Durbanville outages

[daveza]

I really don't believe any posts here make the slightest difference to the Sentech service levels, but just as a heads-up to others who may be considering using this lot:-

You will note an announcement on the ' Bulletin Board' that the Durbanvile link was down early last week.

On Friday night it went down completely - and only came back up around 11pm Sunday night. Nothing mentioned on the Sentech Board. That's a whole weekend with zero connectivity.

This morning the link failed for about an hour again.

Btw - I received a reference number after my second call on the weekend to try and find out what was happening. Apparently this would mean a call to me when the system was up again.

I'm still waiting for the call.

Pathetic service Sentech. Miserable , disgraceful , shameful service. Don't you feel embarrassed when you take my money ?

 

[bees]

Agree. Also connecting to Durbanville tower. Was off whole of today, even losing signal completly. Currently the wonderful green light is blinking away in all it's connectivitylessness.

I'm busy putting something together to email off to Desmond, Manager at NoWire. [email protected], if someone is interested.

Also asked about this compensation fairy today, and it's the first they heard of it. They said UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will we be compensated for lack of connectivity.

Thanks SuchTech.

 

[Teejay]

Durbanville Tower 126

My wife uses this service to work from home. Since late Thursday she has not been able to work because the service was down more than it was up. Sentech talks about "intermittent" service. Our service has been almost non-existent since Thursday. If one calls the helpdesk you get the standard "We are experiencing extremely high call volumes" taped message and if you leave a message they don't phone you back. Their customer service is crap. Their only saving grace is a guy named Carl who helped us set up a dial up connection to use as an alternative. He was the best helpdesk guy we have ever dealt with. He even phoned me back (twice!) on my cell phone to make sure we had got the dial up working. What a pity they don't have more people like this working for them. We certainly won't be recommending MW to any of our friends and as soon as our contract is finished we're outta here. I'm not particularly fond of Telkom either, but at least our friends who are on ADSL have a service they can use. Always on Internet means Always on, get that Sentech? As customers and users of this service we are not prepared to settle for anything less and will be taking the matter further.

 

[daveza]

The sequel:-

About an hour after my post yesterday the connection fell over again. Three bars on the modem but ' network not available'.

A call to Sentech support was as mentioned - high call volumes etc leave a message etc , but I did get to speak to someone who was unable to provide any explanation or eta. I was assured ( as I was on Saturday and Sunday ) that the problem was listed on the Bulletin Board - it wasn't.

Last night I finally lost it and got through to some poor Sentech punchbag who offered the usual lines but added an extra bit about a part being flown down from Joburg.

Now let me make it quite clear what my problem is. Having been at the hardware face of the Internet industry for 10 years I am most aware of equipment failures, outages due to lines down etc etc and have learned to accept them as part of progress. What I do expect is communication and honesty. Sending a part from Joburg is what is needed to fix a breakage - I don't need to know that. I need to have some idea how long the problem will take to fix so I can plan or find alternative solutions. I need the problem acknowledged in writing so I know it's not just user-error.

I was again assured the fault was listed on the Bulletin Board. I then told the fellow I would stay on the phone while he checked for himself - oh dear, no it wasn't listed - but he would speak to second level support to ensure it would be done. I said I would call back in half an hour to confirm - as it turned out it never did get posted. In the US, this would guarantee legal claims for loss of earnings and failure to provide service for fees paid. Sentech doesnt even seem to find a 3 day outage worthy of mentioning on their Bulletin Board !

Finally - and this is the most disturbing - I asked to speak to the Sentech Customer Services Manager. Yup you guessed it - he didn't know who the CSM was. Customer support staff have no idea who they work for ? Perhaps Sentech have bigger problems than just equipment failure.

Perhaps Sentech actually doesn't have a Customer Services Manager. If there is one he or she is nothing more than an oxygen thief.

I would have liked to end this by venting my utter contempt for this purile lack of communication but actually I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Can we expect an apology - nah !

 

[JayT]

NoWire are useless. My 12 month contract was supposed to end at the end of last month. I emailed them twice asking them to confirm if my account will be changed to a month by month contract, which is a R50 per month drop in price.

Yesterday I get an email from them, after waiting 1.5-2 weeks from my original email, saying... thanks for the continued service and your account is now month by month. All this and they still charged me the full rate earlier this month.

If you know your original contract has been completed, check and make sure you're paying the month by month rate which is a far bit lower. It looks like they might be trying to milk the cow and catch those who dont know about the price drop.

 

[Teejay]

Yeah, Daveza we also got the story about the spare part coming down from Joburg. It was only going to be installed on Saturday morning, yet suddenly the service came back up again (albeit briefly, before crashing again) on saturday night. How is this possible if the part hadn't arrived yet? Makes you wonder whether they're telling us the truth doesn't it?

 

[Teejay]

Durbanville Tower 126

This whole story stinks. One of the excuses we were given by a helpdesk staffer was that the spare part had arrived from Joburg, but that it was too windy for the technicians to go up the tower to replace it and they would wait until the wind died down in the morning! It seems that when they did eventually replace the part, it didn't solve the problem and they were then looking for another fault. I drove past that tower today and it doesn't look that high, certainly not like the TV mast on top of the Tygerberg. The Durbanville tower is actually in Kenridge Heights, just a couple of kays up Durban road from Tyger Valley. Carl was kind enough to give me GPS co-ordinates for both the Durbanville and the Loevenstein towers, so I could locate them on the map, with the idea of trying to force my modem to connect to Loevenstein. Unfortunately, they are both in the same direction from my place, with only a few degrees angle difference, so even a Pringles tube over the antenna is not going to work for me! If there was a tower over in Kraaifontein or Brackenfell, I could probably pick up from there. Anyway, I digress. I would actually love to know what the problem was ( I understand tech stuff so it would mean something to me). Having been involved in maintenance myself for many years, I find 4 days downtime very difficult to swallow. One can almost always get up and running quicker than that.