Why does Vumatel allow one ISP to block another?

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BarnettE

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Two weeks ago I placed an order with Cool Ideas to install fibre at my home. So far all I know is they cannot proceed because another ISP (Telkom apparently) has a pending order and is blocking the installation.

Several months ago I received an unsolicited call from Telkom offering to upgrade my ADSL to fibre for free. But nothing ever came of that. I phoned them at some point to follow up and was told something along the lines of "Vuma does not do business accounts", so I have to stay with ADSL. Either way, they never did the install and never contacted me again.

But now they seem to be blocking everyone else from providing me with fibre. Why does Vumatel allow one ISP to block another ISP like this? It makes no sense.
 
BarnettE said:
Two weeks ago I placed an order with Cool Ideas to install fibre at my home. So far all I know is they cannot proceed because another ISP (Telkom apparently) has a pending order and is blocking the installation.

Several months ago I received an unsolicited call from Telkom offering to upgrade my ADSL to fibre for free. But nothing ever came of that. I phoned them at some point to follow up and was told something along the lines of "Vuma does not do business accounts", so I have to stay with ADSL. Either way, they never did the install and never contacted me again.

But now they seem to be blocking everyone else from providing me with fibre. Why does Vumatel allow one ISP to block another ISP like this? It makes no sense.
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I take it nothing was installed at your premises?
Vumatels system is just horrible.
When i first applied they messed up my order so it got stuck and nothing could be done so just do a new application with a different email address (if gmail just move a full stop around it will still be your adress) that worked for me.
 
Yea, nothing was ever installed. I managed to speak to Telkom. They now claim they got a lead from Vumatel, but has since cancelled it from their side. So this whole thing is starting to sound like a bunch of sales people fighting over who should get commission... meanwhile the customer is stuck in the middle.
 
BarnettE said:
I am not saying it is their fault, but they implemented this mechanism to allow one ISP to block another ISP. Why did they do that? What is the purpose of that?
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They are not blocking anyone. If an order is placed with an ISP, that ISP holds the line until the customer notifies that ISP to release it to another one. Vumatel is effectively out of that transaction.
 
pinball wizard said:
They are not blocking anyone. If an order is placed with an ISP, that ISP holds the line until the customer notifies that ISP to release it to another one. Vumatel is effectively out of that transaction.
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except for my first issue :)
when I changed ISP's - new ISP couldn't get line because Vuma said its with old ISP , Old ISP said they released the line back and forth.then Old ISP and new ISP both went together and Vuma who said Oh! right we need to just.... and a few minutes later i was up and running.

So Ya ISP's can be at fault but from my experiences Vumatel systems are a horrible :sick:
 
pinball wizard said:
They are not blocking anyone. If an order is placed with an ISP, that ISP holds the line until the customer notifies that ISP to release it to another one. Vumatel is effectively out of that transaction.
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Yes, they are blocking my order. It is Vumatel that is rejecting the order from Cool Ideas. At the very least they should automatically expire these "blocks" after some time, when it is clear that the ISP that placed the block is not interested in proceeding.
 
isie said:
except for my first issue :)
when I changed ISP's - new ISP couldn't get line because Vuma said its with old ISP , Old ISP said they released the line back and forth.then Old ISP and new ISP both went together and Vuma who said Oh! right we need to just.... and a few minutes later i was up and running.

So Ya ISP's can be at fault but from my experiences Vumatel systems are a horrible :sick:
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I had the exact same problem with Vumatel.....twice. Both times the line was released by the old ISP but the new ISP couldn't pick up the line. The first time I was offline for about a week. The second time I was off for about 10 days. Vumatel's system is just plain bad. They have too much manual processes that 'developers' need to get involved in before things start moving again.
 
esmile said:
I had the exact same problem with Vumatel.....twice. Both times the line was released by the old ISP but the new ISP couldn't pick up the line. The first time I was offline for about a week. The second time I was off for about 10 days. Vumatel's system is just plain bad. They have too much manual processes that 'developers' need to get involved in before things start moving again.
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Sounds like this is a common problem with Vumatel then... reminds me again of Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."
 
BarnettE said:
Yes, they are blocking my order. It is Vumatel that is rejecting the order from Cool Ideas. At the very least they should automatically expire these "blocks" after some time, when it is clear that the ISP that placed the block is not interested in proceeding.
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I don't even want to think about the ****-storm we would endure from customers if we just willy-nilly cancelled orders like that. Thankfully you aren't in charge of our billions of Rand of company.
 
pinball wizard said:
I don't even want to think about the ****-storm we would endure from customers if we just willy-nilly cancelled orders like that. Thankfully you aren't in charge of our billions of Rand of company.
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Well, now you have to deal with a customer (who is seemingly not even a client of Telkom Fibre ISP) who cannot get their line with Cool Ideas because Telkom Fibre ISP has the line.
 
pinball wizard said:
I don't even want to think about the ****-storm we would endure from customers if we just willy-nilly cancelled orders like that. Thankfully you aren't in charge of our billions of Rand of company.
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Well, there is clearly much room for improvement. The current protocol causes delays of several days (or two weeks so far for me). Even snail mail is faster than that. This might have been acceptable 100 years ago, but not today. And especially not for a technology company. Come up with a protocol to get this done in less than one hour. Or less than one minute if you want to impress anyone.
 
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We have been waiting for 6 WEEKS. CISP placed an order with Vumatel for FTTH . Our house has no fibre connection only the box on the outside. First we were told that we already have fibre - no we don't otherwise we would not apply for fibre, duh. We have have been living here since pre-fibre days so would know if the garden was dug up! Then we were told that there is an application with another ISP - no we never applied. Then we were told to please provide proof of address, which we did. CISP kept on escalating to no avail. Then last week we got an order number, yippee. Today Vumatel rejected it. Now we have to apply again. Telkom is cutting our copper line at the end of this month instead of end November. Looks like I'm going to have to port my landline to a VOIP company and use Vodacom wireless to keep the number. Vumatel what is going on? I don't want to use Openserve as it looks like the fibre cable is dangling from all the neighbours trees and bushes and then tacked onto 40 year old poles that are about to fall over.
 
lostfish said:
We have been waiting for 6 WEEKS. CISP placed an order with Vumatel for FTTH . Our house has no fibre connection only the box on the outside. First we were told that we already have fibre - no we don't otherwise we would not apply for fibre, duh. We have have been living here since pre-fibre days so would know if the garden was dug up! Then we were told that there is an application with another ISP - no we never applied. Then we were told to please provide proof of address, which we did. CISP kept on escalating to no avail. Then last week we got an order number, yippee. Today Vumatel rejected it. Now we have to apply again. Telkom is cutting our copper line at the end of this month instead of end November. Looks like I'm going to have to port my landline to a VOIP company and use Vodacom wireless to keep the number. Vumatel what is going on? I don't want to use Openserve as it looks like the fibre cable is dangling from all the neighbours trees and bushes and then tacked onto 40 year old poles that are about to fall over.
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This sounds a helluva lot like my issue last time. Wonder if they have a standard manual with these responses :-D
 
lostfish said:
We have been waiting for 6 WEEKS. CISP placed an order with Vumatel for FTTH . Our house has no fibre connection only the box on the outside. First we were told that we already have fibre - no we don't otherwise we would not apply for fibre, duh. We have have been living here since pre-fibre days so would know if the garden was dug up! Then we were told that there is an application with another ISP - no we never applied. Then we were told to please provide proof of address, which we did. CISP kept on escalating to no avail. Then last week we got an order number, yippee. Today Vumatel rejected it. Now we have to apply again. Telkom is cutting our copper line at the end of this month instead of end November. Looks like I'm going to have to port my landline to a VOIP company and use Vodacom wireless to keep the number. Vumatel what is going on? I don't want to use Openserve as it looks like the fibre cable is dangling from all the neighbours trees and bushes and then tacked onto 40 year old poles that are about to fall over.
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Rather use OpenServe, as you can see Vumatel systems are poorly designed (pinball wizard, if it all gets solved by Friday I will gladly retract this statement), and it will probably cost you more each month.

Use the savings to have a LTE backup.
 
It's not as simple as it might seem and as an ISP your hands are chopped off. You have limited options to get the issue resolved.

If there is a pending order from any ISP or the address can't be used to place an order it's a headache. If there is no order but the address is a problem you wait in a Vuma Dev queue that will put the pension pay out queues to shame. If it's another ISP then Vumatel is reluctant to to clear the address and request a proof of address to clear the address. That is not always a solution because the address will be cleared and an order will get placed but you basically then have a vc order number that is going nowhere and escalations again.

This usually makes the client so angry they cancel and leave and go to another ISP just to find out from the new ISP the order is not going anywhere because the issues was not with the ISP.

I struggled to get a Vumatel client connected on a migrate in order for 2 weeks. They decided to cancel and move on because they can't deal with our useless systems. That client is still not connected at the new ISP.

If the system works it works well but if there is a spanner in the works it's extremely difficult to get solutions quick. If the client calls Vumatel directly they will just say no ISP needs to contact us or there is no order they must do this just adding fuel to the fire.

I'm in no way bashing the FNO here just trying to explain what happens behind the scenes that the clients do not always see.
 
How does another ISP get involved when we have never had or applied for fibre previously ? Only Vumatel and Openserve in the area. Hmmm may be the evil Telkom is behind all this. They keep on phoning to ask us to migrate to their fibre.
 
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