Time to go - how the mighty have fallen

I'm not a demanding user - my needs are simple.

I just want a decent and reliable ISP.

I've been a happy AAISP user for a long time now, but the service levels appear to be plummeting lately.

I emailed support in February about my speeds. Downloads were stable around 43-44 Mbps, but uploads had fallen gradually from around 16 down to 8.

Initially, I was impressed by the fast response.

Their support person suggested they'd send me a different modem, failing that, they'd "task Openreach out".

Fast forward a few days of back and forth, he then said they wouldn't be able to send Openreach after all, but he'd send me a modem to try.

That was the last I heard. No Openreach, no modem.

A while later I had a terrible drop in bandwidth. This time I used the live chat. This person eventually just disappeared.

While we were chatting, answers were taking between 5-10 minutes to come in. Not exactly live chat.

I now have to use QoS to throttle different apps - a major nuisance.

When I decided to jump ship to idnet, I had the "sorry you're leaving, can I ask why" email.

They said they'd be in touch.

That was two weeks ago.

I'm happy to pay above average for a decent service, but when the decent service dries up...

A great shame. Ironically I'd been recommending them a few days before this began.

Edited by thedavecollins (Wed 17-Apr-24 08:00:13)

As you can see from the other thread here (Poor uptime and reliability) they've had a few issues recently so I'm sure you are not the only one wondering why you are paying a premium price but not really get a premium service.

It sounds like your issues are telephone line related and possibly needs an Openreach visit to fix, something that A&A advertise as being their thing in getting Openreach out and fixing problematic lines, so its disappointing you've not been helped. If it is your physical telephone line causing the problem you may find the issue follows you to another ISP.

If A&A are not engaging with you then I think all you can do is vote with your wallet in cases like this, or pursue it by raising a more formal complaint. Still if you are out of contract and can just migrate away, I understand why that's the easiest option especially if you've lost faith in the service.

Edited by E300 (Wed 17-Apr-24 08:47:27)

I jumped ship the other way because of continuing problems with download speed resulting from their use of ZenW backhaul for FTTP. (None of IDNet's alternative's FTTP providers have a presence here.)

I was also pretty gobsmacked how IDNet didn't want to acknowledge there was a problem, which was in marked contrast with how I was treated when I had similar problems after migrating an FTTC connection to them a few years earlier.

My 115/20 FTTP connection has been absolutely rock solid in terms of real world performance and TBB speed test results since I joined AAISP.

I do hope that you are not jumping out of the metaphorical frying pan into the fire.

I hope so too!

My AAISP line seems to disconnect almost every night, and the upload speed was getting to be a real problem.

And their "oh well" attitude was unacceptable.

Even now, having chased the "we'll get back to you" email from 12 days ago, despite their being a tracking code in the email subject, here's the reply I got:

Hi Dave,

Yes I have seen that but it doesn't explain what the issue is or was.

This just reeks of a company that no longer care.

I get that there will be technical issues. I've been running my own business online since 1997.

But I won't accept being fobbed off.

In reply to a post by thedavecollins:

I hope so too!

My AAISP line seems to disconnect almost every night, and the upload speed was getting to be a real problem.

And their "oh well" attitude was unacceptable.

Even now, having chased the "we'll get back to you" email from 12 days ago, despite their being a tracking code in the email subject, here's the reply I got:

Hi Dave,

Yes I have seen that but it doesn't explain what the issue is or was.

This just reeks of a company that no longer care.

I get that there will be technical issues. I've been running my own business online since 1997.

But I won't accept being fobbed off.

Spoken to Sales today about cancelling and I didn’t even get a “sorry to see you go.” I explained I work fully remote and I don’t want to be an alpha or beta tester for a broken product. Was told I would need to pay £160 for early termination. Let’s just say I am bitterly disappointed in their product offering. I had to reboot the router again today due to the speeds dropping and it’s becoming a pain. I’m going to sit this out but I really don’t like their attitude.

Edited by Sun4Lw5LIQy (Tue 23-Apr-24 14:10:55)

In reply to a post by Sun4Lw5LIQy:

I had to reboot the router again today due to the speeds dropping and it’s becoming a pain.

I can think of three possible problems here.

1. Your router is faulty and/or has been infected by malware. That might explain why a reboot fixes the problem temporarily. Given that you have a static IP, someone who has found your vulnerable router would be able to re-infect it pretty quickly.

2. Your line is becoming faulty. Noise is reducing the sync speed, and a reboot/retrain gets it back up to a more normal speed. (Risk of DLM permanently slowing your line though).

3. There is unexpected background traffic on your network connection, consuming some of your bandwidth, which might be a sign of some other device on your LAN being infected with malware.

Swapping the router for a new one (preferably from a different vendor) would help to determine which it is. Also looking at the *sync speed* of your modem, as opposed to the upload/download speeds from a speedtest, would show if it's a line fault or something else.

You need to be aware that a speedtest shares the available bandwidth with whatever else is using the line at the time. TCP roughly shares the bandwidth equally between different TCP streams. So if you have a 16Mbps capacity uplink, and there's something on your network which is uploading data, and you run a speedtest at the same time, you're likely to see around 7-8Mbps as the result of the speedtest (total TCP throughput being slightly less than sync speed).

But that doesn't explain the nightly disconnections. They *could* be due to Openreach doing work on your cabinet, or they could be to do with a fault in your router again (does the router's uptime show that it has rebooted?) They potentially could also be down to AAISP rebooting LNSes, but this shouldn't be happening since lower-speed connections should be on the more stable FB6000 routers.

With the exception of overnight line drops, I don't think any of the likely issues are related to AAISP, and therefore are unlikely to be fixed by changing ISP. Therefore, you should think long and hard about the £160 exit penalty, and whether you would be better off spending it on an alternate router, both to prove/disprove the issue and to keep as a spare.

Then at the end of your contract you can re-evaluate whether you think you're getting value - and in the mean time, you can try again (politely) to get assistance from AAISP resolving your problem. You might have been unlucky with the particular support person who took your earlier ticket(s).

Showing that you've done your homework will help a lot here:
- here's my exact router model and firmware version
- here are my sync speeds at time T1, T2, T3 ...
- here are my speedtest results at time T1, T2, T3 ...
- here are logs showing the line drops (and uptime showing it's not the router rebooting)
- etc

Just a quick update - I've been live on IDNET for a few weeks now.

There hasn't been one single drop of connection. On AAISP this was at least once a day, usually (but not always) at night.

There hasn't been a single drop in speed. It's just solid and stable. Consistently.

Speeds are very slightly faster than AAISP, but there's not much in it. Reliability, however, by comparison, is staggering.

Was the change of ISP the only change you made, or did you replace your router as part of the process?

Nothing changed, aside from my login details. Same router, same hardware, same everything.

Just a happier me!

In reply to a post by thedavecollins:

Nothing changed, aside from my login details. Same router, same hardware, same everything.

Just a happier me!

Is the IDNET backhaul via Zen?

I'm not sure. I think that at least some of their connections are?

I just know that my connection is very stable,

Strange, I've been on AAISP FTTP since April 17th, and i've 100% uptime, 900Mbps all the time I want to use it...