Something is seriously wrong here...

No real point to this post but some food for thought...

My neighbour called round a few days ago to ask if I could look at his internet connection. It had been out for several days following talktalk moving him to their LLU service at the local exchange. He had complained to support many times and got nowhere but they said there was a connection fault on the line and they were looking into getting it repaired (?). After hearing about 10 seconds of him talking I know he doesn't know what's going on and/or support are fobbing him off so I just connect to his router while he is at the door with my laptop (I set it all up so know the wifi/router password, and signal gets to my house).

Quickly see that the router was connected to the exchange fine but just not authenticating properly (I assumed that, the router model didn't specifically give an auth error, I just guessed they may have just gone and changed the details from the old @tiscali he was using). I went round and phoned up Talktalk on his behalf and got through to India quite quickly. I was asked to reboot the router and try a different computer (I said I already had), and then I suggested they go through the login details with me.

At this point, it seems they had changed the logon details without telling him, hence the cause of the issue. New details put in and problem solved within 10 minutes of me looking at it after days of my neighbour trying to sort it with support.

Then another neighbour mentioned to me he had no internet connection the day after. By this point he had been without a connection for an entire week, numerous support calls and even a BT engineer round who replaced all the house wiring and master box and was investigating further as the line was still faulty.

I told him to phone up TalkTalk and check login details. Issue fixed in minutes.

This is two people with a TalkTalk connection who live only 3 doors apart! You'd think I was making this up!

Failings on the part of almost everyone involved. TalkTalk support clearly not troubleshooting properly (but to be fair the person I spoke to was very good), ignorant customers (ultimately the customer has some duty themself to help fix or diagnose the fault - they aren't paying for a managed service), talktalk planning (not emailing customers change of details), and finally a BT engineer for taking a sledgehammer approach to trying to fix something, and then fobbing the customer off with a line fault issue, when the issue is a simple username/pass issue.

Really very worrying how often this may be going on.

Edited by Pipexer (Fri 03-Aug-12 21:03:07)

You had me at 'talktalk support is [censored]'

In some respects though if I had been the customer, I would have been praising TalkTalk Support, because when I phoned on behalf, admittedly I got the stupid "try restarting the router" question, but when I just told them to give me the new login details she did so without messing about and they also picked up within 5 minutes. The whole call lasted less than 10 minutes. They quality was also very good and the lady spoke good English. I have waited longer than 10 minutes with premium ISPs.

But when dealing with "unknowledgeable" customers (shall we say), they obviously didn't get it right, they messed around the first guy and provided the 2nd guy with a new router, new master socket, and complete BT line inspection, all for nothing. I do not know what they asked the customer to do, perhaps they asked him to check these details but he just said something really stupid so they thought they'd get rid of him on the line and escalate or say they'll get someone to phone back.

I attribute more blame to the customer for not knowing how to get to 192.168.1.1, or simply giving up without trying at all, router manufacturers for sending out stupid configuration CDs which end up causing more confusion (it would be simpler to just give them a step by step guide to get to 192.168.1.1 rather than a CD), and finally the BT engineer who clearly knew nothing beyond physical line issues (that's fine in itself, but not to make up some nonsense about it being a physical fault and requires more investigation (i.e., probably palm off the issue on his superior or someone else in the organization)).

Multiple failings here, talktalk is not the only guilty party - admittedly they caused the problem initially, and I'm not excusing that.

Edited by Pipexer (Fri 03-Aug-12 21:33:44)

and finally the BT engineer who clearly knew nothing beyond physical line issues

Would be nice to know what information TT had provided Openreach with ? Did they just raise a line fault ? If it was an LLU SFI, I seriously doubt there was any useful info provided, and it sounds like the punter wasn't able to add anything. So what do you do, make the line as good as possible. Bear in mind, there is no default TT login to try, and co-op calls, are more often than not, unanswered or chocolate tea-pot time.

I believe the issue just highlights pisspoor TT support.

A brief discussion with the punter should have identified the problem.
'It stopped working but I still have sync'.
'Hmm, same day we changed how your broadband is provided.'
Here's how to access the router, could you try these log in details'
Sorted.

But with respect you can't ignore the issue of the BT engineer who came round and did all these works and then said there were other issues when it was an auth problem all along. This just causes even more problems! Unless there was some other hidden issue with the line but I am not aware of this and the connection was fine, physically, before and after.

I don't know more specifics than that because the BT engineer had been out after I "took charge" of the situation.

You have to bear in mind that the punter probably doesn't know what the hell sync is and just said "its all stopped working", even though said person has qualifications in IT. If he had listened to my advice 5/6 years ago he would have stopped purchasing rubbish routers and other nonsense and let me manage the service for him, and then he wouldn't have had any problems, or at least they would be resolved quickly as and when, but he is presumably too paranoid that I might try and shaft him if he lets me set it up by stealing his wifi connection or something (my own connection is far superior so there would be no point in doing that!), and also wants to penny pinch by getting ADSL routers from brands I do not rate because PC world have them on sale. Luckily, neighbour #1 took my advice and purchased a good router (Linksys) and let me set it up, so it was a very simple task of fixing it once he approached me.

Edited by Pipexer (Fri 03-Aug-12 21:55:28)

I find with many provided routers already being preconfigured, many customers struggle to understand that there are separate router admin logins, modem authentication login and sometimes a different online account login.

The modem auth login is of course probably never used by the customer and not readily found.
I always write it on the bottom of the modem.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

I don't know more specifics than that because the BT engineer had been out after I "took charge" of the situation.

Before?

"Before", indeed, can't edit as too long ago

Edited by Pipexer (Sat 04-Aug-12 10:27:28)

It's a pretty sorry tale though. That's assuming no notification really was sent - possibly to out-of-date contact email addresses.

I like the chap with "IT qualifications". How to use MS Office I expect.

Just noticed your sig - What happened to Beekle?