Apparently I am now "acting like a bullying, petulant child" because I have given a customer 30 days notice of termination of service as per terms.
Not sure what I can say to that. He has asked that I "please, go away and grow up".
Well, going away is exactly what we are doing by giving him notice.
He has said "The facts stand and
your inability to grasp the complaint, even after this many months,
shows that the problem is yours and yours alone." but he has yet to actually make any formal "claim" even though we have suggested he follow our customer complaints code several times now.
He has posted a negative comment on ispreview, which is a shame.
Basically, there is no way we can provide a service that (a) never has a major outage, (b) can force his router, which we did not supply, to reconnect after an outage, or (c) can make a third party mail server not bounce emails he has sent.
So what can I do? - with those expectations I cannot provide service! - so have given him notice and a migration code (which he has not used).
What do you do?
It is funny, people give us notice all the time. We don't accuse them of "acting like a bullying, petulant child", we simply cease or migrate their service as requested with no hard feelings. Why is it that doing the same thing from our side is seen in a different light. Odd...
Oh well.
P.S. Looks like he is finally using the migration code - sorted!
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Someone does seem to have it in for AA on ispreview.. after years of excellent comments 3 negative ones at once?
ReplyDeleteOr are they all the same person?
Sadly not - separate cases. None of them (IMHO) justified, but what can I say that does not look lie sour grapes.
DeleteLets hope things are better from now on - anyone want to post good things is welcome to do so.
OK I've done my best.
DeleteOf course *now* someone is going to accuse you of soliciting for good reviews :p
I am, of course, soliciting good reviews :-)
DeleteI am not soliciting false or exaggerated reviews though and not asking anyone to be dishonest. Just that if you have nice things to say, please feel free to post a good review. If we have done something wrong, it would be nice to get the chance to fix it before you post something negative though.
Unbelievable. Tell him that he'll have far better luck with TalkTalk - he'll have to pay them £lots per minute to tell their customer support line that they are bullying children then...
ReplyDeleteSome users will always be unreasonable and we all have our fair share of them; fortunately, this user will migrate elsewhere and realize that the underlying problem was not A&A.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, as I have said to you before, the number of customers who think you are doing something right far outnumber those who think otherwise.
I cannot leave positive comments on ISPreview as we are not retail customers of A&A but I am happy to provide an extremely positive testimonial for the A&A website w.r.t our wholesale L2TP experiences if you want one.
There does seem to be a popular belief that service providers should not terminate services, even if there are reasonable alternatives available. I personally believe both parties should be able to walk away when unhappy with the deal. Maybe that should happen more often.
ReplyDeleteThis is the main thing I find odd. We are not being nasty about this. We provided a migration code and 30 days notice. Either side can give 30 days notice. I have even given reasons why we have given notice (that we are not able to provide a service to the customers expectations). I don't have to give a reason. But as you say, some people seem to think there is some spite or something if an ISP terminates services. It is not like there are not a lot of other providers or that it costs to move. He we almost certainly save money with someone else.
DeleteI've got to ask the question - what is/are "line-validation problems that exist at the BT switch level"? I've never heard of 'line validation' before.
ReplyDeleteAlso, is "AAISP just refuse to chase BT on this because it will cost them money." true? I mean, is there such a thing as a BT fault which BT will charge you to fix?
I don't know about you, but I get "My computer expert says ' ', so you must be wrong" quite a lot. It *always* turns out to be an ill-educated 'expert' offering duff advice. Ho hum.
Not sure of the first one. As to cost to fix faults - BT try to charge us for all sorts of things even fixing faults, but we manage not to pay for those. The main cost in any fault fix is our time, but that is not the issue.
DeleteThe issue here is that the fault was a major outage in BT Faraday node. It caused drops in service on several occasions and caused some loss and latency for several days. It affected around 5% of BT Wholesale circuits over all ISPs using them. We chased BT, usually before BT know they had an issue (i.e. usually withing 60 seconds). They fixed it (eventually). The bigger problem was that his router did not reconnect after an outage and needed a power cycle. We did not supply it and he refused to change it. Somehow it was our fault that his router did not reconnect and we had to fix it!
His other complaint, over which he wanted to takes us to the regulator, was that a third party mail server bounced one of his emails!
There were other faults previously and the fault team addressed those at the time.
So a lot of things he complained about were not things we could fix even if we wanted to - nothing to do with cost.
If a customer wants a service with no outages ever, then broadband from us is not the service he needs. Hence giving him notice.
I'm just trying to understand the comment on ispreview...
DeleteHe's saying "line-validation problems that exist at the BT switch level" and you say you're not sure. Does that mean you're not sure what he means by "line-validation problems that exist at the BT switch level" or you're not sure whether there were "line-validation problems that exist at the BT switch level" (and if so, out of interest, what are line validation problems?)?
He says he's tried three different routers. You say he has only used one router and he refused to change it. Which of these statements is true?
I am not sure what he means. I wonder if it is related to the router not reconnecting. I think he has tried more than one router. I am not sure if he has tried different makes. But the router he was using during the Faraday issues was not reconnecting after outage, when the hundreds of other customers affected had not issue reconnecting using other makes of router. Whatever the issue is we have no way to force his router to reconnect.
DeleteYou could have offered him an upgrade to the whole internet (i.e. IPv6). This would have forced him to buy a new router which, presumably, would work properly.
ReplyDelete"line validation issues" are closely related to sunspot levels and the moon reflecting off swamp gas. I'm sure BOfH had a server for these at one time.
ReplyDeleteClassic.
DeleteI have just gone through all my emails to him on this and I have been nothing but polite in the whole matter. I doubt even the ombudsman could suggest otherwise on this case.
Sorry RevK,
ReplyDeleteBut IMHO, you have the wrong stance here. Bending over backwards for a customer is not always the right thing to do.
I think the phrase you are looking for is CEASE.
Simples
You have misread - we are ceasing!
DeleteYes you are ceasing, but far too late in the game. The customer is clearly complaining of issues that you as an ISP are not accountable for.
ReplyDeleteCarlos - I disagree. RevK was correct in trying to manage the expectations once it became clear that what the customer expected was not providable with the service they paid for. Quite often the customer goes "Oh, I didn't understand that. I guess I either need to cope with what I have or find another service that provides what I need".
ReplyDeleteBecause the customer didn't do that (continually), AAISP ceased the line at that point.
He has finally migrated away today.
ReplyDelete