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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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| 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 | 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. | |
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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. | |
xdrag
join:2005-02-18
North York, ON
4 edits | reply to TSI Marc
said by TSI Marc: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, on the TSI website, you need to have a section to post any suspected network downtimes. Twitter, RSS or anything.
If you think there's a downtime or congestion in an area. It wouldn't hurt to post it. When those who are affected by these unforeseen problems, they can see on your website and be like "oh, maybe that's why my connection is sucking".
i.e. comstock POI is being upgraded - users in the scarborough area may experience network issues
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.
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.
Great theoretical points. you're saying we should change this and all these problems. but How? you've pointed out all the problems but what's going to happen between here and there. How practical are all these changes, how hard/easy will it be to implement, how will we execute this, how do we find support, how much will it cost.
It's like saying, if we had fusion power, it could solve the problem of all our energy needs. How do you get fusion power?
Someone people think they have great ideas (sometimes they are) but in reality they're either terrible or not plausible to execute - dragon's den. In reality, you need to pick a few gems and run away with them.
The biggest need at the moment is consumer education. Most people have NO clue to what's going on and only blame TSI as their sole source of woes. If people became self-educated on the issue between TSI's arm-lock with rogers and bell, there would be more action. The prime example is UBB. People heard about it, learned about it and took action against it.
»openmedia.ca was suppose to do this, but it's clearly not working. Bell and Rogers own all the media outlets in canada so unless you start a riot in DT, most of this will fall on deaf ears | |
1 edit | said by xdrag:said by TSI Marc: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, on the TSI website, you need to have a section to post any suspected network downtimes. Twitter, RSS or anything. If you think there's a downtime or congestion in an area. It wouldn't hurt to post it. When those who are affected by these unforeseen problems, they can see on your website and be like "oh, maybe that's why my connection is sucking". i.e. comstock POI is being upgraded - users in the scarborough area may experience network issues I agree, there needs to be something there on the website with suspected downtimes. And like you said it could be anything more. Right now as far as I know we only have advisories on the phone like when you call Teksavvy there may be a message right off where it says which POI has problems.
I think a map would be good, like Toronto hydro's, since not everyone knows about POIs. Red could mean confirmed disturbance, yellow could mean suspected, and green could mean normal.
said by xdrag:The biggest need at the moment is consumer education. Most people have NO clue to what's going on and only blame TSI as their sole source of woes. If people became self-educated on the issue between TSI's arm-lock with rogers and bell, there would be more action. The prime example is UBB. People heard about it, learned about it and took action against it.
»openmedia.ca was suppose to do this, but it's clearly not working. Bell and Rogers own all the media outlets in canada so unless you start a riot in DT, most of this will fall on deaf ears
I also agree with this. Communication is always key. I think the problem though is that the general public thought just because UBB is gone all our internet problems are solved. So yeah, there needs to be another uprising of sorts, rioting is a little extreme IMHO. | |
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| reply to The Mongoose
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. | |
| reply to NightMayor
Right now as far as I know we only have advisories on the phone like when you call Teksavvy there may be a message right off where it says which POI has problems.
I think a map would be good, like Toronto hydro's, since not everyone knows about POIs. Red could mean confirmed disturbance, yellow could mean suspected, and green could mean normal. Great points here.
I heavily dislike not being advised about a known problem until I pick up the phone to hear an automated message telling me so. It would be a lot easier for TekSavvy to publish these known issues, as they become known, on a "Network Status" page of their website, and/or via Twitter to their followers. Ditto for Facebook. We are in the age of social media, after all. Yes, there is this forum, which is very useful, but they'd reach far more clients via other means.
Separate of that, I can't help but to have some sympathy for TekSavvy here.
For a few years, I worked for Primus Canada, whose DSL service (among other types of connections) operates mostly at Bell's mercy. Many-a-night would there suddenly be a surge of calls coming in, reporting issues in a particular area. It wasn't until some time would pass that we'd learn it was due to maintenance on Bell's end that we had zero notice or control of. Customers were screaming at us while my employer was not at fault in any way. The irony is that some of those clients had just switched to Primus from Bell, to get away from the headaches that they had gone through with Bell. Surprise!!  ... At the end of the day they were still saving money, though. 
Side note [& rant]: virtually all of us who have worked in ISP support can certainly recall [business] customers who are yelling that they're losing hundreds of dollars every hour that their Internet is down, while they solely rely on one single basic DSL connection. ...Dude. Get a backup/secondary connection. And get off my phone.
My 2¢. | |
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| reply to QuantumPimp
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. | |
 TwiztedZeroNine Zero Burp Nine SixPremium
join:2011-03-31
Toronto, ON
kudos:3
·TekSavvy Cable
| reply 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!
--
You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.
Twitter:Merv Chat:irc.teksavvy.ca | | |
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| reply to sbrook
Re: TekSavvy - glorified reseller, not ISP said by sbrook: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. I oversimplified TSI to a "reseller" to point out that the service is comparable to one, since many of the issues related to support are in Rogers' hands, and they have to reach out to Rogers to get things done - I totally understand they are a "hybrid". The point is they have a long way to go, in my mind, before they compare with the level of reliability and support I received when I was with Rogers. What good is it that you can talk to someone locally, who is fluent in English, if they can't resolve your issue? I don't call TekSavvy to chat with someone. I'm also not going to debate why that is - I do agree a lot of this is Rogers' fault. However, I'd like to see TekSavvy get to that level of reliability / support and even better, if at all possible. Higher costs aside, my connection *was* better with Rogers - for *several years*. Downtime was infrequent, and usually a matter of hours (never longer than a couple of days), and I only had a slow speed issue (lasting long enough to warrant support) *once* - it was quickly repaired by a tech putting a filter on my cable, because the signal was too strong. This is exactly the same connection (I have been at this address a long time) that I'm using with TekSavvy - when I switched, no tech came out to install anything. However, in the past less than two years, there have been numerous support-related issues / headaches.
As I stated in my first post, the reason I switched to TekSavvy was primarily cost related - specifically, related to caps and UBB - and the reviews suggesting that TekSavvy was a "better ISP".
I do agree the incumbents shouldn't have so much control over the "last mile", and they shouldn't be allowed to charge such high prices. However, we need to be clear about this - if TekSavvy is giving us these great deals at the expense of support, then people need to be informed of this and make their decision of which ISP to go with when they are informed. I joined TekSavvy with the impression it was "better" than the incumbents. My experience shows otherwise. TekSavvy's marketing suggests they are "different, in a good way". I suppose that depends on your definition of "good". I don't agree that "good" includes subpar service. I'm paying less, but I didn't agree to pay less to get an unrealiable connection and no real support. I think everyone deserves to know the truth about the service they can expect.
Is it nice that the CEO and staff talk to us in a forum? Of course it is. Will talking with the ISP actually make the service better? Time will tell. | |
Reviews:
·TekSavvy Cable
| reply to BronsCon
said by BronsCon:I think you misread. I never suggested that your issue was related to internal wiring. Fair enough. However, my suggestions are based on the issues I am personally experiencing, and my overall understanding of what an ideal ISP would do. I can see you're talking about overall support, and I do agree TekSavvy does have practical limitations to what they can support. However, if there is an issue with the network (as it appears there may indeed be in my case, so one can assume others as well - am I the only TekSavvy customer in my area?), then this definitely falls in TekSavvy's area of responsibility.
I agree with your other points.
said by BronsCon:That said, yes, it does sound from your description (and everything thus far in this thread) to be a network issue. Thank you - this is my point. If it's a network issue, TekSavvy needs to deal with it. Two months later, it's still not clear what the problem is and it's not resolved.
said by BronsCon: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? I'll assume you're asking with an open mind, and not simply to refute the idea, so I'll try to be as clear as I can about this.
Throughout the past two months of troubleshooting my issue with TekSavvy, they requested I submit various logs to them, including ping, tracert, etc. Each time, gathering those logs took me approx. 45 mins. or longer. I am well-versed on how to run these DOS commands and gather the logs. If this is what TekSavvy requires to open tickets with Rogers for support, all of this could have been automated. This is the very minimum TekSavvy could do - take responsibility for gathering this information, and not rely on a customer (whose level of technical knowledge will vary greatly) to do that for them. I do agree that these kinds of tools are not ideal, compared to the tools that Rogers techs have and should be available to TekSavvy. However, given these limitations, it should not be be the responsibility of the customer to gather all this information which TekSavvy could easily do themselves.
I am not an ISP network tech, so I don't know how far TekSavvy could develop the customer-based tools, but I do know the support experience could be greatly improved. The DSLr Line Monitor is another example - not ideal, but at least we have a clear idea now of when packet loss is happening. It took a member of the DSLr to suggest setting this up. Why didn't TekSavvy suggest this from Day 1 of my current issue? Why is the onus on the customer to solve his/her own problems? My point is simple - TekSavvy needs to take responsibility for ensuring a service they provide works. They cannot see the Rogers side of things, so they rely on the customer to advise them. I think they could do a lot to make and/or implement customer-based tools that would advise them without the customer getting directly involved.
Both Rogers and Bell provide software with their service. One of the things the software does is assist in monitoring / troubleshooting your connection. Although I personally choose not to install that software, I think if the software is created with a high level of professionalism (which TekSavvy, as an ISP, should be able to accomplish) then it should be made available to TekSavvy customers as well. At the very least, if there's a connection problem and TekSavvy needs to gather data from the customer's end (which they do need to do at present, since they don't have access to the incumbents tools), they can suggest the customer install / use their provided software tools. I've already suggested this to TekSavvy, and TSI David agrees this would be very helpful - at the very least, they can automate their log-gathering with a batch file. I think they could do much better than that, though.
said by BronsCon: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. Therein lies the essence of my thread in the first place. If customers will not accept a subpar service, it needs to change. Those who come to TekSavvy must be fully apprised that they are choosing TekSavvy, with all its disadvantages, to support this cause. TekSavvy's marketing does not in one bit suggest this - it says "We are committed to giving our customers the best service possible". Where's that "best service"? I don't see it yet. I feel it's very important for a company to be who they say they are. If TekSavvy's approach is to differentiate themselves from the incumbents by saying they are "honest", and "different, in a good way", and they provide the "best service" ... that's exactly what they need to do.
said by BronsCon: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. You seem to be fairly reasonable in your discussions, so again, I'm going to be very frank. I disagree. TekSavvy is a business, like any other ... a business, by definition, exists to make a profit. If TekSavvy cannot run a business model that makes a profit, and at the same time provide all the great things they promise their customers they will provide, then that's a mistake on their part. Alternatively, if they are just doing this for the "cause" of making changes in Canada, wonderful - in that case, they would need to be prepared to sustain a loss and compensate any customers who they didn't provide the service the customer signed up for. When they also go so far as to ask the customer to waste a lot of time performing troubleshooting when they themselves have not ruled out a network issue (which is their responsibility), they do indeed need to make things right. Whatever losses they may incur as a result, that's solely because of their current processes and procedures. If they want someone like myself to troubleshoot for them, they can put me on their payroll.
I'm not disputing it's a terrible situation for any TPIA to be in. However, they clearly want to compete with the incumbents as a "better service". I joined TekSavvy with this impression. My experience being otherwise, I'm sharing that it isn't (which some people have appreciated). They have offered to make things right, so I'm giving them that chance. | |
Reviews:
·TekSavvy Cable
| reply to NightMayor
said by NightMayor:said by xdrag:said by TSI Marc:...
What's the right thing to do?
Marc, on the TSI website, you need to have a section to post any suspected network downtimes. Twitter, RSS or anything. If you think there's a downtime or congestion in an area. It wouldn't hurt to post it. When those who are affected by these unforeseen problems, they can see on your website and be like "oh, maybe that's why my connection is sucking". i.e. comstock POI is being upgraded - users in the scarborough area may experience network issues I agree, there needs to be something there on the website with suspected downtimes. And like you said it could be anything more. Right now as far as I know we only have advisories on the phone like when you call Teksavvy there may be a message right off where it says which POI has problems. I think a map would be good, like Toronto hydro's, since not everyone knows about POIs. Red could mean confirmed disturbance, yellow could mean suspected, and green could mean normal. +1 ... this is constructive and getting somewhere. It's a good start.
said by NightMayor:said by xdrag:The biggest need at the moment is consumer education. Most people have NO clue to what's going on and only blame TSI as their sole source of woes. If people became self-educated on the issue between TSI's arm-lock with rogers and bell, there would be more action. The prime example is UBB. People heard about it, learned about it and took action against it.
»openmedia.ca was suppose to do this, but it's clearly not working. Bell and Rogers own all the media outlets in canada so unless you start a riot in DT, most of this will fall on deaf ears
I also agree with this. Communication is always key. I think the problem though is that the general public thought just because UBB is gone all our internet problems are solved. So yeah, there needs to be another uprising of sorts, rioting is a little extreme IMHO. +1. I'm all for this as well. While TekSavvy (and other TPIAs) work towards improving their service to the best possible levels (given the limitations of working with incumbents), getting things to change is obviously one of the main factors needed for long-term benefits for all.
There was no violence (that I'm aware of) which caused so many people in Canada to protest UBB - there doesn't need to be here either. Education / action is what is needed. | |
 elwoodbluesElwood BluesPremium
join:2006-08-30
HarperLand
·Cybersurf Intern..
| reply to TwiztedZero
Re: Welcome to Dystopia 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.
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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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