Cool Ideas not so Cool anymore

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EvilSurd

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tldr: Fringe customer with unique problem, doesn't fit into the scripts and metrics that drive a business, worth losing and not going to extra effort as their negative noise would not affect growth anyways

I have written this post in my head atleast 6 times over.
From gracious, to sarcastic, to spiteful, to full on Karen.
I have received great performance and good service with CISP since my Fibre installation and my simple queries were always handled adequately. Whenever I saw a MBB ranking of ISP's be it cost/package or performance on said package, I was always chuffed with the fact that I had chosen these guys and could just do what I needed.

It really does suck when that changes. I could bore or regale you all with the back and forth, the highs and lows of my support query, but it wouldn't affect much in the end I believe.
I had a fairly unique performance challenge I believed and eventually logged a call after doing many things my end.
Insert the standard story of slow and bad initial response.
Respond with a burst of activity in reply to bitchy cancellation email/ticket.
Continue following standard/scripted path and further insulting customer intelligence and patience.
Make no actual effort to take an extra step to retain customer through technical/financial/emotional means.
Actually have the ticket land on a knowledgeable and broadminded support engineer, a week after logging and quietly acquiescing to the scripted questions and test.
If you ever have Sidney McGeer assigned to your ticket, he's worth working with and may have saved an account. Good guy.
Finally get the ISP to make some changes on their end, thus proving that you are on to something and it can't be solved with a Windows Update, Router reset/firmware upgrade, and yes I am definitely on the LAN and not WiFI.
Being questioned repeatedly on your own personal experience and intelligence is beyond frustrating.

Support engineers have to deal with large call volumes and high % of consistent customer issues and repeat problems, I get it.
But you also need to train them and give them much clearer exit questions/options when a user knows things and it is a potential problem, and forward it to that good guy hiding behind a wall of empty energy drink cans that is going to ask you to do things without first prompting you to "Push the Start Button, now type Command Prompt, do you see it?"

There also needs to be more alternative paths of troubleshooting on Fibre than there currently is.
You used to be able to dial in to a different ISP and connect at close to 56k on a test account to prove to support that it's not your telkom line. You used to be able to log in with a 1GB trial acc to another ISP and show that your traffic was being shaped and routed differently and move forward from there.
And you could do this all without giving a calendar months notice to switch ISPs and hope that their peering is actually different to justify your moaning instead of just being yet another marginalized customer that won't affect bottom line.
That's why some of the more popular providers exist today, cos as a community we believed they tried harder and actually heard us

Oh, the attached pic is actually my response to the 2nd engineer on my ticket when I lost my ****. Made by a mate after endless Whatsapp moaning
 

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EvilSurd said:
tldr: Fringe customer with unique problem, doesn't fit into the scripts and metrics that drive a business, worth losing and not going to extra effort as their negative noise would not affect growth anyways

I have written this post in my head atleast 6 times over.
From gracious, to sarcastic, to spiteful, to full on Karen.
I have received great performance and good service with CISP since my Fibre installation and my simple queries were always handled adequately. Whenever I saw a MBB ranking of ISP's be it cost/package or performance on said package, I was always chuffed with the fact that I had chosen these guys and could just do what I needed.

It really does suck when that changes. I could bore or regale you all with the back and forth, the highs and lows of my support query, but it wouldn't affect much in the end I believe.
I had a fairly unique performance challenge I believed and eventually logged a call after doing many things my end.
Insert the standard story of slow and bad initial response.
Respond with a burst of activity in reply to bitchy cancellation email/ticket.
Continue following standard/scripted path and further insulting customer intelligence and patience.
Make no actual effort to take an extra step to retain customer through technical/financial/emotional means.
Actually have the ticket land on a knowledgeable and broadminded support engineer, a week after logging and quietly acquiescing to the scripted questions and test.
If you ever have Sidney McGeer assigned to your ticket, he's worth working with and may have saved an account. Good guy.
Finally get the ISP to make some changes on their end, thus proving that you are on to something and it can't be solved with a Windows Update, Router reset/firmware upgrade, and yes I am definitely on the LAN and not WiFI.
Being questioned repeatedly on your own personal experience and intelligence is beyond frustrating.

Support engineers have to deal with large call volumes and high % of consistent customer issues and repeat problems, I get it.
But you also need to train them and give them much clearer exit questions/options when a user knows things and it is a potential problem, and forward it to that good guy hiding behind a wall of empty energy drink cans that is going to ask you to do things without first prompting you to "Push the Start Button, now type Command Prompt, do you see it?"

There also needs to be more alternative paths of troubleshooting on Fibre than there currently is.
You used to be able to dial in to a different ISP and connect at close to 56k on a test account to prove to support that it's not your telkom line. You used to be able to log in with a 1GB trial acc to another ISP and show that your traffic was being shaped and routed differently and move forward from there.
And you could do this all without giving a calendar months notice to switch ISPs and hope that their peering is actually different to justify your moaning instead of just being yet another marginalized customer that won't affect bottom line.
That's why some of the more popular providers exist today, cos as a community we believed they tried harder and actually heard us

Oh, the attached pic is actually my response to the 2nd engineer on my ticket when I lost my ****. Made by a mate after endless Whatsapp moaning
Click to expand...

What was your “fairly unique problem”?
 
Hi, we are always here for escalations and usually for those with unique circumstances exactly.

Is there something we can assist with?

May I have your support reference number please?
 
So you take the time to post your rant here... but you couldn't be bothered to escalate your issue here?

Interesting.
 
EvilSurd said:
There also needs to be more alternative paths of troubleshooting on Fibre than there currently is.
You used to be able to dial in to a different ISP and connect at close to 56k on a test account to prove to support that it's not your telkom line. You used to be able to log in with a 1GB trial acc to another ISP and show that your traffic was being shaped and routed differently and move forward from there.
And you could do this all without giving a calendar months notice to switch ISPs and hope that their peering is actually different to justify your moaning instead of just being yet another marginalized customer that won't affect bottom line.
That's why some of the more popular providers exist today, cos as a community we believed they tried harder and actually heard us
Click to expand...

You can still dail accounts from another ISP on openserve fibre.
 
The problem was intermittent packet loss that was hard to pin down and harder to explain
 
EvilSurd said:
The problem was intermittent packet loss that was hard to pin down and harder to explain
Click to expand...
Do you have the support ref for me to investigate? This is the reason we have a dedicated thread :)
 
EvilSurd said:
The problem was intermittent packet loss that was hard to pin down and harder to explain
Click to expand...

I'm going to take a wild guess and say you are on Frogfoot, Metrofibre or SADV/Vuma Villages right?
 
Don't worry, "international is not guaranteed" - cool ideas support staff for 2Mbps on a 100Mbps line speedtest to Hamburg.

I don't think I'll ever get over that one, and it summed up my experience with CI quite well.
 
I think you should go and sign-up with Web Africa. It'll give you a lot of perspective.
 
Johnatan56 said:
Don't worry, "international is not guaranteed" - cool ideas support staff for 2Mbps on a 100Mbps line speedtest to Hamburg.

I don't think I'll ever get over that one, and it summed up my experience with CI quite well.
Click to expand...
Your issue was packet loss which is what we established with you if you recall ;)

But on a pure technical level throughput anywhere can't be guaranteed in a WAN environment where you have no control over external factors. Hence why when talking about bandwidth availability it is done on a contention level, not on a throughput level.
 
Looking at the ticket this was due to stale routes on Blizzards network that was resolved? This was after the COD update.

The initial delay in response regarding your issue, I totally agree with and the respective staff member has been spoken to so apologies for that.

This is why we make ourselves available for escalation should a case fall through the cracks.
 
Last edited:
Well nothing was properly resolved. I went from 230ms rock solid since installation, to no understanding of why I then experienced issues, to finally having Sidney get the Architect Paul to change my routing and having 260-280ms stable via your London Telehouse route.
So no resolution or explanation why we couldn't get back to previous performance and all that frustration to finally get someone to try alternative technical options to prove there was an issue with my traffic after the endless testing hoops.
It sucked not being able to speak to someone knowledgeable and have the type of convo where you go "Ok, we've put you in a different IP Pool, any better, let's see how it goes if we send you via a diff route or gateway, or do you mind if we drop you to 50 or 10 or 2MB to see if that works"
Instead it was "Please can you do a speedtest 30mins apart and send us the screenshots" when that has nothing to do with any issue and throughput was never a complaint.

I was told that the weekend portal upgrade on your end mean't you were unable to do any changes on your side and that you were unable to get Vumatel to do anything either.
It's like a mechanic saying it's impossible to test if different sparkplugs or tires would change the issue, we can't change them anyways, everyone all uses the exact same brand and drives on the exact same road, that's just how your car goes now. But look, there are different things that can be done, should someone want to try.

My post was not intended to source another avenue of support, just to express my disappointment at what I felt used to be that personal touch sports tuning garage ISP where you could talk real talk with the guys to just another one of the bunch where you get what you get. The response from the accounts team was also cold and reference to non-action by a supposed retention team.
 
EvilSurd said:
Well nothing was properly resolved. I went from 230ms rock solid since installation, to no understanding of why I then experienced issues, to finally having Sidney get the Architect Paul to change my routing and having 260-280ms stable via your London Telehouse route.
So no resolution or explanation why we couldn't get back to previous performance and all that frustration to finally get someone to try alternative technical options to prove there was an issue with my traffic after the endless testing hoops.
It sucked not being able to speak to someone knowledgeable and have the type of convo where you go "Ok, we've put you in a different IP Pool, any better, let's see how it goes if we send you via a diff route or gateway, or do you mind if we drop you to 50 or 10 or 2MB to see if that works"
Instead it was "Please can you do a speedtest 30mins apart and send us the screenshots" when that has nothing to do with any issue and throughput was never a complaint.

I was told that the weekend portal upgrade on your end mean't you were unable to do any changes on your side and that you were unable to get Vumatel to do anything either.
It's like a mechanic saying it's impossible to test if different sparkplugs or tires would change the issue, we can't change them anyways, everyone all uses the exact same brand and drives on the exact same road, that's just how your car goes now. But look, there are different things that can be done, should someone want to try.

My post was not intended to source another avenue of support, just to express my disappointment at what I felt used to be that personal touch sports tuning garage ISP where you could talk real talk with the guys to just another one of the bunch where you get what you get. The response from the accounts team was also cold and reference to non-action by a supposed retention team.
Click to expand...
I am the same Paul so I am well aware of it, our peering with Blizzard via SACS and NYIIX is what we disabled because of th COD update.

We then enabled it again and you said you had issues with rubber banding so we disabled the peer again which would take our London peer and route. We learned there were stale routes on Blizzards side so purged those to what I believe resolved your issue.

It is impossible to policy route different ranges effectively to test this kind of thing.

These are some lessons learnt with trying to optimise latency etc. So unfortunately not a simple task and usually down to Blizzards network.
 
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