Awesome Proactive Service from BigPipe

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ResponseMediaNZ

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#183940 4-Nov-2015 09:04

Just want to say great service from BigPipe yesterday.

Proactive email from them regarding the network issues that happened yesterday.

corksta

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#1420429 4-Nov-2015 09:21

Plus Twitter updates so yes definitely good service from them.

nakedmolerat

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#1420430 4-Nov-2015 09:23

Yep, agreed.

Good on you bigpipe.

Dairyxox

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#1420434 4-Nov-2015 09:29

I've found their email support to be excellent too.
About 10 minutes turn around time at 9pm on a Friday evening.

Thumbs up O Bigpipe

JoshBigpipe

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#1420446 4-Nov-2015 09:44

Hey, thanks for that. Really good to know that it's appreciated!

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sultanoswing

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#1421014 4-Nov-2015 17:06

I wouldn't mind them being a bit more awesome & proactive with UFB in Palmerston North...

JoshBigpipe

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#1421024 4-Nov-2015 17:18

sultanoswing: I wouldn't mind them being a bit more awesome & proactive with UFB in Palmerston North...

We'd like that too. The good news is, *hopefully* we should have something in place there before the New Year rolls around. Geekzone will be among the first to know, so watch this space!

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DaveB

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#1422795 7-Nov-2015 12:20

Impressive ISP. Everything has surpassed my expectations so far.

youngs

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#1422837 7-Nov-2015 13:50

My first ISP that actually emailed me a network outage notification. Well done Big Pipe

richms

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#1422840 7-Nov-2015 13:57

Im not to fussed about the email as twitter and facebook are better ways to find information like that which is more useful in realtime. Luckily bigpipe do both so its a double win.

Richard rich.ms

cadman

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#1423099 8-Nov-2015 12:09

As a BigPipe customer since day one, I too was impressed by this proactive stance. It must surely pay off in terms of not having to field the same question from hordes of customers who don't know that it's already being looked into.

But what I wasn't so impressed with was an outage on my VDSL last Saturday.

I'd seen a Chorus technician fiddling with the contents of the grey post at the end of the driveway at about 10:30am. A couple of hours later I noticed that I had really poor internet speed and when I logged into the admin console I noticed that the modem was only syncing at 0.75Mbps down and 4.2Mbps up (yes, that way around) and that there had been a reconnect from around the time I'd spotted the Chorus technician.

So I rebooted the modem and that made no difference to the sync speed. Clearly this was unlikely to be an issue on my side of the demarcation. So I immediately contacted BigPipe with this information - low sync speed, presence of the Chorus technician around that time and a screenshot of the admin console showing the sync speed. All pretty conclusive. Or so I thought.

In any case I was diddled about for the next 9 hours with emails back and forth asking about whether I'd done a speedtest over WiFi or ethernet (like that makes any difference at all when the sync speed is the problem I actually raised, not low bandwidth) and a whether I'd done an isolation test, which would be fair enough normally, but in the context of the fact the problem started around the time the Chorus technician was here was probably just a waste of time and of course I already knew there are no devices plugged in anywhere and there's a master filter installed.

So around 7pm I finally got the confirmation that Chorus will be visiting on Sunday, which to me given the information I'd provided in my first contact logically seemed should have just been initiated by them immediately after that.

So said Chorus technician turns up and sure enough there's a broken wire which he fixes. All is good in the world once again.

So I guess really my gripe is that the person I was dealing with at BigPipe seemed to be following a script and ignoring the information I'd compiled and provided in the hope of a speedy resolution and due to this it dragged out overnight.

One of the reasons I liked BigPipe (the first fixed line broadband ISP I've ever personally used) is their business model discourages non-technical users - the sort that think if there's only email support and the fixed line broadband is down, then how can you contact them to tell them, and people who like to pick up the telephone without doing any of their own troubleshooting and have their hand held as they're walked through it. I don't wish to subsidise lazy people.

It seems to me that perhaps BigPipe have lost their way in this regard and have started treating everyone like tech morons. Of the 4 or so minor issues I've had in the last 18 months they've usually been excellent and they've even followed up to make sure that the solution has endured. So I do hope this was just an isolated incident.

BigPipeNZ

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#1423157 8-Nov-2015 15:04

cadman: snip.

Hi Cadman,

thanks for the feedback, and sorry to hear you didn't feel our support was up to scratch in this situation.

You are quite right that the wifi request was unnecessary - we could definitely have saved an email (and a couple of hours) there. Will pass this onto the team to make sure our processes are correctly up to date here.

However, the other email, regarding isolation test, was still useful, since the chorus tech fiddling and your slowdown could easily be a coincidence,
Of course, you know that an isolation test won't do anything, but we don't know whether or not you have other devices or a master filter plugged in unless you tell us that in the initial email - so we have to ask that question to eliminate that as a possible cause.
(you'd be surprised how often people attribute slowdowns to this sort of thing - it only takes someone seeing a chorus van in the street before all sorts of things get attributed to them, and the last thing you want is a $150 'no fault found' fee)

Just a minor correction though to your post above. I've looked at the case and can see you logged the issue at 3pm on the saturday, then, after 2 emails back and forth (1 asking about wifi, and 1 asking for isolation test), we logged the fault at 7.50pm - so it was around 5 hours, not 9 before we ordered the tech, and then issue was fixed by about ~1.30pm on Sunday (the next day)

It's very rare for chorus to schedule a tech the same day as a fault is logged (especially on a weekend), so even if we had logged the fault as soon as we received your initial email at 3pm on saturday, it almost certainly wouldn't have been fixed any faster.

At any rate, thanks for the feedback, definitely appreciated.

Just FYI - We're in the process of redesigning the 'contact us' form at the moment (amongst other things) - so will definitely build this sort of thing in - prompting for specific things, rather than a more generic "tell us what you've already tried" The more things we know you've tried or eliminated up front, the faster we can get onto booking a tech for you.

Cheers

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cadman

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#1423383 8-Nov-2015 23:05

BigPipeNZ:
cadman: snip.

Hi Cadman,

thanks for the feedback, and sorry to hear you didn't feel our support was up to scratch in this situation.

You are quite right that the wifi request was unnecessary - we could definitely have saved an email (and a couple of hours) there. Will pass this onto the team to make sure our processes are correctly up to date here.

However, the other email, regarding isolation test, was still useful, since the chorus tech fiddling and your slowdown could easily be a coincidence,
Of course, you know that an isolation test won't do anything, but we don't know whether or not you have other devices or a master filter plugged in unless you tell us that in the initial email - so we have to ask that question to eliminate that as a possible cause.
(you'd be surprised how often people attribute slowdowns to this sort of thing - it only takes someone seeing a chorus van in the street before all sorts of things get attributed to them, and the last thing you want is a $150 'no fault found' fee)

Just a minor correction though to your post above. I've looked at the case and can see you logged the issue at 3pm on the saturday, then, after 2 emails back and forth (1 asking about wifi, and 1 asking for isolation test), we logged the fault at 7.50pm - so it was around 5 hours, not 9 before we ordered the tech, and then issue was fixed by about ~1.30pm on Sunday (the next day)

It's very rare for chorus to schedule a tech the same day as a fault is logged (especially on a weekend), so even if we had logged the fault as soon as we received your initial email at 3pm on saturday, it almost certainly wouldn't have been fixed any faster.

At any rate, thanks for the feedback, definitely appreciated.

Just FYI - We're in the process of redesigning the 'contact us' form at the moment (amongst other things) - so will definitely build this sort of thing in - prompting for specific things, rather than a more generic "tell us what you've already tried" The more things we know you've tried or eliminated up front, the faster we can get onto booking a tech for you.

Cheers

You're right - I was going off the time I took the screenshot and the donotreply@bigpipe.co.nz fault confirmation email was 3pm. My memory was playing tricks.

I can appreciate the caution regarding a potential internal fault and the $150 cost of Chorus not finding one on their side but with you having dealt with me in the past and being able to see the exchanges, I'd expect even the first tier support to recognise I'm no technotard. I do hate to waste other people's time so I always do everything I can to remove all doubt of a fault on my part - that doesn't just go for internet either.

Perhaps you can make a note on my account that I'll only contact support once I'm sure it's not a problem my end and that there's a master filter wired to a single BT jackpoint with CAT5E and no dead legs, all properly terminated.

You're also correct that the presence of the tech and the slowdown being caused by something else could be a coincidence, but with the reconnect time (which I may not have mentioned but suspect I did) you'd have to agree that would be, on the balance of probabilities and considering the general circumstances, highly unlikely.

I know what you mean about people wrongly correlating one thing with another too - I see it all the time myself.

I'm not angry or annoyed - just a tiny bit disappointed. It certainly won't affect my recommendation of BigPipe to anyone I think their service fits - you'd be surprised how many people haven't even heard of you guys.

I hope to never have to use the contact form again, even in its new and improved format, but I suspect with the anti-Midas Chorus technicians, it won't be long before I do.

joshhill96

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#1423390 8-Nov-2015 23:34

Awesome stuff BigPipe! Thumbs Up!