O/T: Mweb Fibre problem (Shaping??)

[Fulcrum29]

Anyway, MWEB have already confirmed, so you and ``most of this forum`` are wrong.

I really don't want to debate/argue with you, here or anywhere, particularly if you don't have the facts.

That depends on how MWEB answered the question, to quote MWEB’s general manager,

Let me state this categorically, the only MWEB employees that are authorized to comment on behalf of MWEB will do so under the official MWEB usernames ( MWEB Guy / MWEB Help ).

As you know well the identity of forum members are not known to us , and unless specifically shared we have no personal detail of any individuals posting on the forums. So let me answer your question , no PostmanPot is not authorized to respond on behalf of MWEB and can confirm he is not an MWEB employee. No, he does not have access to any MWEB network information. He does however have the right, like any other user, to comment and respond on any post MWEB related.

MWEB made it clear that only authorised “employees” are allowed to represent MWEB under their respective online “aliases” or Usernames. They have also made it clear that the alias, PostmanPot, and the true name, the person, behind the alias is not employed by MWEB. They have however given the alias or the Username the permission (the right), like any other My Broadband Forum User, to comment and respond on any post related to MWEB.

Furthermore, MWEB made it known that PostmanPot has no access to any MWEB network technical details.

The above, as quoted, was publically stated on the My Broadband Forum by an MWEB representative Ettienne Cloete.

What I do not understand is that you, PostmanPot, is providing technical assistance to MWEB subscriber queries in the MWEB Feedback threads and other MWEB related threads. Questions which are directed to the authorised MWEB aliases or Usernames pending on the My Broadband Forum User post. Is PostmanPot providing “Feedback” to MWEB subscribers? That is the question.

What MWEB did not answer is that you, PostmanPot, in any capacity whatsoever whether through employment (e.g. by a partner, an entity in which you have an interest, etc.) or partnership (e.g. reseller, tailored, agreement, etc.) have an association with MWEB and/or its members (the companies)?

At times, it does look like affiliate marketing to me… or being representative for a company, whether it is your own or not, which is an MWEB reseller or in any other MWEB-related association. I would appreciate MWEB to clarify on this.

 

[PostmanPot]

What I do not understand is that you, PostmanPot, is providing technical assistance to MWEB subscriber queries in the MWEB Feedback threads and other MWEB related threads.

Plenty of people here help with ISP technical issues.

Questions which are directed to the authorised MWEB aliases or Usernames pending on the My Broadband Forum User post. Is PostmanPot providing “Feedback” to MWEB subscribers? That is the question.

I help fellow MWEB subscribers and answer questions, etc. because I have a lot of experience with MWEB.

What MWEB did not answer is that you, PostmanPot, in any capacity whatsoever whether through employment (e.g. by a partner, an entity in which you have an interest, etc.) or partnership (e.g. reseller, tailored, agreement, etc.) have an association with MWEB and/or its members (the companies)?

There is no association.

At times, it does look like affiliate marketing to me… or being representative for a company, whether it is your own or not, which is an MWEB reseller or in any other MWEB-related association. I would appreciate MWEB to clarify on this.

Hehe. No, it's not.

Here are some examples for you. They received almost immediate responses to their queries.

Internet on and off today. Are there issues in 016 dialing code area?.

Yes, Telkom issues.

Thanks

-

Hi, does anyone know at what time MWEBhelp retires for the evening?

Usually 22h00, you can also call 087 700 0777 until 22h00 24/7/365 if you have a more urgent issue.

It's an accounts issue, can't call on that. Trying to reset a family member's password for the login. Unless that belongs to technical fault.

Technical, yes.

Or https://myaccount.mweb.co.za/mwebcore/myaccount/login/passwordreminder/passwordReminder.jsp.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Anyone can grab a 10Mbps 1GB free trial from us. Even the Postman. Which is why it makes no sense why he'd need to try to get our customers' usernames and passwords behind the scenes to apparently "test".

You tell me, does he strike you as the type to be neutral and fair about his feedback? This coming from the guy who tries to imply that Crystal Web doesn't offer support on MyBroadband and we suffer from network issues, the latter being a set of claims we had to get mods to remove as they were utter nonsense. This coming from the guy who when we had a customer who did not pay us and we suspended the account, came to MyBroadband and lied and made all sorts of false accusations. This was over a christmas period if I recall correctly and I was supposed to be with family. We subsequently spent half a day proving that the customer was a liar and was expecting free internet. Defamatory thread was closed, rightfully so, and I prepared to enjoy the rest of my day. Nope. Low and behold next minute it is open again - PostmanPot has complained behind the scenes that it must be reopened and all of a sudden I'm back dealing with the same thing all over again. We had to forgive and forget and unsuspend just to sort it out and move on after that point. They never paid us, and we lost about R3k from those thieves, which is around double our initial exposure thanks to having to try to address it all over again and just having to start afresh with them to move on with life. When I queried via PM with PostmanPot as I had no idea why he'd do that (I do now) rather than explain, he got very angry that we knew that it was him who had it requested it to be reopened and started with the threats that he was going to Rudolph Muller and he will get to the bottom of this.

Needless to say, when my days like that are destroyed for no purpose other than for him to cause trouble for us, the threats start flying when I send a PM asking if there is anything he feels we have done that I can fix up, the back-handed compliments are slipped into Mweb threads about our company, the outright lies are posted about our company, the lies about Mweb are blasted all over the forum unabated, all the while users are being duped by him into believing he knows what he is doing, I feel it is high time someone step in directly, considering that MyBB evidently approve of his actions, as do Mweb.

So I'm not convinced that giving him free internet for a month and asking him to provide a fair and balanced public report will be anything less than the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the kneecap...

It's ironic in light of this thread that u received better and faster service from Crystal Web in the past year or less that I've been a client on my little/cheap consumer home account than I did in the previous five years with multiple business and home fibre and DSL and related managed services in the tens of thousands of rands every month.

But I guess I'm in the same boat as PP then, equally fanatical.

 

[Johnatan56]

Here are some examples for you. They received almost immediate responses to their queries. -

Yes, you were not out of line there. You were out of line on the part where you said until 22h00 24/7/365 and people called you out on it and yet you still said nope, it's as good as so it's the same.
Go back to DJ's car analogy, that's what you're doing.

 

[PostmanPot]

But I guess I'm in the same boat as PP then, equally fanatical.

I love quality products.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I love quality products.

And on most of them we agree.

 

[PostmanPot]

Yes, you were not out of line there. You were out of line on the part where you said until 22h00 24/7/365 and people called you out on it and yet you still said nope, it's as good as so it's the same.
Go back to DJ's car analogy, that's what you're doing.

I'm never out of line. And as mentioned numerous times now, it was clearly intentional hyperbole... I said "Until 22h00 24/7/365", not "24/7/365".

Technical Support

Telephone 087 700 0777
Email [email protected]
Business hours Mon - Sat 08h00 - 22h00
Sun 10h00 - 22h00
Public Holidays 08h00 - 22h00

 

[PostmanPot]

And on most of them we agree.

It would have been all if you took me up on my offer. Guaranteed.

I'm just glad you're happy.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I'm never out of line. And as mentioned numerous times now, it was clearly intentional hyperbole... I said "Until 22h00 24/7/365", not "24/7/365".

Well you just provided an easy test for everyone here.

Email that address and [email protected] and see who responds the fastest.

We'll just ignore that Crystal Web has live chat support on their website...

Not to mention their "premium" Silver business tier isn't open any longer/later or responds any faster or with more professionalism than their consumer channel.

 

[PostmanPot]

Well you just provided an easy test for everyone here.

Email that address and [email protected] and see who responds the fastest.

We'll just ignore that Crystal Web has live chat support on their website...

Both ISPs provide support differently.

MWEB does have Live Chat.

And http://www.mweb.co.za/help/home.aspx.

I prefer asking people to ask themselves why they keep needing support from their ISP when it should always just work.

I'm much more interested in consistent performance than support.

By the way, MWEB's support is fantastic. I've had some great conversations late at night, I'm talking 1 hour+ phone calls.

 

[Johnatan56]

Both ISPs provide support differently.

MWEB does have Live Chat.

And http://www.mweb.co.za/help/home.aspx.

I prefer asking people to ask themselves why they keep needing support from their ISP when it should always just work.

I'm much more interested in consistent performance than support.

By the way, MWEB's support is fantastic. I've had some great conversations late at night, I'm talking 1 hour+ phone calls.

Why would I want 1hour+ phone calls with support. The shorter the call the better...

 

[PostmanPot]

Why would I want 1hour+ phone calls with support. The shorter the call the better...

Because I've found there to be awesome people who work at MWEB. It wasn't a support call as such, I was just doing some testing and chatting with top level support, who happened to be an interesting person who I presume found me interesting too.

 

[DJ...]

I help fellow MWEB subscribers and answer questions, etc. because I have a lot of experience with MWEB.

Prove it. Put your money where your mouth is now. It's easy to assert something without evidence. So back up this claim:

So does Mweb load balance its IPC on multiple links or has it been aggregated into a single connection? Why would this matter? If yes, is there any layer 4 QoS applied here that may interfere with the interpretation of tracert data from a customer? How do you account for this when you ask Mweb customers for this data, or does blaming Telkom not require this? Which providers do Mweb use for their national longhaul traffic? What size link do they use for their Teraco traffic and which services reside within these locations? Is there a separate split of international connectivity irrespective of customer location or does it all aggregate and failover only when needed? Cisco or Juniper? Does the IP-range lease from the core or the exchange? How many points of presence do they have nationally? Any international PoPs and where? Where is the cloud cluster located for the gaming servers? Is there any QAM modulation on the longhaul links at all? If so, what type? Does Mweb make use of TR-069 for auto-provisioning and if so, does a mechanism exist to sniff the traffic for live analysis? If so, is this over SNMP? Which DCs host the core routing equipment? How does Mweb prevent DNS requests from announcing for a route if the services reside locally or close to the edge?

If you refuse to answer the above, which I suspect you will, just answer me this: can you answer these questions? Hell, can you answer the first 5?

 

[DJ...]

Yes, you were not out of line there..

I'm not convinced. I cannot find the specific NN from Telkom for that notice to Drifter and most of those changes at the time across Telkom were zero impact changes happening on non-live equipment, where a simple switch-over happens afterwards. So had someone who knows WTF they are talking about answered Drifter, it's entirely possible that they'd have given him a different answer and actually offered proper support by asking for more information to determine whether it was something they could actually blame on Telkom, or if there was something else at play at that time...

 

[DJ...]

I'm never out of line. And as mentioned numerous times now, it was clearly intentional hyperbole... I said "Until 22h00 24/7/365", not "24/7/365".

Then you do not understand how to communicate. You cannot say 100% guarantee and 100% uptime SLA guaranteed, 20% of the time.

You are not a moron. You knew exactly what you were doing there with that bit of PR spin bullschit...

 

[Johnatan56]

I'm not convinced. I cannot find the specific NN from Telkom for that notice to Drifter and most of those changes at the time across Telkom were zero impact changes happening on non-live equipment, where a simple switch-over happens afterwards. So had someone who knows WTF they are talking about answered Drifter, it's entirely possible that they'd have given him a different answer and actually offered proper support by asking for more information to determine whether it was something they could actually blame on Telkom, or if there was something else at play at that time...

I was specifically talking about when he quoted me, I didn't follow the rest of them, so not sure.

 

[PostmanPot]

Prove it. Put your money where your mouth is now. It's easy to assert something without evidence.

MWEB has offered consistent performance for so many years. Either there are never issues, or there are issues which affect everyone, i.e. Seacom down and intermittent Chrome issues with Youtube. In other words, everything is very black and white with MWEB, with very little grey areas. Everything just works, so when there is the occasional exceptional issue for unbeknownst reasons, I've found that there's very little that MWEB can actually do. MWEB promotes troubleshooting via the forum, which means that most/all of the problems are public. I've read every single post in the feedback threads for many years, collecting a wealth of information which contributes to much of what I know.

So back up this claim:

So does Mweb load balance its IPC on multiple links or has it been aggregated into a single connection? Why would this matter? If yes, is there any layer 4 QoS applied here that may interfere with the interpretation of tracert data from a customer? How do you account for this when you ask Mweb customers for this data, or does blaming Telkom not require this? Which providers do Mweb use for their national longhaul traffic? What size link do they use for their Teraco traffic and which services reside within these locations? Is there a separate split of international connectivity irrespective of customer location or does it all aggregate and failover only when needed? Cisco or Juniper? Does the IP-range lease from the core or the exchange? How many points of presence do they have nationally? Any international PoPs and where? Where is the cloud cluster located for the gaming servers? Is there any QAM modulation on the longhaul links at all? If so, what type? Does Mweb make use of TR-069 for auto-provisioning and if so, does a mechanism exist to sniff the traffic for live analysis? If so, is this over SNMP? Which DCs host the core routing equipment? How does Mweb prevent DNS requests from announcing for a route if the services reside locally or close to the edge?

If you refuse to answer the above, which I suspect you will, just answer me this: can you answer these questions? Hell, can you answer the first 5?

Hey I said you don't need to impress me.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Plenty of people here help with ISP technical issues.

Good, that is what contributed to MyBroadband Forum’s success, a community providing support.

I help fellow MWEB subscribers and answer questions, etc. because I have a lot of experience with MWEB.

You have engaged with MWEB and other ISP subscribers through PM, providing technical assistance related to MWEB and/or access to ISP subscriber/trial details or shared details?

There is no association.

Hehe. No, it's not.

Other than you being an MWEB subscriber I would appreciate MWEB to answer to the 'association' question.

Here are some examples for you. They received almost immediate responses to their queries.

Good, that is speedy answering to general queries.

EDITED, amended quote.

 

[DJ...]

And http://www.mweb.co.za/help/home.aspx.

Your point? Other ISPs including Crystal Web offer the same...

I prefer asking people to ask themselves why they keep needing support from their ISP when it should always just work.

Careful now. You're finding yourself inferring that this is the case on Crystal Web once again. Your leading question may sound super-smart in your head, and may work on some people, but ultimately it leaves you with less integrity than even before, as rather than sell on your own benefits you'd instead knock the competition. Those are the tactics of a junior greaseball salesperson...

I'm much more interested in consistent performance than support.

Except for the last few days where you didn't have consistent performance, and needed support, because the network you claim never has issues, was having issues? Have you asked yourself why you keep needing support? Would you not prefer a consistent network experience over needing quality support?

By the way, MWEB's support is fantastic. I've had some great conversations late at night, I'm talking 1 hour+ phone calls.

You should opt for an ISP where one hour phone calls aren't required in the first place. You just implied that Crystal Web is schit because Sauronza commented on receiving far superior support over business level support from Mweb; you promptly imply that Crystal Web must be schit because he required support; and then go on to tell us about your support experiences with Mweb, and forget to mention the support you've required the last few days where the network wasn't operating correctly.

Is it not yet blindingly obvious why people take issue with you?

 

[PostmanPot]

I'm not convinced. I cannot find the specific NN from Telkom for that notice to Drifter and most of those changes at the time across Telkom were zero impact changes happening on non-live equipment, where a simple switch-over happens afterwards. So had someone who knows WTF they are talking about answered Drifter, it's entirely possible that they'd have given him a different answer and actually offered proper support by asking for more information to determine whether it was something they could actually blame on Telkom, or if there was something else at play at that time...

The MWEB Notice Board listed issues in his area - http://www.mweb.co.za/help/ServiceStatus/ServiceStatusHome.aspx.