Telecom Broadband down in CHC 50hrs and counting

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom Broadband down in CHC 50hrs and counting

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#94443 11-Dec-2011 15:12

Around 1:30pm on Friday 9th December our Telecom internet connection was lost.
After half an hour and several router reboots and even replacing the router I called Telecom.
20 minutes on hold and I'm told to restart my router, I explain I've done that several times and even used a different (Telecom provided) router, I'm then told to reset my router...
Finally 30 minutes into the call the help desk 'expert' sees there is a fault at the exchange and the problem should be sorted soon.

4 hours later I call again, I'm told to restart my router I explain that's most likely not going to solve their problem and they tell me there is no ETA on when it will be fixed and that 2000 customers are affected.
Frustrated that they can't tell me anything I go to the Telecom website to see what they have listed as their network status, 'Broadband network all clear'.

After 48 hours without internet and having huge withdrawal symptoms I call again expecting to be told to restart my router, thankfully not however they still have no idea when it will be fixed.
I was offered a dial up connection to get me through the outage however I respectfully declined.

So anyhow 48+ hours without internet and no communication from my ISP I find myself burning up my 2degrees mobile broadband but at least Telecom will compensate for the 48 hours which I'm assuming will be about $8.

Rant over... Anyone else still affected in Christchurch?

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637 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#556637 11-Dec-2011 16:30

chch here is fine

yeh we all get the same procedure if router is down

and you end up talking to someone in philipines or india

but you can be ask to be put through to the

nz aux center

had that once.. when they couldnt help

but in the end both times it was down for more then

5 hours was due to a new tech installing
another user on the street

unplugging us by mistake

and it took 3-4 days for the tech or another
to check the line

atleast they admitted the fault when asked
was it a dead router in their exchange

sounds like you might have to wait 3 working
days..
so being weekend will be longer

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rugrat

3088 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#556677 11-Dec-2011 19:01

Internet went off line some time friday, saturday. Went to use it saturday night dsl light on, internet light off.
Tivo usually keeps it logged on 24 / 7. First time had to power cycle in months, but it came back on ok after power cycling.

See what happens monday, maybe they don't work weekends.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#556741 11-Dec-2011 22:25

First world problems huh. Why should telecom compensate for the 48 hours IF (and thats a fairly big if) it is something totally out of their control? Yes there are plenty of times when human error and I understand that can be frustrating knowing some drongo disconnected you by mistake. Faultman will be working flat tack down there at the moment and will be doing so for the next 10 years. So yes it might take a couple if days for the list to be filtered down to you. It's just how it is. Everyone is in the same boat. Telecom, Telstra, slingshot, vodafone etc all have to lodge fault tickets on a first come first served basis.

numfarr

329 posts

Ultimate Geek

#556769 12-Dec-2011 06:29

Yes I had the same problem at about the same time. It took two half-hour-on-hold calls to get Slingshot support to submit a fault to Chorus, but after that it came back up on Saturday afternoon.

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#556837 12-Dec-2011 11:11

chevrolux: First world problems huh. Why should telecom compensate for the 48 hours IF (and thats a fairly big if) it is something totally out of their control? Yes there are plenty of times when human error and I understand that can be frustrating knowing some drongo disconnected you by mistake. Faultman will be working flat tack down there at the moment and will be doing so for the next 10 years. So yes it might take a couple if days for the list to be filtered down to you. It's just how it is. Everyone is in the same boat. Telecom, Telstra, slingshot, vodafone etc all have to lodge fault tickets on a first come first served basis.

This wasn't human error there was a problem at the exchange (overheating) and they told me it was affecting 2000 customers - this is why they would compensate - it's not force majeure. Anyhow I'm not at all concerned about a few dollars.

I just want to know what's happening but know one could tell me and I think with a couple thousand affected customers surely they could put something on their website to acknowledge this and update their customers.

Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek

#557195 12-Dec-2011 20:20

I'm in exactly the same boat peroski, broadband has been off here in St Albans since 1.30pm Friday as well. Had the same thing with Telecom - both times I called I had to go through a long troubleshooting checklist before they realised it was a known network outage.
I also can't believe if it's affecting 2,000 customers they don't put it on their website, but I guess that would just be bad press.
I was also offered dial up but don't have a dial up modem so that's no use.

And jeez chevrolux, were you trying to troll or do you work for a telco?

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#557488 13-Dec-2011 15:09

I've got through to tier 3 support (whatever that means) appears most customers are back online except us unlucky ones.
Have you got anywhere?

Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek

#557509 13-Dec-2011 16:01

Nah I haven't wanted to call Telecom again as I figured I would just get the same old thing. Emailed on Saturday but still no reply. Will try them again tomorrow morning if it's still not on.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#557553 13-Dec-2011 18:11

Oliver:

And jeez chevrolux, were you trying to troll or do you work for a telco?

Haha na not trolling. I used to do faults for Chorus and still do the odd one when I have to. There is only so many times you can listen an old women having a moan cos she couldn't ring Doris that night. Or the reclusive gamer having a moan cos he couldnt go on wow for a couple days. I understand people being pissd off as I, just like everyone, do every day things on the net and when it isnt working it makes life hard. But im not going to have a winge to the joker fixing it or jump on a forum, and use expensive 3G data, to tell the world my net isnt working.

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#557863 14-Dec-2011 13:14

chevrolux:
Oliver:

And jeez chevrolux, were you trying to troll or do you work for a telco?

Haha na not trolling. I used to do faults for Chorus and still do the odd one when I have to. There is only so many times you can listen an old women having a moan cos she couldn't ring Doris that night. Or the reclusive gamer having a moan cos he couldnt go on wow for a couple days. I understand people being pissd off as I, just like everyone, do every day things on the net and when it isnt working it makes life hard. But im not going to have a winge to the joker fixing it or jump on a forum, and use expensive 3G data, to tell the world my net isnt working.

I'm having a whinge because I work from home and have been without internet for 5 days now.
The worst thing is that Telecom won't give me any information about it other than 'there's an outage' surely after 5 days they must have some idea what has caused the outage and an ETR.
For a communications company they sure lack communication.

Ragnor

8196 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#557941 14-Dec-2011 15:33

It's a common mistake to think that just because consumer DSL normally works well that you can rely on it for work/business/etc...

Unfortunately you do not get a SLA (service level agreement) on residential/consumer connections, not at the price you are paying, that's just the facts.

It's a shame their customer service isn't doing a better job of communicating status updates but you can safely assume engineers/techs are working on it as fast as possible.

Though you would have to pay more, you would be getting better service from their business helpdesk for a business service.... just saying ™

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#557985 14-Dec-2011 17:27

Ragnor: It's a common mistake to think that just because consumer DSL normally works well that you can rely on it for work/business/etc...

Unfortunately you do not get a SLA (service level agreement) on residential/consumer connections, not at the price you are paying, that's just the facts.

It's a shame their customer service isn't doing a better job of communicating status updates but you can safely assume engineers/techs are working on it as fast as possible.

Though you would have to pay more, you would be getting better service from their business helpdesk for a business service.... just saying ™

Absolutely, I don't think anyone should expect 100% uptime from their residential ISP.
But I think it's fair to expect them to take ownership of their problems and keep their customers informed i.e. make use of their network status page when there is a known outage

Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek

#558629 16-Dec-2011 10:46

So still nothing here. I actually put in a complaint with Telecom, not so much about the actual outage but because the way the handled it was terrible. The response I finally got was a standard copy/paste telling me how to reset my modem and to call the help desk as soon as I notice an internet outage.
We've now been down for a week and have no idea what the problem is and when it will be back.

Anyone had any luck getting info on what's going on? I'm starting to wonder if maybe the problem with the network has been fixed and maybe the problem is now at our end, but the techs are meant to be getting back to me on that one... hmmm

peroski

37 posts

Geek

#558635 16-Dec-2011 10:57

Oliver: So still nothing here. I actually put in a complaint with Telecom, not so much about the actual outage but because the way the handled it was terrible. The response I finally got was a standard copy/paste telling me how to reset my modem and to call the help desk as soon as I notice an internet outage.
We've now been down for a week and have no idea what the problem is and when it will be back.

Anyone had any luck getting info on what's going on? I'm starting to wonder if maybe the problem with the network has been fixed and maybe the problem is now at our end, but the techs are meant to be getting back to me on that one... hmmm

I got a text yesterday to say the issue was resolved, it wasn't so I called the helpdesk, 40 minutes later I got through to tier 2. They said they thought they had resolved it but hadn't, they reopened my case (I got a text to confirm) then a minute later I got a text to say it was resolved... it wasn't.
The guy from tier 2 said he was unsure how many people are affected but in the hundreds...

http://www.telecom.co.nz/help/servicealerts is their network status page however the only alerts the past week have been for the Your Telecom website which some mobile users were unable to access and an email issue.

Their handling of this outage is an absolute joke.

Ragnor

8196 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#558640 16-Dec-2011 11:02

Since they haven't noticed this thread, try raising this problem on their Twitter account, there are some decent folks there that can probably kick the tyres and find out where things have broken down communications wise.

http://twitter.com/telecomnz

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