In reply to a post by jpm:

I'm inclined to side with with Zen on this one though maybe the news could have been delivered with more customer-service friendly language. It's not reasonable to expect an ISP to do work because a server admin self-hosting a forum in the Netherlands has an inaccurate geo IP database. They are routing your packets to that host, the host is then dropping them. Every database I can query easily shows that IP space as being Zen's and based in the UK.

This isn't someone DDoSing the server from Zen IP space and Zen letting it happen, the permanent fix is for that server admin to not use an inaccurate geo IP database.

As someone said earlier... the online world can be a jungle sometimes.

To be fair to the website-admin in the Netherlands, he does realise that his server is basing its auto-block on an inaccurate geo-IP database. And he has said he'll do what he can to sort this out. But he has warned it could well take some time. I have no idea which database is at fault, how these databases are run and managed, and why bad or out-of-date listings aren't being corrected.

But it's interesting that I got an instant reply - late in the evening - from Richard Tang, the Zen CEO to whom I'd sent a message. I had already been in contact with him previously some weeks ago about the initial inability of Zen to connect and deliver my broadband and VOIP services, and he intervened to get that sorted.

Richard clearly takes his responsibility and reputation seriously: he gets things done, This is what he said: "Very sorry ... I thought we’d fixed the Bulgarian IP address issue (we bought a couple of IPv4 blocks from Bulgaria)… but it looks like we haven’t completely fixed it. I’ll get our Networks team onto it.".

To me, it is hugely impressive, but also embarrassing, that the Zen CEO sends such a reply.

Impressive that he took the trouble to reply personally and very quickly. Shows that Zen knew about the Bulgarian problem, saw it as their responsibility, and had taken action to sort it. Just not quite enough.

The embarrassment is that Zen's tech support people appeared not to be aware of any of this, and worse, that they sent a reply saying in effect "....we refuse to do anything, go away, sort it yourself".

If I were the Zen CEO I'd be asking some hard questions about the calibre, competence and quality of their support staff. It is a nonsense that a message to the CEO is needed to get a practical solution.

Hopefully this turns into a pincer movement on the providers of the geo-ip database.

Will this be the last instalment in the story?

I have just had a call from Zen. They have now taken some action - presumably triggered by the CEO's intervention. Their complaints team (the same staff member who dealt with my previous issue last month over the initial setting-up of my broadband and phone connection) phoned and emailed me to confirm that the matter had been resolved.

They have assigned me a new static IP address - from their range 146.66.xxx.xxx. It appears to be working fine: no "Bulgarian problem".

Zen are also re-checking whatever inaccurate IP database was the cause of the problem . That - along with the efforts being made by the website owner in the Netherlands whose servers were affected - ought to sort out the geo-IP inaccuracy.

So once again and for the second time in as many months, Zen have come good in the end. But it's been hard work. Many thanks to all in this forum who have contributed comments and advice.

In reply to a post by br1anstorm:

I have just had a call from Zen. They have now taken some action - presumably triggered by the CEO's intervention.

Glad you stuck with it and got the IP address changed, shame you had to escalate it to their CEO to get something done. All the best.

Got there. Well done for persevering with it 👍

Raises other questions to me.

What are Zen - a company that have boasted in the past about having an excess of IPV4 addresses thanks to being one of the UK's oldest ISPs - doing recycling Bulgarian IPs they've bought to paying customers without having cleared up database issues? Stinks.

My own disappointing interactions with Zen support over obviously poor performance on their own network vs the Openreach one on the same FTTP line terminating at the same equipment at the exchange led me to dump them, and I'm not sure I'd ever take another Zen service again.

Zen have been selling blocks of IP's recently, so it might be a case that they're not swimming in spare IP's as they once were.