A week without broadband!

Let this be a lesson to you boys and girls.. don't do any of the
following:

a) Use Demon Internet as your ISP
b) Have a 'premium' business DSL line for which you are paying twice
what a regular domestic line would cost
c) Upgrade your line from 512K to 2M
d) Have a very old BT-supplied router that dies just after the upgrade
requiring Demon to call out BT to replace it.
e) Spend about 4 hours on the phone to Demon (India) trying to speak to
someone who a) has a clue and b) can actually do something about the
problem

If all these conditions apply to you you will be a week without any
broadband coverage at all as Demon do the following:

Send out an email with my 'new' IP address range (the same as the old
one) and including an incorrect DSL login and password.
Refuse to call out BT because I don't have the model and serial number
of my router (according to the BT engineer they don't care especially
when it's going to be replaced). An hour of working up the call centre
foodchain results in them grudgingly putting in the call.
When the BT man turns up with a sparking new router he discovers that
Demon have not bothered to create the DSL profile for the new account
and so a config has to be created manually by the BT config centre.
The router can't login to the Demon radius server and make a proper PTP
connection as Demon have not created a raduis profile for my new
account. Nor allocated the static IP addresses that they were supposed
to.
Claim that everything is OK with the account but then discover that in
fact the new profile hasn't been created at all.
Create the new profile but forget to put in the IP addresses and
generate a different password to the one I have been sent.
Add in the IP addresses and change the password to another unknown
value
Final call - reset the password to what I had asked originally.

Hooray! We have broadband again - almost a week after I first notified
them of the problem.

Even for a home connection that would have been appalling service - for
a business DSL line it was totally unacceptable. It's just as well that
I don't use the line for making money!

Phil.

 

<snip tale of woe>

I have been using Fastnet - a small ISP based in Brighton - excellent
customer services/support - they have a good relationship with BT and
have always been able to get a BT engineers out within a day. You always
speak to a person and they always get back to you. 4 years on business
broadband and nothing to complain about.

--

jeremy
'01 Triumph Sprint ST in green
_______________________________________
jeremy0505 at gmail.com

 

A level of service increasingly par for the course these days if you
read demon.service.
--

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Moto Guzzi Mille GT/Squire RS3 Gilera Nordwest |
| Gilera GFR Moto Morini 2C/375 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

In uk.rec.motorcycles, Phil Launchbury belched forth and ejected the
following:

<Big snip>

You have my sympathies.

I went without for two days. I had the option of dial-up but at what I
thought was going to be 25p a minute I didn't bother using it for more
than 5 or 10 minutes.

If I wasn't a net-junkie I think I'd be in the pub almost every night.

 

Consider yourself lucky - BT left me without a business connection for 3
weeks having taken it upon themselves to transfer me to another ISP without
my knowledge. Apparently it was all my fault. The compo negotiations were a
hoot though.

 

I was fortunate enough to work that one out in 1996:-

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/demon.service/browse_frm/thread/cb454123844bea4c/913c53fddb49d09a

It's interesting to see that that useless shower of shit haven't
improved any in the past 8 years.

I can recommend Clara.Net for business broadband (including an upgrade
from 512Kb to 1Mb, which was seamless) - I've used them for a couple of
years with no complaints at all.

 

1Mb? Bandwidth pikey.

 

One of my clients uses them. Their size definitley works in their favour,
and the few occasions that I've had to speak with them in 3 years, they
have been on the ball.
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3 OMF#22
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7 156 TS S2
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

The strange thing was that the actual line regrade happened a couple of
days earlier - with no changes at all at my end it all suddenly started
working at 2mb.

Then 3 days later the email from Demon arrived and (like a fool) I
followed their instructions..

Phil

 

I have plenty of porn already - 1Mb is fine for me.

(And yes, adding-up and taking-away is clearly not one of my strong
points - in my defence, I plead a mild hangover).

 

Most ISPs make the odd cock-up.

Now if you really want to see how to do it properly, look at E7even.

 

When is their business plan due to hit the buffers? Must be round
about 12 months now since they had their initial influx of people
willing / stupid enough to pay up front.

 

About now - and I was one of the stupid ones. Also one of the lucky
ones, in that I got a MAC within a month of asking and after only two
emails and two registered letters. Some poor sods have been stuck with
tags on their lines for months.