In reply to a post by dect:

Where is Zen Customer Service when their customers need them. I'm sure people will remember this.

I will definitely be leaving Zen when my contract with them ends. I do not have a problem with my connection at the moment, but their customer service has gone completely downhill.

OK, so pretty well a full day with about 4 or 5 different Zen people, going over exactly the same ground that I originally reported, and with exactly the same results.....

I pay for 500 down plan

I have just been on the phone to ‘Chris’ from Zen for 45 minutes, and he has all the data on the various tests, but in summary:

Using PPPOE direct to the Mac 500 down / 75 up – this was with constant cabling to downstairs, all that is eliminated, and all cables Cat5e
Apple router 220 down / 50-75 up – this will be the TimeCapsule hardware limit – look on the web…..
Fritz about 19 down / 20 up – as a LAN based test, WAN based (AVM/Fritz diagnostic) shows 500/75

I KNOW this all sounds like it is the router, BUT…. Have tried 2 Fritz boxes, and 2 firmwares, reset to factory defaults, and all are the same, as it the Technicolor exactly the same

I know this all changed over the night 20-21 March, which is ‘coincidentally’ when the GEA migration happened, it has been constantly bad ever since. There were no router upgrades any time near then, and no other hardware changed overnight here.

It is crystal clear that as far as PPPOE into the ONT is concerned that everything works fine, so I really doubt Openreach will play ball.

ANYONE would say ‘it’s the router’, but honestly? 3 different ones?

Is the NAT encapsulation different in the TimeCapsule? - or what is ‘different’ when I use that?

WHY oh WHY can’t we just go back to how it was before it was messed up? The OBVIOUS change, get rid of GEA? OK, if it isn’t that, then we have other things to look at I guess?

Edited by SteveBushell999 (Thu 28-Apr-22 16:58:22)

If your issue is the router (which has been replaced at least once) surely that would have been easily spotted by the Zen network engineer when he/she visited on 11th April? or am I expecting too much?

In reply to a post by dect:

If your issue is the router (which has been replaced at least once) surely that would have been easily spotted by the Zen network engineer when he/she visited on 11th April? or am I expecting too much?

When they came, they tested into ONT, and I have tried 3 routers tried with different firmware revisions.... It's not the router!!!

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by ajays:

Anyone else that is still experiencing issues, please feel free to drop me a message with your details and I'll make sure your case is flagged.

Your absence over the last month from this thread has been extremely noticeable, your customers have been desperate for info on what is happening and you are no where to be found then suddenly todays claim its been fixed you're front and centre again.

Where is Zen Customer Service when their customers need them. I'm sure people will remember this.

To be fair to Zen, despite this not being a Zen support channel both ajays and hazey_flakes from Zen have posted in this thread over the last month. It seems like there has been ongoing contact between Zen and customers away from the forum. It is probably right that Zen's support team deal direct with customers to fix issues rather than on a public forum.

What is interesting is that you can actually get the full bandwidth when directly connected to the ONT via the Mac.

I hadn’t appreciated that before you mentioned it today.

The Apple router is simply too old, not enough grunt. So discount using that box completely. That’s previously been acknowledged as deficient with PPPoE throughput on high speed broadband connections.

Then your left with the Frtizbox and Techicolour which are exhibiting poor throughput over the LAN, but reporting full bandwidth at least WAN-side for the Fritz - so definitely not all faulty hardware. Without diagnostics on the router it’s hard to say where the fault lies - firewall/NAT or PPPoE weirdness.

In reply to a post by JakeDog:

To be fair to Zen, despite this not being a Zen support channel both ajays and hazey_flakes from Zen have posted in this thread over the last month. It seems like there has been ongoing contact between Zen and customers away from the forum. It is probably right that Zen's support team deal direct with customers to fix issues rather than on a public forum.

Ajays last post in this thread before today was on 29th Mar (its 28th April today !!) when I asked him a question that he never replied too and I agree hazey_flakes has made several posts but my post was about ajays going AWOL not hazey_flakes.

Apologies, I wasn't ignoring you, I just hadn't spotted your question.

I hadn't posted on this thread as my technical collogues had picked up the issue.

Please always feel free to contact me with a PM if you need an answer to a question that I've not spotted.

In response to your earlier question, it all depends on what's changing. For a change of backhaul we typically wouldn't send individual notifications.

This is definitely weird and not the behaviour I've seen on my connection.

Mine is slow no matter what's connected to the ONT.

Update: there's been a flurry of activity today, I presume following this meeting.

Both ajays and hazey_flakes have been in touch directly. A change was made to my connection but this appears to not have made things any better.

Test results were sent back to them.

I've been offered a 100% refund on my service until the issue is resolved, and a Samknows Whitebox so that the connection can be continuously monitored whilst Zen make changes to resolve the issue. I think this is fair enough for now (and I presume backdated to when the issue started).

The fault team told me that they were "re-opening" my case as it had been closed due to inactivity. I'm not sure why this happened as I never hinted that the issue was resolved. If I missed an email somewhere, I was never chased for a reply nor warned/notified that my case was being closed. I'm actually more disappointed in that than the technical issue I think as it seems such an easy thing to get right. This may explain why I haven't been hearing much.
Definitely a "lessons learnt" for Zen I think.

Seems like everyone is happy then, Zen suddenly announce at midday today on ISPReview that the issue is resolved, Steve has still got an issue and so have you (your ticket was conveniently closed) and both of you participated in the on site testing so should have been used to test and confirm the fix. All swept under the carpet today after a high level meeting at Zen, just perfect.

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Apr-22 22:45:37)