Coms technical support (or lack of)

I'm an ADSL24 customer who was moved to Coms.com just over 2 weeks ago. On Friday afternoon my ADSL stopped working, it's happened before and generally leaving it for an hour or 2 and its back and working but 5 hours later it wasn't back so I called Coms on their technical support number and it was immediately answered by the technical support answering service. They were very polite, took my details and said that technical support would call me back. The next morning and I'd still not got a call back so called again, I was assured that I'd get a call back, but again did not. I called again at lunchtime and was again assured I'd be called back, but no one called. Finally I called early evening tonight and again, no one called back. Each time I've called the ladies were very nice and apologetic and sympathised. But as a customer, I simply don't know what else to do if no one will call me back.

Do Coms have *any* technical support working at the weekend ?

Am I getting the Coms 'answering service' because it is the weekend ?

When I call, the answering service ladies seem surprised I've not been called back but have no power to escalate or help much other than note that I called (again) and assure me someone will call me back.

I'm used to ADSL24's customer service which was excellent, phones were always answered and technical support was there immediately, but Coms seem to have a wall that is impenetrable. As a customer, if the first thing you are met with is an answering service and the support team don't follow up and call back, what else can a customer do ? (Other than turn to a public forum and moan ).

I'll try again in the morning, and then on Monday morning when the 'office' is more likely to be open and hopefully I can finally get someone to look at why my ADSL has stopped working.

Unfortunately it seems that since Coms took over we're all living in 'mushroom syndrome', kept in the dark and fed bulls**t. I'm not sure that there IS any support over the weekend, it's bad enough trying to get answers normally and one theme that has been a constant annoyance since changeover is the lack of support generally.

Putting that to one side, you can do a few very basic things while you're waiting. Bear in mind that the weather may have busted your dropwire, flooded your cable or fried your internals if you've had lightning like I had a few days ago.

Are you getting dial tone - this will at least prove your line gets to the exchange. Dial say 1 and listen to see if the line sounds ok, hum indicates you may have one leg earthing or high resistance, crackling usually means water in the cable somewhere that will cause so much noise the modem drops out.

Try turning your router off for a couple of minutes and then switching it back on again so that you are doing a hard reset.

Try a different ADSL/phone splitter. If you have one, try a different modem.

Try connecting your modem direct to the main incoming phone socket, without anything else connected, to eliminate internal wiring faults.

If you have a software modem line tester like DMT use it to see what it reports. Does it get to the handshaking stage but then dropout for example.

At least if you do these few simple tests you can avoid the 'it's your fault, nothing wrong here' answer that you'll get otherwise and a nice costly visit from BT that you din't want. Best of luck

In reply to a post by My_brain_hurts:

Try connecting your modem direct to the main incoming phone socket, without anything else connected, to eliminate internal wiring faults.

I expect you meant to say "the test socket uncovered by gently removing the master socket faceplate".

@RobertoS

I didn't mean that actually on account of the fact that I don't have a modern 'test socket' just a [censored] ancient phone socket which BT refuse to replace as they are so poor apparently. But don't get me started on that...

But yes, thanks for pointing that out, it is no doubt as you say.

Many thanks for your very helpful hints / checklist. I was going to work my way through them this morning however before I've started my ADSL is working again. I've done nothing this end, so they've either investigated it and fixed it, or whatever was damp has dried, who knows. Since they never called me back, I have no idea what-so-ever why I lost my connection for almost 2 days, I doubt I will know.
Based on others feedback here, Coms are having problems with the migration of users. I'd been with ADSL24 for over 6 years, was very happy with them, and my loss of connections throughout that time were less than 4 and support was always on the end of the phone to help and investigate instantly. I even rang the wrong number once after ADSL24 had left Enta and called Enta instead and they were kind enough to diagnose an issue for their competitor based on calls they'd received in my local area with a local outage!

So Coms, you need to pull your socks up with customer support based on my own experience and other users I read here. Otherwise, we'll be voting with our MAC codes.

I missed the ADSL24 to COM's announcement. Was it a company sale to coms?

Glad you're back up

Strange how these things mysteriously 'fix themselves' methinks (tongue very much in cheek)

Hi Stunts,

Thanks for the feedback.
We have moved several thousand customers over the past few weeks and have had some issues as is plain to see. The majority have been closed/completed following profile changes and testing.

Regarding the general state of play, BT Openreach have been struggling with fault response due to the sheer demand and are receiving over 90,000 faults a week which is more than double the average. This is mainly due to the weather and impact it has on the underlying infrastructure.
Note this is not an excuse, merely an possible explanation as to why line fault issues have been slower to close off.

Thanks,
Paul

Paul - any news on when line profile will be enabled on My Account? Im sure that will reduce the number of tickets once we can change our profile ourselves