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 elwoodbluesElwood BluesPremium
join:2006-08-30
HarperLand
 ·Cybersurf Intern..
| reply to brad
Re: TekSavvy - glorified reseller, not ISP said by brad:said by elwoodblues:Again I have to disagree, I'm on Distributel, since they bought 3web a few years back my connection has been ROCK SOLID. I don't think I've called them (except to bitch about a speed issue and it was my News provider). Have their been disconnections? A few, I tether my phone till it comes back up and all is good.
LOL. You even contradicted yourself. clueless as usual How did i contradict myself? I said I called them once to bitch about speed and it wasn't them.
--
No, I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake....... | |
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 ·TekSavvy Cable
| reply to QuantumPimp
said by QuantumPimp:I appreciate the heads-up and feel a lot of empathy for your situation. It really is an eye opener. You are being offered lots of TSI help in this thread ... just not certain why this wasn't done sooner. Given this pattern of chronic non-support why not schedule a secondary service and let the winner have your business after 30 days?
Thank you, appreciated. I agree, I have no idea why it took this long. I had a good discussion with TSI David yesterday about this (by phone), and he devised an action plan to resolve things. It seems to be a good plan and I'll see how that goes. TSI Gabe and David have been very helpful recently, and they do agree that it shouldn't have taken this long to address problems. I'm looking forward to finding out what exactly the issue is with my connection.
Ultimately, I'd love to see TSI be the ISP that I switched over to in the first place - if I didn't care and didn't want that, I would easily have switched back to Rogers or otherwise long ago. I hope this is a learning experience for TSI and others, and TSI improves as a result. There are some issues which they cannot control - but TSI Marc has pointed out that they are pursuing things (with the CRTC, etc.) to make that happen. Let's wait and see. Some of the issues I've had, though, are clearly TSI's fault - support could have been (and *should* have been) much better... they are trying to make amends now, and I'll give them that chance. | |
| said by OneWorld9:said by QuantumPimp:I appreciate the heads-up and feel a lot of empathy for your situation. It really is an eye opener. You are being offered lots of TSI help in this thread ... just not certain why this wasn't done sooner. Given this pattern of chronic non-support why not schedule a secondary service and let the winner have your business after 30 days?
Thank you, appreciated. I agree, I have no idea why it took this long. I had a good discussion with TSI David yesterday about this (by phone), and he devised an action plan to resolve things. It seems to be a good plan and I'll see how that goes. TSI Gabe and David have been very helpful recently, and they do agree that it shouldn't have taken this long to address problems. I'm looking forward to finding out what exactly the issue is with my connection. Ultimately, I'd love to see TSI be the ISP that I switched over to in the first place - if I didn't care and didn't want that, I would easily have switched back to Rogers or otherwise long ago. I hope this is a learning experience for TSI and others, and TSI improves as a result. There are some issues which they cannot control - but TSI Marc has pointed out that they are pursuing things (with the CRTC, etc.) to make that happen. Let's wait and see. Some of the issues I've had, though, are clearly TSI's fault - support could have been (and *should* have been) much better... they are trying to make amends now, and I'll give them that chance. I'm glad to hear that they're doing more to help solve the problem and want to improve TSI a lot more. Communication is always key. +1 | |
| reply to OneWorld9
(topic move) Slow speedsModerator Action
The post that was here, has been moved to a new topic .. »Slow speeds | |
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1 edit | reply to OneWorld9
Re: TekSavvy - glorified reseller, not ISP said by OneWorld9:1. Fix the problem - how TekSavvy does this, that's up to them. However, when it's clear that sending a Rogers tech during 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to troubleshoot an issue that does not present itself during that timeframe is very futile and a waste of everyone's time, what do they hope to accomplish by doing this? Will anyone be surprised when the tech says the line is fine? I've told TekSavvy the same (many times) already, no need for a tech during the day. It's clear to me that if TekSavvy wants to troubleshoot an issue, they need to do so when the *issue is occuring*. How TekSavvy expects to do that at any other time is beyond me.
If you want honesty, this is the FIRST time since the end of July they suggested they would send a tech - all the other times were simply tickets to Rogers, coming back as "no problem found"; what a surprise.
[For those who may be wondering how I can suggest how an ISP should be troubleshooting an issue, I'm an MCSE, with my own IT business for over 10 years now - I do have a bit of a clue as to what is required to successfully resolve an issue; it's not rocket science to figure out that if the issue is not occurring when you're investigating it, it's very difficult to isolate] This assumes that TekSavvy can send a tech to work on Rogers' equipment. For the same legal reasons you can not work on Rogers' equipment, neither can they; it is not their equipment to mess with. Before you say TSI should employ technicians for the purpose of fixing internal wiring (which would not be owned by Rogers), you need to consider that TIS's terms of service state wuite plainly that they bear no responsibility for that wiring, give that it was not installed by them (most likely it was Rogers who installed it, to Rogers standards, with Roger supplies; alternately, it was the homeowner or their contractor, to the homeowner's standards, with unknown supplies). Perfectly reasonable for them to be unwilling to support something they are literally unable to know anything about in order to be able to support it.
As for TSI's ability to troubleshoot modem and network issues over the wire, yes it's technically possible if they're given access to the tools to do so. However, Rogers refuses to allow this, so your MCSE means nothing. The most Rogers will accept from TSI is them filing a ticket, plain and simple, and Rogers decides when the tech is scheduled. TSI can request that the tech be sent out during a certain time, but Rogers can ignore that; especially if it's not within the 12hr window during which Rogers techs actually work (that's the 8AM to 8PM you were complaining about). All of your complaints are with Rogers; yes, they affect TSI, but they are not caused by TSI, who must operate within the confines of Rogers' rules. Keep in mind that Rogers knows this is hurting TSI and they have no interest in changing it.
said by OneWorld9:2. Advise me if this is, in fact, not anything to do with my particular connection but due to Rogers maintenance / POI changeover. Nothing TekSavvy has said so far in any of the techs who have responded has made this the definitive answer. Like NightMayor said, communication is definitely lacking. Either TekSavvy has no idea what's going on in terms of maintenance / POI upgrade in my area (ashis as they've suggested is the case in the Direct Forum - they can only speculate), or they are witholding information for some reason. If it's the former, that's another support blackhole that needs to be addressed. TekSavvy is providing my Internet connection - they should be fully apprised of when it's not going to work (especially if it's scheduled), why, and for how long. Again, this assumes that Rogers makes this information available to TSI. They don't and they have no interest in doing so. When TSI looks bad, Rogers looks a little bit better. It's a support black hole, along with many others, that TSI time and again tries to address, and Rogers doesn't really care. Why should they? They make a pittance from you as a TSI customer, compared to what you'd be paying them directly.
said by OneWorld9:3. Give me a credit for all the time TekSavvy wasted. TekSavvy refuses to even acknowledge that I suggested this - for all of you who feel entitled to suggest TekSavvy cannot / should not do this, feel free to keep your comments to yourself. TekSavvy is a business - when any business screws a customer around for this long, the right thing to do is to offer a credit or some other form of compensation. If they don't want to do this / are unwilling to accept any blame, that's their choice... but it's a bad business move. You are absolutely correct, a company that screws customers around like Rogers does should issue a credit. As soon as TSI receives one, they should be able to afford to issue one to you, as well, and I'm certain they would, even though it was not them screwing you around.
Edit: In haste, I forgot to include the following in my post --
The facts are as follows:
TSI's hands are tied regarding many of their support issues. Yes, it is true that callbacks often don't happen and that is purely the fault of TekSavvy, but beyond that, their hands are tied; a callback to tell you they've heard nothing back yet would be nice inasmuch as it lets you know they haven't forgotten about you, but it really accomplishes nothing. In another thread, I did suggest that they email each open ticket at least once every 48 hours, which, while being no more productive, can be automated at minimal expense and with a minimum of resources; I was told they will look into this suggestion and I'm not even a customer. That. Is. Service.
You have the choice between paying the bully more for less actual product, with the benefit of the bully mostly leaving you alone, or paying a friend, who will charge you less than the bully, to deal with the bully for you and deliver more product than the bully would give you directly, knowing that the bully can decide to throw a fit and stop delivery on a whim.
In case you can't figure out how that applies here, Rogers is the bully, TSI is the friend. Yes, it's inconvenient to deal with TSI to resolve a Rogers issue, but the fact is that if more people were willing to do so, Rogers would have to improve in order to survive, because the majority of their income would be from TPIA. It's an inconvenient fight to fight, but it's necessary if you want affordable internet. | |
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| reply to elwoodblues
said by elwoodblues:said by TSI Marc:Sorry dude. It's not a "fact", install TekSavvy cable in parallel and then we can compare. Apples and Oranges.
Each node is different.
We have plenty of capacity on our side, yet, here we are.
Marc, if I'm on Distributel, and my neighbour is on Teksavvy,and he has a problem and I don't what that does say? Does that say that TPIA providers are the problem, or that Teksavvy is the problem? Or his internal wiring is the problem. | |
brad
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON | reply to elwoodblues
said by elwoodblues:How did i contradict myself? I said I called them once to bitch about speed and it wasn't them.
You said your connection was ROCK SOLID and then proceed to say in the next sentence that you've had a few disconnections and had to tether your phone. That's not ROCK SOLID. | | |
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elwoodbluesElwood BluesPremium
join:2006-08-30
HarperLand Reviews:
·Cybersurf Intern..
| said by brad:said by elwoodblues:How did i contradict myself? I said I called them once to bitch about speed and it wasn't them.
You said your connection was ROCK SOLID and then proceed to say in the next sentence that you've had a few disconnections and had to tether your phone. That's not ROCK SOLID. I'm sorry but to me a few outages is much better then slow downs, and all the other issues you hear about. Many time's it has nothing to do with Distributel (like TSI) Rogers or a contractor has made a mess somewhere an knocked out lines.
--
No, I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake....... | |
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| reply to BronsCon
I'm not interested in nitpicking with what you've said, but I do want to clarify some general misunderstandings:
I never suggested TekSavvy come and fix my internal wiring. How did you conclude that internal wiring is the problem? Neither TekSavvy nor myself have done that, and based on all the logs I submitted to them and the line monitoring data now available (see a previous post) of my connection, it doesn't add up. Looking at last night, packet loss occured from approx. 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. (as far as I can tell, pretty much to the exact hour), and the line has been clear of any packet loss before and after. This suggests a network / external issue to me. If you have insight into why it's internal wiring, feel free to share. I do take constructive suggestions - one of them was to implement the Line Monitoring service here on DSLr. I hope it will help isolate the issue.
It's understood that TekSavvy doesn't have full monitoring capability of their customers lines. I never suggested otherwise. Given that, they a) have an obligation to make it a top priority to get that (if they want to provide this service to customers as an ISP, and not just be a reseller of Rogers' services), and b) come up with workarounds in the meantime. I've already suggested they can create their own customer-based tools that will greatly enhance their ability to troubleshoot remotely, and not rely on customers to do the troubleshooting for them. If / when they determine that absolutely the issue is with internal wiring, they can then pass the buck to the customer - not beforehand. TSI Gabe has reviewed the logs submitted, and believes this could be a local node congestion issue - that's one possibility. We haven't narrowed it down to internal wiring (yet).
Service advisories are common practise, and any ISP *should* be able to provide them. What information Rogers does or does not provide is between TekSavvy and Rogers - they need to get that information to properly support their customers.
I'm fully cognizant that Rogers doesn't want to change things. As TSI Marc has pointed out, though, that has to change. TekSavvy and other TPIAs cannot operate this way if they want to be successful as ISPs. You said it yourself - if TekSavvy cannot offer services they promised to provide, customers will favour Rogers and will leave. At the end of the day, TPIAs will become a niche-market provider - servicing customers who hope that "one day" things will change, or are OK getting subpar service for a bit of cost savings - if they cannot surpass these obstacles.
Regardless who supplies TekSavvy with the ability to service customers as an ISP, it is TekSavvy's responsibility to provide support. If that support is not provided, and they end not providing the service and/or needlessly wasting their customers' time, it's up to TekSavvy to make things right. If you read my latest posts, TekSavvy agrees, and is working towards that. | |
brad
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON | reply to elwoodblues
said by elwoodblues:I'm sorry but to me a few outages is much better then slow downs, and all the other issues you hear about. Many time's it has nothing to do with Distributel (like TSI) Rogers or a contractor has made a mess somewhere an knocked out lines.
Most customers consider outages considerably worse.
Most of the slowness since TSI has had cable are node issues which has nothing to do with TSI. | |
brad
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON | reply to OneWorld9
said by OneWorld9:Service advisories are common practise, and any ISP *should* be able to provide them.
The incumbent providers do not provide such advisories. Even the vast majority of telcos do a very poor job of providing any kind of service advisories even with major outages. | |
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| said by brad:The incumbent providers do not provide such advisories. Even the vast majority of telcos do a very poor job of providing any kind of service advisories even with major outages.
»service.sympatico.ca/index.cfm?m···ceStatus
»TekSavvy FAQ »Bell Service Advisories | |
 TSI MarcPremium,VIP
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON
kudos:14 | This is a complicated issue.
We don't get anything from any incumbent other than maintenance or downtime on links that we are explicitly paying for. If something is going on in Toronto and we have 100 users affected. We hear about it when they all call us.
The issue is that for 100 users we're going to notify thousands and thousands of people even though this has nothing to do with them.
This is what we've been doing. We have no way to know how many users are actually affected. With Bell and Rogers in particular since we have so many users with them, when there is any outage almost anywhere, we hear about it.
What's the right thing to do?
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy | |
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| said by TSI Marc:This is a complicated issue.
...
What's the right thing to do?
I'll assume you're asking me (and others) this question, and that it's not rhetorical.
I think what you should do (assuming you want to be an ISP, and not simply a reseller) is outlined in my longer post above. How you arrive at that level of service (both short and long term), that's for you to figure out - I did provide some suggestions to consider. Beyond that, if you want to hire me to consult with TSI about this, I'm open to suggestions.  | |
 sbrookPremium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa
kudos:4
·TekSavvy Cable
| If TekSavvy was a "reseller of Rogers services", then the world would be different. You'd be paying very very close to Rogers rates, and be paying UBB with their ridiculously low caps.
It's time you got that idea out of your head (of being a Rogers reseller). That they have to pay Rogers or Bell to get from their network to you is the limit of Rogers involvement. A reseller would be Rogers from end to end.
There are precious few "tools" that one can create that allow diagnosis of connection problems. Heck, Rogers don't provide any to themselves either, relying on tracerts that they commonly make invalid assumptions from, and the modem stats that they make invalid assumptions from.
If you look at any cable MSO elsewhere in the world, they all suffer the same problem ... because it's hard to isolate problems except when they stand out like a sore thumb ... like an upstream signal strength of 55 dBmV
Tracerts with timeouts in them take a lot of working out to determine where a problem may be, if there's a problem at all. I can show you tracerts that are utterly useless and will lead you to the wrong assumption. | |
| reply to TSI Marc
Is there a way to just notify a select area instead of thousands and thousands of people, say by postal code? If it's a local node congestion you wouldn't need to issue a big advisory, possibly only to customers within that postal code or near a major intersection and adjust accordingly based on calls/posts.
This is for a local area obviously. If it's a spread out 100 people then it's not wise to issue one.
Just putting my 2 cents. | |
 AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ
kudos:1 | reply to TSI Andre
touché or should I say tushy?
actually, I take it back, I don't want to crap the thread any further.
--
--Standard disclaimers apply.-- | |
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| reply to OneWorld9
I think you misread. I never suggested that your issue was related to internal wiring. I was stating that TSI can't legally touch Rogers' equipment so it would be pointless to hire their own techs. To head off the possibility of you coming back with a remark about internal wiring issues, I added the bit about internal wiring not being their responsibility. Please go back and read it again if you still think I said something different. That said, yes, it does sound from your description (and everything thus far in this thread) to be a network issue.
Regarding the customer-based tools you suggest, from where do you propose these tools gather the plethora of data that is available from the ISP-facing interface of the customer's modem (and from the head-end), that the customer-facing interface does not provide access to? I'm just curious, how do you figure such a tool would improve the situation and if it's such a great idea, why does no other ISP use such a tool?
said by OneWorld9:You said it yourself - if TekSavvy cannot offer services they promised to provide, customers will favour Rogers and will leave. At the end of the day, TPIAs will become a niche-market provider - servicing customers who hope that "one day" things will change, or are OK getting subpar service for a bit of cost savings - if they cannot surpass these obstacles. Again, you misunderstand me. I laid out the choices; deal with a bully and PAY more for less, or pay someone else to deal with the bully for you and GET more for less. I then laid out the cons of the second option (the con of the first being paying more and getting less) and pointed out that if people want to enact change they need to suck it up and deal with the bully's temper tantrums when they choose the second option. You are absolutely correct, however, in your statement that people in general won't do this.
And yes, I do know that TekSavvy generally agrees that it's on them to make it right; however, it's not within the realm of possibility for them to do so monetarily, as it seemed you may have been suggesting, and still stay in business to support the majority of their customer base who don't have issues. It's reasonable to expect someone to face the fact that the service they provide to the many who don't want a refund (no issues, or issues resolved without incident) outweighs the benefit to them of providing such a refund to keep one customer. It's an unfortunate fact, but it is a fact.
There is no way TSI could have foreseen Rogers being this dickish about things and by the time the realization came about, it was too late to turn back. A unilateral stop-sell on cable in Rogers-serviced markets would spell doom for TekSavvy, you know it, I know it, and most importantly Rogers knows it, and you can bet your ass they use that fact in negotiations with Tek. "You need us at this point, without us, you'll lose enough revenue that you won't live to see the next contract negotiation, so no, we're not changing a thing." sounds plausible.
I'm not arguing how it should be, I'm pointing out the facts of the situation, so people (in general, not just you) understand why it's the way it is and not the way it should be. TPIAs have no leverage in negotiations with Rogers, or any other last-mile infrastructure provider and, given that they're in direct competition with the same, things can get ugly pretty quick. Bell is bound by a lot more legislation than Rogers and the other cable providers, so you hear about this a little (not much) less with Bell lately, and the other cable providers are nowhere near as dickish toward Tek as Rogers is, despite the contracts being nearly identical. This truly is less of a TSI problem and more of a Rogers problem, as far as the cause; insomuch as the solution, well, TSI knows what needs to be done, Rogers knows what needs to be done, guess which one of them isn't willing to do it? | |
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| reply to OneWorld9
said by OneWorld9: Given that, they a) have an obligation to make it a top priority to get that (if they want to provide this service to customers as an ISP, and not just be a reseller of Rogers' services), and b) come up with workarounds in the meantime. I've already suggested they can create their own customer-based tools that will greatly enhance their ability to troubleshoot remotely, and not rely on customers to do the troubleshooting for them.
They absolutely should not make this a priority. Given that it would involve a massive and probably unwinnable legal fight to get the CRTC to force Rogers to provide such tools, I'd rather they kept the money and maintain their low prices.
Resellers don't operate their own large-scale networks. TSI does. They have no choice but to use Bell and Rogers to connect individual homes and businesses to those networks. That's not going to change any time soon.
said by OneWorld9:Service advisories are common practise, and any ISP *should* be able to provide them. What information Rogers does or does not provide is between TekSavvy and Rogers - they need to get that information to properly support their customers. Rogers is horrific at providing such updates even to their own customers. They have no incentive to give TSI any information they aren't forced to...we will never, ever get real information on things like node congestion or the hilarious DNS fail across much of Rogers' network today (which they didn't communicate until after it was repaired).
TSI has been very clear in communicating problems on their network like the POI congestion earlier this year. Even though that was caused by Rogers' incompetence and neglect, it was on TSI's side, so they advised us of the problem.
said by OneWorld9:I'm fully cognizant that Rogers doesn't want to change things. As TSI Marc has pointed out, though, that has to change. TekSavvy and other TPIAs cannot operate this way if they want to be successful as ISPs. You said it yourself - if TekSavvy cannot offer services they promised to provide, customers will favour Rogers and will leave. At the end of the day, TPIAs will become a niche-market provider - servicing customers who hope that "one day" things will change, or are OK getting subpar service for a bit of cost savings - if they cannot surpass these obstacles. TSI's growth would indicate otherwise. I wouldn't go back to Rogers under just about any circumstances and neither would anyone I know using TSI, Distributel, or Acanac. The cable TPIA model could certainly be better, but it is succeeding in spite of the behaviour of the incumbent. We can always hope for Rogers to behave better, but it's hardly going to be the end of TSI if they continue to be intransigent.
said by OneWorld9:Regardless who supplies TekSavvy with the ability to service customers as an ISP, it is TekSavvy's responsibility to provide support. If that support is not provided, and they end not providing the service and/or needlessly wasting their customers' time, it's up to TekSavvy to make things right. If you read my latest posts, TekSavvy agrees, and is working towards that. It's their responsibility to support it in every way they can. When they drop the ball, they should try to make things right. But when the problem is not on their network, there is only so much they can do. When it's on the customer's end, they troubleshoot just like any ISP, and often it's going to be frustrating for everyone. When it's on Rogers' end, they have to work through a slow and unreliable system to get a hostile entity to fix problems they don't even want to acknowledge. I don't envy the TPIA providers. | |
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