I agree with the sentiment having also been with tcl for over 15 years, it was really two issues that caused me to move. One was obviously the poor performance but just as bad if not worse was the complete lack of communication from tcl other than some bland comment that we are investigating, not even an acknowledgement that there is a major problem.
Based on this thread and the others it seems the problem is in tauranga but also wider bay of plenty. The final straw for me was looking at truenet and seeing that tcl was showing up very badly on the national statistics, what you can't tell is whether it is poor across the country or been particularly bad in tauranga area is dragging the nationaal average down, and it's been the same for a couple of months now.
Given their advertising campaign it brings to mind it should always be easier to keep a customer then to gain a new one. I would not be happy if I had just switched. What I must say is I was very pleasantly surprised as to how easy the switch was.
Behodar:It's also affecting Whakatane, Te Teko and I'm assuming other nearby towns too.
Hells bells, thats unbelievable; whats going on. Come on TC guys, step up to the mark and advise why this continued lock down of bandwidth in Tauranga areas? Al.
DMC:What I must say is I was very pleasantly surprised as to how easy the switch was.
And is there a difference like chalk and cheese of the bandwidth you are getting now? EG you are on same DSL, but different ISP and the difference is? Cheers, Alistair.
Note the major drop-off in the evening. I was monitoring this every weekday since and did get above 1.00 for download between the hours of 5pm and about 10pm.
This is what I was getting yesterday after switching over.
1;00pm - 15.76 down / 1.04 up 5:30pm - 7.23 down / 0.86 up 7:00pm - 9.80 down / 1.01 up 9:30pm - 15.04 down / 1.02 up
All otehr parameters the same - no change in wiring, router or modem.
I can understand a little speed drop-off in the evenings when it's busy, but I have numerous occasions where I cannot even ping Google.com for up to 5 minutes. This is unacceptable.
I'd just like some more detailed information from TC. Will it be fixed in 2 days? 2 weeks? 2 months?
I don't want to move, but this has got to stop. I also support a number of commercial TC links, which I have started monitoring more closely. Although they are not utilised heavily outside normal business hours, they still have to be working...
DMC: To summarise some of my posts on the TCL wiring thread
Below are the numbers (geekzone speedtest) a couple of weeks ago
That's an impressive change....
That's it! I've had enough. I'm going ISP plan hunting
Hi Andrew before you do leave them, suggest try their support again to try to get to the bottom of it. I have found their support to be excellent the few times Ive used it. However, I find it hard to accept their support is not making any comments on this thread - thats piss poor. Al.
I have sent an update to the fault ticket requesting more information and an ETA. It's just very frustrating not knowing. It's been going on for over a month now.
I'm currently trying to trial a web conferencing system which works better over the Telecom Mobile Network in the evenings. Unreal.
AndrewTarr: I have sent an update to the fault ticket requesting more information and an ETA. It's just very frustrating not knowing. It's been going on for over a month now.
I'm currently trying to trial a web conferencing system which works better over the Telecom Mobile Network in the evenings. Unreal.
How long do you wait?
I have hassled the help desk and told them how unacceptable I find this situation. They said there were aware of the problem but could not give me an ETA. Again, I told them it was unacceptable and all they could do was tell me to be patient. And this was from my business TC account, not my home account. Typically they react faster to business account issues. Not this time.
If any TC staff are reading this: At least do us the courtesy of giving us an update. As you can see from this thread you are losing customers.
Please explain how it is possible that your service status page still shows "no known problems". I am astounded at how unprofessional that is. On one hand your support staff tell us they know there is a region wide problem and you are fixing it, and on the other hand the service status page says "no known problems". Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Thank you for the updated results. At present we are still investigating the issue, and unfortunately do not have an ETA on the fix. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience during this time.
Note the major drop-off in the evening. I was monitoring this every weekday since and did get above 1.00 for download between the hours of 5pm and about 10pm.
This is what I was getting yesterday after switching over.
1;00pm - 15.76 down / 1.04 up 5:30pm - 7.23 down / 0.86 up 7:00pm - 9.80 down / 1.01 up 9:30pm - 15.04 down / 1.02 up
All otehr parameters the same - no change in wiring, router or modem.
Chalk and cheese would be an understatement.
Those are shocking numbers.
As I see it you have two choices. Stay or move.
Moving is the quickest answer for you.
The amount of congestion that you're seeing would suggest to me that some fairly large upgrades are going to be needed.
I have every idea just how much work that means. Once planned, TCL will then have to order equipment (assuming they have budget approval to do so) and then deploy it.
Gary did give some hint of more capacity for international coming on line. Obviously some of us have some other ideas as well because the rumour mill works well enough and most people in the industry get some sort of basic heads up on most of this stuff.
As I said the other day, the marketing has been really successful, clearly it worked a little to well.
I know it will take a couple of weeks for you to move from TCL to another provider. With the number of customers who have moved to TCL (which is just obvious from the current network performance as reported by TrueNet) there's a bunch of ISPs out there with redundant capacity now.
However, given the size of the upgrades that I imagine (and note that I do say 'imagine' because I know little more than anyone else despite the rumors running around) I'd suggest it's going to take longer than another month to push some upgrades into the network.
Where the hell is the BlooXXX TCL Rep and Tech guy on this?!?!?!
Seriously guys, two or three really basic points here...
1. What would you prefer them doing? Planning and pushing in upgrades that we all know need doing or sitting about on GZ reading our posts and trying to argue that we're either right or wrong?
2. Would you ask any of your staff to spend the day reading Facebook pages about how crap their company is? Would you be concerned about how negative energy might/will/could impact on staff?
If Allan's a smart CEO, and I'm sure he's got some clues despite what some of us might think some days, I'm sure he's asked staff to keep away from this sort of social media.
3. What do you really expect anyone from TCL to say "Yip, well spotted guys, you're quite right, our network is a bit over loaded".
4. I'm sure you'd all like some hard and fast target dates to have each thing fixed.
Just not going to happen and for a bunch of really really really obvious reasons if you just engage brain and think about it for just 3 seconds, but I'll give you a few...
a. It's quicker to upgrade stuff than plan it and publish dates. b. If they miss a date then you guys will crap on and on and on and on for every, so why bother? c. Stacks of this stuff can't be planned. BB use is exploding all around the world but no one is talking to each other because of competitive and commerical reasons.
I very much doubt that Juniper had any idea or heads up what volume of orders they'd be getting from TCL this month, last month. Nor Cisco. However, I'm sure both have been asked to provide stock they weren't planning on and are now placing orders on manufactures.
DSE does keep ADSL modems in stock, thousands of them. Cisco and Juniper don't keep the sort of carrier stuff in stock in large numbers that I'm sure TCL are now calling on.
You on the pay roll this week Don?!
I got asked this last week, so I'll just save people asking...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the lack of planning, the bs mass marketing that has stuffed up our services.... again!
Just like the rest of you, I just upgraded my service and it's no better than it was last month and in some cases worse, in fact I'm currently considering downgrading my 100/10 service because it doesn't represent value to me, but I'm going to give it another month and see what happens.
However I think we do need to keep it real.
I have over two decades experience dealing with carriers with ISP issue at a much higher level than the average consumer, but also not as much experience as some on this board either, so I do feel I have some ability to add a bit of explanation of the issues as I see them.
HTH
D
Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!
DMC> Hi I refer to TelstraClear Terms and Conditions section 3: We will always do our best to make sure that you receive reliable and high-quality services. We cannot however guarantee that our services will always operate free of faults.
With the above conditions there must be a 'reasonable' emphasis on the first paragraph.
Also since you are contracted into a broadband (not dial-up) arrangement with bandwidth expectations, you are possibly not receiving a 'fit for purpose' service. There should be specifications of what is acceptable broadband bandwidth variances within NZ?
I have a friend on Slingshot, rural, out of Whangamata. He was advised there is nothing that can be done for his bandwidth and accepts this, due to exceptional circumstances.
Its a pity that TC have let you down as in our area the bandwidth is great, and I have nothing to complain about with their support which has been far better than some other ISP I have had over 20 years.
You are quite correct, although digging a bit into the detail which we probably will never know. Like you, I have also worked with carrier provisioning and understand the limitations and reasonable expectations of a service. It's sad really, because TelstraClear has in the past been my choice of providers, especially when I was on the cable network in Wellington.
All of this aside, the fact is the current speeds and regular outages are unacceptable for what I do. I've always had realistic expectations of the service and accepted the odd slow times and blips, but this is beyond that. Add to that an unknown ETA to fix, which as you said,could be months and this is a big problem.
Based on that...
So long TelstraClear, and thanks for all the fish!
I'll be cutover on Tuesday. I'll let you know how I get on.
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