Well, it seems my rants on the status page have caused some high level "shit hitting fan" at our favourite telco. It was not done as a PR stunt in any way - it is out of sheer frustration to get things done right. The XML change to stop us sending faults back was really the last straw and had me swearing over the phone at them!
We are prepared to work with them at all levels - heck, we could sell them some of our kit even. At the end of the day we just want a working reliable network so we can give our customers the best service. Fighting them is not helpful for us or them.
So, I do feel sorry for my poor account team there. They work hard, and they try hard. They face the corporate giant on our behalf and a lot of the time they get the attention you might expect for a small ISP that is a thorn in their side - i.e. not a lot. Sadly it takes media attention, as has happened a few times now, to get anyone to take notice of us. We have to lead the way and other ISPs chip in. We have to go out on a limb and say what is going on in a public way.
The good news is that, in the aftermath, things do get sorted. We usually see some slow but significant changes in policy and attitude and things do get fixed.
At the moment we are seeing senior people in that company getting people involved to understand the issue and address it. To understand if the design is right or wrong or needs adjusting. To understand customer expectation. It's the focus we wanted, and it will take a few days to show any progress I am sure.
So sorry and thanks to Andy and Ian. Keep up the good work. Next time we moan, remind them of this and suggest that maybe it is worth listening. I hope we are giving you ammunition not grief. Have a good weekend.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: Said favorite telco is purposefully making working with them as difficult as possible in order to make their own 'retail' offering as attractive as possible. My company is now making complaints to Ofcom with evidence supporting this behavior.
ReplyDeleteAt work, we recently got re-quoted for 21CN access, after quoting us £0.25m last year just for the fibre backhaul. After charging us for bandwidth, fibre backhaul delivery, line rental and more, they still wanted £24,000 just for the pleasure of doing business - that bumped our per-user price to £26. And on top of that they claimed we can only put 20 people onto ADSL2+. They've been officially told to stuff it up their arse, as we can go with Be/Fluidata for £16 per user and no ridiculous £24k per year we-let-you-do-business-with-us fee.