Communication between WBS & iBurst Customers

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Just a random quote really from no one, or someone...
:D
Period. Tell the truth, and, even though you might still get a few swear words from the client, the chances of that client calling back "because you said it would be fixed in an hour or that you have isolated the problem and is fixing it" and being pissed off at you would be THAT much less.
Click to expand...

Customer: " Hi, im constantly being disconnected. Whats happening?"
Call centre: "Im sorry but, I dunno"
Cust: "well when will it be sorted out?"
Call Cen: "Err, uhh im not too sure on that..."
Cust: "Wtf is your problem, dont you know anything?"
Call Cen: "ummm, no not really. Im telling the truth, honest!"

Id rather tell them a little white lie. I used to be a waiter and telling customers in your restaurant the 'oh im so sorry but the kitchen had an accident with your food and is re-doing it/they forgot to make it/busy doing it now/will be here any minute' excuse is better than saying: 'I forgot all about you and your food is cold/someone bumped me and that pile of food on the floor back there, is well, yours.../just stfu and wait for your food u impatient loud-mouth f*****!'

And many more.
Ahh the virtues of dealing with people, all for money
Mmmyes ;)
 
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Noone 52% of the call to the helpdesk are about "real" issues. This does not mean 52% of iburst users are having problems.
 
Sorry guys but you going to have to give Shaun some time to get back to you. Shaun was sent to hospital today with Bronchial Pneumonia and is out of action for a while.
 
It seems to be hit and miss - depending on who you speak with at the Helpdesk - as to whether you get an honest appraisal of your problem. Most of the time, it feels like the Helpdesk personnel have a 'Master List of Excuses' from which they select a reasonable-sounding option,
(such as "Have you checked your MTU settings"
"Do you have anti-spyware software running?"
"Have you checked that your firewall isn't blocking the signal" (d'uh)

then they move onto the general ones which mean 'there's nothing we can do'
ie: "There's been a problem overall with the network, and the technicians have been working on it for some time now."

If you mention you're running a ping, or can see from degraded download speeds that there's a problem, they use:

"Well the results you're getting can be due to the place you're downloading from or pinging."
(When its pointed out through gritted teeth that you're pinging iburst itself, they sometimes switch to:

"I'm looking at the master screens of the towers and they all seem fine"

(this when there's a 50%+ packet loss visible)

There seems to be a structure in place that the helpdesk orcs are using, instead of immediately assuming that 'the customer is right in their perception of the service' - many of them try different tacks to misdirect the customer.

It all depends on who you get through to..

Some new helpdesk guy started yesterday (thursday 24 Feb) - didnt get his name, but he seemed fairly decent and willing to accept the immediate slapping aside of his suggesting the usual 'mtu settings' 'spyware' and 'its the fault of the server you're downloading from' excuses.

Perhaps the helpdesk should ask customers directly, how much they know about PC's upfront - so as to avoid wasting time and irritating customers with clearly non-useful suggestions, and rather find out rapidly whether or not the customer is tech-aware enough to tell the difference between 'network-side issues' and 'possible problems with their own pc's'

As, I'd imagine, a large percentage of the time taken with each call, is to do with the Orcs raising a range of issues that are not relevent and fairly irritating to those of us who can tell the difference between 'our' problem, and 'Ibursts problem'. It might save time overall, to immediately cut through the rubbish and ask customers rapidly a question or two which can eliminate this whole range of irritating questions - and allow them to go straight to the realisation that they need to immediately speak with a radio techie about a specific tower..
 
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I spent a few days in Cape Town this week and decided to take my UTD with me. Probably a big mistake. Speed was excellent in three different areas. At one point I had one light signal strength and was getting speeds of around 20KBps from the MSDN download site. With full signal that same download increased to around 65KBps. Back in JHB now and trying to complete the same 5.2Gig download - 6KBps. (Northcliff Tower)

Something else that is interesting is that in Cape Town my VPN connection to the office works perfectly, in JHB, as soon as the VPN connection is established I get an immediate disconnect from Iburst.

:mad:
 
Drastik, it's because UUNET peers from both Cape Town and JHB (stronger peer in Cape Town I think because they're based there?)

So all Cape Town's traffic goes via whatever from Cape Town, not Cape Town -> JHB -> wherever.

But I think it's because of tower saturation that the speeds are so k@k on Northcliff (i'm there too) If they put a tower there by the proton building (above clover where old mutual is) then I reckon they can sufficiently half the tower's strain. (And because I literally live 200m away, will be a plus for me)

I live like 800m away from the roodepoort tower, however, I can't connect to it (not direct line of sight, I have direct los of northcliff tho)

Go figure
 
I still have difficulty understanding the tower saturation issue. The speeds that we were all experiencing in December did'nt slowly deteriorate. It was an overnight occurance.

It happened to coincide with me installing the beta of the MS Anti Spyware tool which I immediately removed, when that did'nt work I resorted to formatting and reinstalling my system drive. Unfortunately, this time it wasnt my PC.
 
I was on vacation in December, when I got back I still had full speeds (that was on the 9th of January) heard ic b1tch about speeds, laughed and thought it was temopary. The last several weeks though has been a total disaster.

I even got the "if it's not broken, why did they fix it" thing from Shaun. He might understand our pain and frustrations, but sure as hell doesn't know what the techies are doing and why they're doing things.
 
btb, the master screens of towers does not show degradation on bandwidth/disconnections... only radio signal. So by looking at it, they can tell if a RADIO SIGNAL is down or degraded, NOT your internet speed.

So when they give you that excuse again, slap them aside with "yes, the master screens shows radio signal, i dont have a signal problem, i have a bandwidth problem, something CLEARLY must be wrong, and you're inept to do your job..."

then go " beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! this has been a test of the idiocy level of iburst, you successfully completed the test! congratulations! beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!"
 
The most frustrating thing for me was after lots and lots of patience I email Louis directly. I went to great pains to give him all the detail that he would have needed to assist me. UTD ID, copies of speed tests, ping results, etc, etc, etc.

All I got back was a response that intimated that my issues were user related and that I should check my PC for spyware. Helloooo! I have been in IT as long as I have been working and it was completely obvious that the mail he was sent was drafted by somebody that would have checked for spyware.

And here we sit. Currently getting a wonderful 2.2KBps download speed guarenteed to disconnect before it is complete in 3 days!!!

I am having lunch with a friend this afternoon who is a Journalist for IT web. Possibly some more bad publicity will do the trick!!!
 
Implementation of a pop3 server would take me less than 2 hours to complete and setup (including all the mail accounts)
 
noone said:
Implementation of a pop3 server would take me less than 2 hours to complete and setup (including all the mail accounts)
Click to expand...
Right, and then the fun starts.
"The recipient you have mailed does not exist on this mail server"
Call to help desk results in "Please re-install the software on your PC and we'll see if that works, otherwise you will have to buy a new PC and only once that has been done will we check to see if there is a problem with our POP3 server"

Guess I just stay with MWEB for the time being, about a year or so untill the POP3 problems have been resolved.

Anyone want to place any bets on this prediction?
 
Sorry Noone,
Just reread your post and saw that it would take you less than 2 hours.

First reading I assumed you meant to say IBurst would take less than two hours.

@me, Go back and sit, don't think.
 
I'm sticking with hotmail and yahoo mail accounts that have no connection whatsoever to my ISP - I've learned now that, if you want to have a guaranteed perm mail method, that doesn't rely on who your ISP happens to be, then online http free email methods are the best.

Also, it means you can have an uninterrupted email service without any need to update folks if you decide to walk away from your current ISP..
 
Hey LG - use a Gmail account instead: gives you 1Gb of mail (dunno what hot/yahoo mail gives, but probably less than this) - can send you an invite if you're interested...
 
I haven't used ISP mail EVER. I registered my own domain name and have a mail server running permanently. Doesn't matter which ISP I use.

Mail only costs me like R60 a month.
 
I have more email accounts then I know what to do with... Having your own domain is the best. I know Afrihost are good with that and for R60 a month you get your own website too... And yeah atleast with Afrihost you have alot of control over your own email
 
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