Cool Ideas Fibre ISP – Feedback Thread 2

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daelm said:
yes. i know what you mean. it's what prompted me to enter the discussion. i'm uncomfortable with the relationship taking that turn.
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How do you navigate the fine line between providing the technical explanation for the cause and being perceived as 'making excuses' - strikes me as a no-win situation.

I said earlier in the thread if they're not able to acquire the ability to restore service quickly, even in the face of a heretofore unprecedented attack in SA, they will go out of business since customers will move on.

I'd like CI to succeed so I'm willing to stick around since Internet at home isn't business critical - context as always is key.
 
AfricanTech said:
How do you navigate the fine line between providing the technical explanation for the cause and being perceived as 'making excuses' - strikes me as a no-win situation.
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i don't think it's that binary. they're different conversations. my concern is that technical answers are being provided when people express concern about things like product failure, business continuity, exception handling, and so on.

basically, it's the same as if your cars caught fire (Hi, Ford) and when clients raised concerns, the discussion devolved onto the difficulties of solving particular engineering problems related to which side of the motor it's best to run flammable pipes. it's the wrong response. the correct response relates to what you're doing about product and service continuity, how you're addressing client concerns, and - critically - why i should be confident that you're defended against future such events.

i have just been reading the client communications from the September outages. i don't feel like re-typing them (they're images) but a sample is below.

746879


this was on the 27th September. so was this:

746881



basically, if you're going to position yourself as a community brand, and highlight particularly the value and strength of your "word-of-mouth referrals" and customer engagement, then when the word you start hearing from mouths is "we're concerned", you have some kind of obligation to take it seriously.

(also, totally subjectively, i don't like the social good lever - we sponsor a lot of schools - because i find that manipulative. i'm glad you do that, and it counts in your favour if i have to choose between CI and someone else, but it's immaterial when you fail to deliver. but that's personal. YMMV.)
 
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it's starting to feel like CI responds to outages with either emotive statements about the community-feel of the brand (correctly categorised earlier as crowdfunding CI which is the "we're all in this together so don't expect us to be prepared" defence) or with claims about the unique and once-in-a-lifetime nature of each event. it gets threadbare after a while.

i think a lot of people are feeling that way, whether they articulate the way i do, and i think that's a big motivator behind the tone and anger in this thread. underlying that is an unspoken doubt that CI is capable of what they set out to be capable of. in other comms, that i haven't included here, they imply that they've been hit harder than anyone else. (it comes across really conspiratorial and doesn't inspire confidence.) i'm sure they feel that way, and i'll allow that it could be true, but to put it in context, ISPs, banks, network providers, and the general tech media have been reporting rolling waves of attacks on SA for some time. it's definitionally not unique.

i'd like them to address these things, rather than ra-ra about their being a plucky band of brothers, doggedly fighting for my liberty and access to services.

anyway.
 
daelm said:
it's starting to feel like CI responds to outages with either emotive statements about the community-feel of the brand (correctly categorised earlier as crowdfunding CI which is the "we're all in this together so don't expect us to be prepared" defence) or with claims about the unique and once-in-a-lifetime nature of each event. it gets threadbare after a while.

i think a lot of people are feeling that way, whether they articulate the way i do, and i think that's a big motivator behind the tone and anger in this thread. underlying that is an unspoken doubt that CI is capable of what they set out to be capable of. in other comms, that i haven't included here, they imply that they've been hit harder than anyone else. (it comes across really conspiratorial and doesn't inspire confidence.) i'm sure they feel that way, and i'll allow that it could be true, but to put it in context, ISPs, banks, network providers, and the general tech media have been reporting rolling waves of attacks on SA for some time. it's definitionally not unique.

i'd like them to address these things, rather than ra-ra about their being a plucky band of brothers, doggedly fighting for liberty and access to services.

anyway.
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I think this may be coming across simply because we are transparent with everything we do which a lot of people appreciate. We can do like the rest of the providers and simply not represent, not be transparent and simply offer internet as you take it.

The reason we stay active on this thread is for feedback on improving what we do, if we come off as arrogant when there is an issue I apologise but again we are being honest. When we are responsible for a mistake we will take ownership and apologise happily.

But when maliciously attacked we still need to apologise? That would make sense if we didn't do anything about the situation from the last attack or if we didn't take it seriously.

Regarding the schools initiative you are saying we shouldn't be socially proud of our achievement in helping underprivileged schools with connectivity?
 
PBCool said:
Regarding the schools initiative you are saying we shouldn't be socially proud of our achievement in helping underprivileged schools with connectivity?
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No, PB. i specifically didn't say that. i said the opposite, namely that it counted in CI's favour when comparing like-for-like providers. (you're welcome to go back and read what i wrote.) what i did say is that crow-barring that into a conversation about your response to continued outages is uncalled for and comes across as manipulative.

you're providing an example of that right now.
 
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PBCool said:
We can do like the rest of the providers and simply not represent, not be transparent and simply offer internet as you take it.
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personally, i'd like you to do "like the rest of the providers" and resolve outages in under 3 days. short of that, perhaps not attacking your actual (active, paying) clients on public forums would also go a long way.
 
daelm said:
personally, i'd like you to do "like the rest of the providers" and resolve outages in under 3 days. short of that, perhaps not attacking your actual (active, paying) clients on public forums would also go a long way.
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So basically what you saying is you would like to rather deal with tier 1 supports all the time and struggle to get through to people that actually know what to do? Try explaining a routing issue to a tier 1 support, chances are 90% of them with have no idea what you talking about. It will take more than 3 days to get through to the right people just my 2 cents.
 
PBCool said:
I think this may be coming across simply because we are transparent with everything we do which a lot of people appreciate. We can do like the rest of the providers and simply not represent, not be transparent and simply offer internet as you take it.

The reason we stay active on this thread is for feedback on improving what we do, if we come off as arrogant when there is an issue I apologise but again we are being honest. When we are responsible for a mistake we will take ownership and apologise happily.

But when maliciously attacked we still need to apologise? That would make sense if we didn't do anything about the situation from the last attack or if we didn't take it seriously.

Regarding the schools initiative you are saying we shouldn't be socially proud of our achievement in helping underprivileged schools with connectivity?
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I think Daelm responded very eloquently on behalf of a lot of us having doubts right now.
I would just add that I am a customer for some time right now and I would hate to change, but as much as I value feedback and interaction, that can’t make up for a weekend-long outage where others have been down for far shorter.

I must add that if I assume that the rabid-defenders on this thread are not sponsored, they are unfortunately probably part of the perception of arrogance, and that is unfair as they are not controlled by you.
 
@PBCool

PB, your response was just enough to move the needle. i'm coming up on my 2-year anniversary, and i've been pretty measured in this discussion. but i'm old and life is short, which is why i'm actioning the cancellation. i assume that's via email etc? i didn't see another option in there.
 
daelm said:
personally, i'd like you to do "like the rest of the providers" and resolve outages in under 3 days. short of that, perhaps not attacking your actual (active, paying) clients on public forums would also go a long way.
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The outage mitigation started when the DDoS started, and was totally mitigated by just over 36hrs. So far less than 3 days? I am not attacking anyone at all so please don't take it that way, again just being honest and straightforward.
 
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