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The Mongoose
join:2010-01-05
Toronto, ON

The Mongoose to OneWorld9

Member

to OneWorld9

Re: TekSavvy - glorified reseller, not ISP

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.

QuantumPimp
join:2012-02-19

QuantumPimp

Member

said by The Mongoose:

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.

Agreed. I often wonder what would happen if customers successfully deluge the CRTC with complaints and thus force a change to service level agreements. Does this automatically mean even more money and power to the incumbents? I'd rather trust TSI to apply pressure, when required, to enhance their product as they see fit.

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

BronsCon

Member

said by QuantumPimp:

said by The Mongoose:

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.

Agreed. I often wonder what would happen if customers successfully deluge the CRTC with complaints and thus force a change to service level agreements. Does this automatically mean even more money and power to the incumbents? I'd rather trust TSI to apply pressure, when required, to enhance their product as they see fit.

Now, being a couple thousand miles outside of TSI's service area, I can't say with any level of certainty that they're doing a good job of this, but I will say this: I've followed TSI for the last 7 years or so; should I ever find myself within their service area for an extended period of time, they will have my business. Everything I've read in these forums seems to indicate that they're doing an excellent job in the face of unreasonable suppliers (who are only so because they are also competitors).

To put things into perspective, go into any other ISP's forum here and count the complaint threads. Now, divide those numbers by the most reasonable estimate of the number of subscribers for each ISP you can find, to get a percentage of users who complain here. Where does TSI fall in that list? Last time I did this compared to the ISPs I've used personally, they were at the bottom of the list, lowest percentage of complaints; given that they're probably the ISP with the highest percentage of DSLR users out of the ISPs I compared (AT&T, Cox, and Comcast, 3 US ISPs, though I'm sure anyone here already knows that). That's farkin' impressive.

TwiztedZero
Nine Zero Burp Nine Six
Premium Member
join:2011-03-31
Toronto, ON

TwiztedZero to QuantumPimp

Premium Member

to QuantumPimp

Welcome to Dystopia

I'm in favor of going to war with the CRTC and the big incumbents, and get the rest of the country embroiled in a huge ass legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to break our LAST MILE Infrastructure AWAY from the dastardly Incumbents.

It NEEDS to be DONE! Before that can happen a catalyst has to come to enact such upheaval. Once thats happened successfully then a Last Mile Governing body can be established to oversee and manage this infrastructure for the good of ALL.

Right now, I don't forsee anything of this nature happening because the majority of users out there either don't know any better, or just plain don't care. For now we have to live with it. Like it or not; and make do with what we do have for the interim.

Dystopia: Coming soon to a reality near you!
News Flash: Its allready here!

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
Premium Member
join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

elwoodblues

Premium Member

said by TwiztedZero:

I'm in favor of going to war with the CRTC and the big incumbents, and get the rest of the country embroiled in a huge ass legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to break our LAST MILE Infrastructure AWAY from the dastardly Incumbents.

Who is going to pay for it? If this ever came close to happening. They would create a company in the US and hand the last mile over to them, and when the government goes to take their last mile, they'll sue for compensation under NAFTA.

It's already happened, I just don't remember who the company was. It was a Canadian company, incorporated in Delaware.

TSI Marc
Premium Member
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON

1 recommendation

TSI Marc

Premium Member

Ironically, Rogers was down this week. We weren't.
The Mongoose
join:2010-01-05
Toronto, ON

1 edit

The Mongoose

Member

said by TSI Marc:

Ironically, Rogers was down this week. We weren't.

Which, in and of itself, disproves the title of this thread. Also ironic.

That being said, count me among those who think an easily accessible network status page would be both interesting and valuable. Simple network status, perhaps a notice of any known Rogers outages potentially affecting TSI...even POI-level reports if those aren't considered proprietary (I remember seeing some POI graphs posted during the congestion issue). At the very least, having the latter available would preempt people thinking that the problem is overselling a given POI.

TSI Marc
Premium Member
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON

TSI Marc

Premium Member

We've been doing network outage notices for ages...

If you want to know what's going on, you can call in as we always update the IVR, you can see the web site, we always post here on dslr also... we're on twitter.. before the teksavvynetwork handle was created we did it on one of the other handles.

like... how much more can we possibly put it out there? It's almost like you guys are spoiled and you dont even know it anymore.

I think you guys are missing what's actually happening though. The average person will see all of this and will think that TekSavvy is not reliable. That I think caries more weight then having notices out there.

Furthermore, none of these things are on our network, so we can't say conclusively what's actually happening until we get positive feedback from the incumbents unless if it's on our own network. We always post those... so to spend a massive amount of time trying to fish for problems in the dark is really not efficient. It amounts to a best effort kind of thing on our side, which is what we do and have always done.

As for the link being prominently available on the front page. Yeah, sorry, not going to happen. Just add the link to your favs... the location has changed since we launched the new site but we've had that for years. We're doing the very same things as we've always done.

As it is internally, we're more worried about the message it's sending to the average person because there are so many notices. Just look here on dslr and twitter... there are multiple notices almost each and every week. We have so many users on Rogers and Bell's network that when they change anything anywhere, we have customers who are down. I can't speak to the reasons but the net effect is that we're spending all of our time dealing with outages. It's almost daily. Our phone system clogs up depending what the outage is and then we get accused of not having enough staff... it's a whole different sent of problems. Rogers and Bell are both doing a ton of upgrades. So here we are talking about this stuff... I dunno. Yet, another frustrating problem... I'm very anxious for upgrades to be done. The rate of change is so high on all fronts.

Not trying to sounds pessimistic, I'm sure I'm projecting here but these issues are not trivial and we are working very hard to stay on top of it all. This dialogue is important and I'm open to solid suggestions, its you guys really in the end who can help us flush out and spread the word about what's actually going on.

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

BronsCon

Member

said by TSI Marc:

like... how much more can we possibly put it out there? It's almost like you guys are spoiled and you dont even know it anymore.

I'd just like to point out that the is one of the tongue-in-cheek comments those of us who've been on these forums for years have come to love. It shouldn't be taken as harshly as it's worded and Marc needs to be reminded that sarcasm doesn't come through in text.
OneWorld9
join:2010-12-09
East York, ON

OneWorld9 to TSI Marc

Member

to TSI Marc
said by TSI Marc:

We've been doing network outage notices for ages...

If you want to know what's going on, you can call in as we always update the IVR, you can see the web site, we always post here on dslr also... we're on twitter.. before the teksavvynetwork handle was created we did it on one of the other handles.

I think the conclusion people are coming up with, even those many would consider proponents of the TekSavvy service, is that you could be doing better in this regard.
said by TSI Marc:

Furthermore, none of these things are on our network, so we can't say conclusively what's actually happening until we get positive feedback from the incumbents unless if it's on our own network. We always post those... so to spend a massive amount of time trying to fish for problems in the dark is really not efficient. It amounts to a best effort kind of thing on our side, which is what we do and have always done.

Again, this could be improved. Are you suggesting you don't need to improve? People like myself should be left in the dark for months about why they're having a problem with their connection? Again, ideally, you need to be able to find out which of your customers are affected and why, so you can inform them. "Best effort" has left me with subpar service for more than two months. Personally, I don't feel that's good enough. I'm sure anyone in my position (past, present and future) would agree.
said by TSI Marc:

As for the link being prominently available on the front page. Yeah, sorry, not going to happen. Just add the link to your favs... the location has changed since we launched the new site but we've had that for years. We're doing the very same things as we've always done.

I'm sorry, but this comes off as "Tough, deal with it." Is that TekSavvy's attitude? Again, we had no idea you were posting network updates... not one person mentioned it until you posted. Making that more visible is a good thing for your customers - it shows you care that they are informed.
said by TSI Marc:

As it is internally, we're more worried about the message it's sending to the average person because there are so many notices. Just look here on dslr and twitter... there are multiple notices almost each and every week.

This is the current service you provide, like it or not. What's wrong with informing your customers (who may be affected by these things) what's going on? How many of your customers frequent DSLr daily, to get apprised of issues that may be affecting them? This is a good place to share information, of course, but I don't feel the average customer has any idea what they need to do to get informed. That's where TekSavvy needs to up their game. I don't feel that putting efforts into informing your customers, as best as possible, is a waste of time. Rather, asking many of them to go through troubleshooting when there's an area problem is a waste of time ... both for them, and for your staff. Part of the reason you have to put out fires (such as training more tech staff to man phones) could be mitigated with proper communication. Rather than spending 30 mins. on the phone, they could simply be told there's an area issue and you'll keep them updated as to when it's resolved. The IVR you mention, no doubt it's only updated with "major" outages that you're certain of. Again, this could be improved.

If you care about your customers - and, really, without them TekSavvy doesn't have a business - then you owe it to them to keep them apprised of anything affecting their service. Sure, the bigger picture is you need to make changes with the incumbents, etc. to get to the level of support that would be ideal. When is that going to happen? If not within the immediate future, then you are providing a service "as is" - and you need to compensate by doing whatever you can to support your customers.