 weeks of issues but for the loss of service and number of angry phone calls and time lost at work every 6-8 months over the last 8 years now that they are actually starting to acknowledge that the problem lies deeper than just replacing my cable modem and hoping for the best.



Berkut

broadbandking
09-06-2010, 08:34
A low SNR level can't be sorted out by a tech coming to your house, a network has to go out to the UBR and find out why the noise is causing the issue and sort it, plus if a tech feels you need a RG11 cable repull he should be able to book those in.

jb66
09-06-2010, 10:15
Snr upstream is a toughie as there is no tool the engineer has to check this. Also the modem does not display it either so it's hard to pinpoint what's causing the fault. It can be a bad connector/splitter.

berkut
09-06-2010, 10:55
broadband has been down for 30 hours now...

was talking to one of my neighbours this morning his has been off since yesterday and another neighbour is having issues as well.... so there is a deeper problem here than just my cable

I have the supervising technician coming to my house tonight... not holding my breath though that this will get fixed anytime soon

pip08456
09-06-2010, 13:39
From your post it would appear to be a local area issue.

berkut
09-06-2010, 13:45
according to broadband tech support there are no local issues or outages...

so either I am in a parallel universe or....

pip08456
09-06-2010, 13:47
Not really it could be local as in a cab issue.

jb66
09-06-2010, 14:12
A network tech needs to look at this

caph
09-06-2010, 19:42
Berkut, the VM cable network has been a nightmare for the past three weeks for a whole load of us so you're not alone on that score. God knows what they did to the network!

Nottingham seems to have settled down this week. Hopefully they'll get your area sorted out soon too.

berkut
10-06-2010, 12:45
so... the technician came out last night, as I thought he could not do anything and has referred to networks and apparently they will be here today sometime... it is now 12:30 have been offline for nearly 56 hours

He did tell me some interesting stuff though, apprently there are a lot of upgrades getting done for DOCSIS3 and that networks are changing thresholds and not rebalancing the street cabinets (his words not mine) as he is handling a lot of complaints in this area.

He also said that the 2 of my neighbours that are having issues are on 10Mbit which means that they are on the Cisco platform and because I am on 20Mbit I am on the Motorola platform and that this give an automatic 6db loss over the Cisco platform before even getting to the cab in the street so if my neighbours are having issues then I have no chance of getting any internet service until networks sort this.

He also tried changing the modem to see what a new modem did on the assumption that mine may be bad and it locked on (which mine does not do) but at 60-61 on upstream power level so he reckoned it was not my modem that was the issue.

this is getting to me now... according to the system CS have me logged as complaining about this since 31st May and it is now 10th June, but I had issues for a few days prior to the 31st before reporting it so it is now getting on for 2 solid weeks of problems...

I could go to ADSL but I am 1km from the exchange as the crow flies and the exchange only has ADSL Max and no LLU operators so the best I could hope for is 3-4Mbit. This is a huge drop from 20Mbit with VM... although 3-4Mbit right now would be preferable to nothing.



Berkut

berkut
10-06-2010, 15:36
Back online again after 57 hours of no internet connectivity. Not had any network engineer at the door and have not seen any vans at the cabinet in the street so the old black magic is back at work again.

Wonder how long I will be online for this time....

berkut
15-06-2010, 13:20
Finally it is fixed...

Networks eventually took the fault seriously and after various tests to investigate they finished up replacing the kit in the street cabinet even though the kit in the street cabinet passed all tests.

Upstream is now a healthy 44.7 dBmV instead of 55.2 dBmV

bluebrigade
15-06-2010, 16:06
Finally it is fixed...

Networks eventually took the fault seriously and after various tests to investigate they finished up replacing the kit in the street cabinet even though the kit in the street cabinet passed all tests.

Upstream is now a healthy 44.7 dBmV instead of 55.2 dBmV

You are lucky, been having similar problems since last November and im on the 50mb flagship service.

Agree with the black magic as the same thing happened to me, it was as if a switch was flicked and I had the full 50mb again.

However that was in January and im back to the same old problem now.

Just wrote a lengthy complaint, did you get any compensation then?

berkut
15-06-2010, 17:03
got 1 month refund on my broadband.. not brilliant but better than nothing I suppose.

most important to me is having the problem fixed and having a stable connection as I work from home sometimes and VPN is a nightmare on an unstable connection.