Sky tech support rant.

[kopite]

I`ve been with sky for BB now for about a year now and its been pretty good. I should also explain that I work for Zen internet and deal with DSL faults everyday so I know a bit about what causes faults.

I had an issue earlier in the year where I couldnt Auth so i emailed them with the diagnostics code and told them I had sync but hadnt been able to auth and asked if there was any outage in the area(I`d looked on easynet and seen there was a pop down) They emailed me back asking if the router had sync so I guess I should have seen the warning signs there.

The past few weeks we have been having a lot of static on the phone line which is only there when the router is plugged in. When we pick the phone up it also causes the BB to drop. I have a pile of routers at home so Tried a draytek 2600, Speedtouch 585 and a Fritxbox as well as the origina sky router on the line. Suffice to say the problem occured with all routers. I have an ADSL nation faceplate on my line so I unscrewede that and tried 3 different makes of filters(gotta be thorough ) also tried the dect phones on the line as well as an analogue phone as well.
WIth all this done I was sure that the fault was on the line and Also pretty confident that its a high resistance fault.
Rang BT first just to get a phone line check and they said the line looks ok from their POV.

Rang SKy and spoke to their tech support. to start with I didnt mention I work for an ISP as it annoyed the hell out of me when ppl come on the line telling me how to do my job. I explained the problem, Advised them of all the equipment I had tried and they said they`d raise a fault. They put me through to their second line team. I explained again what was happening and what I had tried. He told me that the line was set on a high profile and had a long delay which would be causing the fault. They lowered my speed and lowered the delay. I asked if he really thought making changes to the speed would make a difference to the noise and he said yes. I let him get on with it and the noise was still there. He told me he would raise the fault to BT. I said at this point that it looks like its a high resistance fault so it would be an idea to let BT know that when they raise it as it should speed things up. he didnt seem very interested in my opinion and said I should have an update in 72 hours.

Now working for Zen I know that BT usually give an update back within 8 hours so I left it a couple of days anyway just to make sure they had time to raise it etc. Rang back yesterday morning and spoke to the 1st line who said that my fault was an intermittent fault and said they would pass me through to the 2nd line team. They passed me through The person on the phone went through all the tests again Running line tests. I rang on the house phone so they could hear the noise (its very loud crackling popping and whistling) he said his headset was crackling so he couldnt hear any other noise. I asked if they had received anything back from BT yet and he said that BT systems where down so the fault hadnt been reported.
I told him I worked for zen internet and have been dealing with DSL faults for over 4 years. I told him the fault looks to be a High resistance fault and it will need BT to investigate it to get it resolved. He again seemed to pay little attention to this and said he would get it raised to BT and they would call me within 48 hours.

I rang back this morning as the phone line is unusable now unless the router is unplugged. I got through to the second line who said that the fault hasnt been raised to BT yet and its with their 3rd line team to investigate further. He read the notes and asked me to plug into the test socket. I told him i was in an SSFP and did he really think plugging into the test socket with another filter was going to make a difference even after all the stuff I had already told them. He said yes so I had a screw driver to hand anyway and had phone on my mobile(I know the tricks ) Unplugged the ssfp plugged a filter into the test and plugged the router in. he said the line had synced up and the SNR looks fine. i told him again what happens picked up the phone and as usual the line was making loads of noise. I told him its a high resistance fault The problem has beeen getting worse as the weather has got worse. They need to get BT to check the line as there could be an exposed bit of cable or something which is causing the line to drop out. He told me that the escalations team would be ringing me later today and I should let them know what I think it is.

So I`m not sitting here with a connection that syncs at just over a meg sometimes, Cuts out when the phone is used and then needs the router to be rebooted to bring it back up.
I have an ISP who are unwilling to listen to me about the type of fault it is and are adament that lowering speeds will fix the issue.

Maybe they will call later and I`ll get through to someone who knows about DSL but I`m losing faith atm

Right Rant over

[JimmyBoy]

why didnt you just ring bt in the first place?

[kopite]

Because I can only contact BT retail who only care about the voice portion of the line. Because the voice line is fine when the router is removed they wont touch it.

The problem needs to be raised by Sky to bt openreach(they are the ppl who deal with the copper itself) And they should then be able to resolve it. I can speak to BT openreach from work but I can only speak to them about circuits that Zen have on LLU so I cant get them to deal with a line that SKy use.

[Jay]

Its bacause it's done via openreach and they are not public facing. I am lucky enough to have direct mobile numbers for a couple of openreach Engineers

[JimmyBoy]

Because I can only contact BT retail who only care about the voice portion of the line. Because the voice line is fine when the router is removed they wont touch it.

The problem needs to be raised by Sky to bt openreach(they are the ppl who deal with the copper itself) And they should then be able to resolve it. I can speak to BT openreach from work but I can only speak to them about circuits that Zen have on LLU so I cant get them to deal with a line that SKy use.

how infuriating!! hope you eventually get it sorted!!

give jeremy an email explaining your situation jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com (sky chief exec) i know people who have had enough of farting about with skys tech support and have gone to him and he puts your queory straight though to 3rd line support who obviously will jump through hoops to appease their boss and it gets sorted within days

[kopite]

Thanks mate

Im expecting a call back from them this afternoon if I havent heard anything by tonight I'll drop him a message

[Drefsab]

Serves you right! Should have had your broadband with zen then you could have raised your own fault I did warn you what sky can be like

On a serious note mate sorry to hear they are giving you grief.Defo sounds like high resistance. Anyways see you in work

[kopite]

lol register just to poke fun

[Jay]

Serves you right! Should have had your broadband with zen then you could have raised your own fault I did warn you what sky can be like

On a serious note mate sorry to hear they are giving you grief.Defo sounds like high resistance. Anyways see you in work

ha ha... well he is right.

[kopite]

Well I think I`ve made progress now. I have been told that they will get an LL5 engineer out on monday morning. Waiting a call back now to confirm this. They said they cant email out to confirm

[Jay]

Its a stupidly lenghthy process with way too many links in th chain if you ask me.

[kopite]

Thats part of the problem with a lot of ISP`s instead of having a tech support team who can fix the fault at the first point of contact they have all these extra layers.

The reason for this is usually because they put call answering above call resolution.

I worked at talk talk business where they where more interested in how many calls got answered within a few minutes and how many calls got dropped. Imo the importance should be put on fixing issues. Id much rather wait 20-30 minutes to get through and know I was speaking to someone who knew what they where doing

[Jay]

I work quite a bit with Telewest Business and I also now a few consultants who also work with Telewest Business and the massive issue is fragmentation. Far too many people not talking to eachother.

[Steve]

I worked at talk talk business where they where more interested in how many calls got answered within a few minutes and how many calls got dropped. Imo the importance should be put on fixing issues. Id much rather wait 20-30 minutes to get through and know I was speaking to someone who knew what they where doing

With modern "call back" queuing systems I'm perfectly happy for this to happen, too.

Thing is, it's not all that easy to change broadband provider, so really they have you in a headlock and don't really have to care that much about good tech support.