Dealing with Telkom ADSL Support

[Kasyx]

Due to the absolute instability of my ADSL line lately, I have found myself contacting Telkom Support pretty much every day for the last week. Through my utter boredom, I decided to time each of the calls to see how long I was on hold.

Call 1: 27 Minutes (Phone on speaker, listening to crappy music whilst browsing bash.org)
Call 2: 46 Minutes (Watched entire episode of House whilst on hold)
Call 3: 22 Minutes (Watched full episode of Scrubs whilst on hold)
Call 4: 1 Hour 12 Minutes (Left phone unattended on desk for 25 minutes whilst cooking dinner, then proceeded to watch another episode of House)
Call 5: No response - on hold for roughly 3 hours (Watched extended edition of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - eventually gave up when Ring was destroyed)
Call 6: 28 Minutes (Another episode of Scrubs, petted cat for remainder of time)

Average Hold Time: One Hour, Two Minutes

Perhaps this may have been worth it HAD ANYTHING ACTUALLY BEEN DONE ABOUT MY LINE, but alas, it is Telkom we are talking about. As of writing, my line has been unstable for the last month. Yesterday I called to log a fault on the line (they refused to do so before, claiming my line tested fine on their end and thus there was nothing they could do), after the woman tried to DOWNGRADE my line right then and there, I finally forced her to log a fault and squeezed from her a reference number.

I then decided to put Telkom's SLA to the test ("Telkom shall repair all faults reported by the Customer, where such faults are attributable to the Telkom network elements, within twenty four (24) hours of such fault being reported to Telkom") and waited until 24 hours had passed without hearing from them. Of course, no one ever called about it, so I phoned them 28 hours after reporting the fault (and managed to catch up on another episode of House - how awesome is that show?) to query its status.

The fault had been written off.

Yep.

Without resolving the issue, dispatching a techie, or even bothering to CONTACT ME, they close the fault. So imagine the support minion's reaction when I phoned this evening to query the status of a fault that had been closed. I told him I had seen no change in my line since I logged the fault yesterday, and demanded that he re-open it.

Unfortunately, up until now, I have been told to call when my line goes down. I do, of course, but in the HOUR AND TWO MINUTES it takes for them to pick up the damn phone, the line is usually syncing again. However, tonight was a particularly bad night and my line kept dropping, right in front of the support minion's eyes. Thus, after "reopening my port" (ha ha), he informed me that he will send a technician to physically check my line (though when that will be, I know not). This, I hope, will sort out my issues as the techie will be forced to do something when opening the door to my exchange only to find himself knee-deep in rain water (you'd think the four hundred odd rand I spend for my "ADSL line rental" IN ADDITION to the R111 I spend on my "phone line rental" would actually cover the costs of DECENT WATERPROOFING).

I do apologize for this long rant, and I am omitting various details. I think if I were to compose, in full detail, all the issues I am having with Telkom at the moment, it would take me about as long as re-writing The Illiad. In Klingon. In Braille. With a Toothpick.

Thus, I will leave it at that.

Thanks for listening

 

[Kasyx]

Oh, and just by the way:

Noise Margin (Upstream): 12.0 db
Noise Margin (Downstream): 1.5 db
Attenuation (Upstream): 19.0 db
Attenuation (Downstream): 38.0 db

With a 1.5dB SNR, one wonders why I am having issues... Especially considering it is usually in the region of 24dB

 

[BTTB]

In another thread there was a discussion about Customers having their faults resolved or "Written Off" as you put it, without any actual work being done and Debbie2 mentioned that this practice is quite common at Telkom by some Call Centre Staff as Telkom Staff Members are measured performance wise by the Quantity of Resolved Faults, I would assume.

This loop hole if I may call it that should be closed up by Telkom's Management and Telkom's Fault Performance Methods re-evaluated.

 

[Freshy-ZN]

The sad thing is your Telkom experience is par for the course. I can never get through to them so I dont bother. I prefer to get in my car and drive to the Telkom service (yeah right) centre and hang on their counter picking my nose till I get references and answers.

I cannot describe how much I hate this organisation.

 

[[OUPA]MrNutz]

just a few q's:

-is it possible for you to test with another router? (like a netgear 834gt)
-how does your voice quality sound when u pick up the phone and press 1
-have u measured the line specs like these below , with all filters , phones unplugged
-have u changed filters?
-have u tried running the router on ups power?

those would be basic things i would try/check.

Oh, and just by the way:

Noise Margin (Upstream): 12.0 db
Noise Margin (Downstream): 1.5 db
Attenuation (Upstream): 19.0 db
Attenuation (Downstream): 38.0 db

With a 1.5dB SNR, one wonders why I am having issues... Especially considering it is usually in the region of 24dB

 

[Kasyx]

I must say I am quite impressed.
After my last call with Telkom last night, they promised to dispatch a techie to take a look at my line. Well, he arrived about 10 minutes ago, checked my line and told me my ADSL was fine, but there seems to be a crossed connection which may be what causes interference on my line. I'm not sure how true that is, but all I wanted him to do was to go check the exchange so that he could see that it is probably soaked in water.

Thanks for the suggestions, MrNutz, I will definitely try them out if the Telkom minion fails to fix my problem. Other than that I am holding thumb, clenching sphincter, and wishing hard.

 

[[OUPA]MrNutz]

on what basis did he say that your ADSL is fine - what tests did he do ?

also - let them do a port reset - or - even better - if they can put u on another dslam port.

last thing u can try - tell the tech to divert the E-SIDE of the cable.

 

[Nod]

My line sync at the full 4Mb it is supposed to. Me only getting 1.8Mb, and sometimes nothing, seems to be of no concern. Most of the time I get higher uploads than downloads. Telkom, of course, does not see a problem, as it is a "up to" 4Mb line, and I am syncing at that speed, so no problem on their side, obviously. Me getting 40Kbit down speed and 145Kbits upload speeds, is also none of their concern.

 

[Kasyx]

on what basis did he say that your ADSL is fine - what tests did he do ?

also - let them do a port reset - or - even better - if they can put u on another dslam port.

last thing u can try - tell the tech to divert the E-SIDE of the cable.

Well I've just got home, and I am connected at full sync though my SNR is still hovering around 11dB so he didn't quite fix what I wanted him to...
If it rains again and there is still a problem, I will get another techie dispatched who I will ask to move me to another DSLAM port.

What exactly does it mean to "divert the E-SIDE of the cable"?

 

[Kasyx]

My line is still causing trouble. Can't use the phone due to the line being crossed and the ADSL randomly disconnects.

I really hope he is still at work and about to fix it.

 

[Kasyx]

Just had another techie come over, he sounded like he knew what he was doing. Fixed my crossed line, but my ADSL is still causing issues. Fortunately he sounded quite keen on getting it sorted out, phoning the main office to get another techie in to assist him. He said he will be back in about an hour (*fingers crossed*) to sort it out. Kept mentioning something about a "UG" or something?

 

[Superman]

I dont like their support , phoned them yesterday to see why I couldnt login to the tracker.
Call 1: 12min holding , then I get put through to a retard who says i miss typing my password , because it was saying invalid user name/pass. Now obviously I know how to copy paste from a text file where I wrote it the first time and copy pasted it to setup my connection so it is right. after some faul language I swore at him for 1 min then hang up.

Call 2: Was on hold for 20min , when I found someone that could help , he said we going to reset your password and see what happens , the portable fone died because the call was so long. (At this point i was ready to rip someones eyes out).

Call 3: Was on hold for 15min , I immediatly asked for the password to be reset. It worked. I could login and check my cap.

But this was a little late because I was capped.

 

[Paul C]

Had a storm the other night,m and made sure I unplugged modem etc. When I put it back on the line wasn't syncing. Still waiting for a tech to come two days later. SIgh. Surely if the line isn't syncing it must be easy to reset it or something. (I tested two different modems.)

 

[Nokkie]

Due to the absolute instability of my ADSL line lately, I have found myself contacting Telkom Support pretty much every day for the last week. Through my utter boredom, I decided to time each of the calls to see how long I was on hold.

Call 1: 27 Minutes (Phone on speaker, listening to crappy music whilst browsing bash.org)
Call 2: 46 Minutes (Watched entire episode of House whilst on hold)
Call 3: 22 Minutes (Watched full episode of Scrubs whilst on hold)
Call 4: 1 Hour 12 Minutes (Left phone unattended on desk for 25 minutes whilst cooking dinner, then proceeded to watch another episode of House)
Call 5: No response - on hold for roughly 3 hours (Watched extended edition of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - eventually gave up when Ring was destroyed)
Call 6: 28 Minutes (Another episode of Scrubs, petted cat for remainder of time)

Average Hold Time: One Hour, Two Minutes

Perhaps this may have been worth it HAD ANYTHING ACTUALLY BEEN DONE ABOUT MY LINE, but alas, it is Telkom we are talking about. As of writing, my line has been unstable for the last month. Yesterday I called to log a fault on the line (they refused to do so before, claiming my line tested fine on their end and thus there was nothing they could do), after the woman tried to DOWNGRADE my line right then and there, I finally forced her to log a fault and squeezed from her a reference number.

I then decided to put Telkom's SLA to the test ("Telkom shall repair all faults reported by the Customer, where such faults are attributable to the Telkom network elements, within twenty four (24) hours of such fault being reported to Telkom") and waited until 24 hours had passed without hearing from them. Of course, no one ever called about it, so I phoned them 28 hours after reporting the fault (and managed to catch up on another episode of House - how awesome is that show?) to query its status.

The fault had been written off.

Yep.

Without resolving the issue, dispatching a techie, or even bothering to CONTACT ME, they close the fault. So imagine the support minion's reaction when I phoned this evening to query the status of a fault that had been closed. I told him I had seen no change in my line since I logged the fault yesterday, and demanded that he re-open it.

Unfortunately, up until now, I have been told to call when my line goes down. I do, of course, but in the HOUR AND TWO MINUTES it takes for them to pick up the damn phone, the line is usually syncing again. However, tonight was a particularly bad night and my line kept dropping, right in front of the support minion's eyes. Thus, after "reopening my port" (ha ha), he informed me that he will send a technician to physically check my line (though when that will be, I know not). This, I hope, will sort out my issues as the techie will be forced to do something when opening the door to my exchange only to find himself knee-deep in rain water (you'd think the four hundred odd rand I spend for my "ADSL line rental" IN ADDITION to the R111 I spend on my "phone line rental" would actually cover the costs of DECENT WATERPROOFING).

I do apologize for this long rant, and I am omitting various details. I think if I were to compose, in full detail, all the issues I am having with Telkom at the moment, it would take me about as long as re-writing The Illiad. In Klingon. In Braille. With a Toothpick.

Thus, I will leave it at that.

Thanks for listening

The longest I hold for telkom on Speaker phone btw.. was 2.30hours before someone picked up and then switched me to 5 differenet other sections before ending up again at the 0800 375 375 nr again.

Nothing much has changed during the past few months still same old telkom,

 

[Surv0]

I logged a fault recently - spoke to the technician who wanted to close the ticket (Lady who sounded like she really had no idea what she was doing), questioned her about what was done, after waiting for her to actually re-read the report. She then, what i think, made up some resolution by saying the technician replaced the line from my house to the distribution box on the corner. I highly doubt that happened but accepted what she said and told her to close the order. Meanwhile ive sent my fault reference to a friend who works in the ADSL call centre and asked him to send me the log of the fault so i can see exactly what she read and what she told me. God help her if she lied to me - i will kick up a mess. Will also have her name in that log.

And the whole thing about technicians closing faults without customers acknowledgement has been going on for some time now. What happens is that the techie is either lazy and doesnt want to call or they cant get hold of the customer, they test the line, see that it is synching and because it synchs they assume that its working and close the fault. This has a number of reprocussions as the true fault probably wont be resolved, and the customer would have to relog it with a new ref and more technical analysis would need to be done (Not that much gets done neway). Brings us back to inadequate training for the staff. They are shown absolute basics and what to look for in their testing applications. Very linear form of support as these "Robots" arent taught to think for themselves and try think out the box at least. The whole systems seems to be there to resolve core faults but more so to shut the customer up rather than actually try resolve a problem and make his/her experience better. And you know if telkom had even a semi decent call centre i reckon the public opinion about them would be 10fold what it is now.

When ever i log a fault, either for myself or a client... i always tell them to stipulate that under no circumstances must a technican close the fault without speaking to me first, regardless of whether or not they cant contact me. So far i havent had any problems...