Yep, I noticed this too. Last messages to the outside world are on the 18th. Perhaps someone should phone their help line but I hate talking to an Indian call centre who will probably tell me to switch off my ADSL router for 5 minutes :-))
A
seems to be leaking out to other ISPs now.
They must use the same call centre as Tiscali, then. ;-)
I've only needed to contact Pipex 3 times - all when my broadband failed. In each case the ADSL carrier was still present.
First time I got a very helpful English sounding bloke who had heard of RISC OS and did his best - pretty good really since non of my RISC OS browsers could get into the router menu. It got sorted with no action from me - he actually phoned me back to say it was likely a BT problem.
Second time - still Pipex - same sort of fault. This time got someone who sounded black - not Asian - and I can only guess had been instructed to waste as much customer time as possible while enraging the recipient into the bargain. I just about changed ISP there and then. That fault also sorted itself without any action from me.
Third time - same fault. This time Tiscali ownership. Got an extremely helpful bloke who sounded Dutch. Spent a lot of time checking everything he could. Eventually concluded it was probably BT again. Fault once more cleared as if by magic. ;-)
Total outages (that I know of) have only totalled a few hours in some 4 years.
I think outgoing is working-ish. Incoming isn't. When something like this happened back around 2000/2001, I took pity and streamed lots of the uk.* groups into Demon from my own newsservers. I don't think I can get to the Demon newsservers anymore (not having a modem or a Demon adsl line).
I used to know a few people who worked there, but I don't know anyone who's still there now. I rather suspect they don't have the expertise left to maintain their service. The news system was their own design, but they lost those staff. From dipping into demon.service occasionally, it looks like they have no one left who knows how to run the service. ISP's are generally very strapped for money (they've beaten each other down in price to below what it costs to run a service). This means they usually can't afford good enough staff and are stuck with aging kit, a combination which leads to poor service levels. Demon also stopped being honest and open about their service status many years ago (it takes many days of outage before they publically admit to anything having gone wrong). This is in stark contrast to how honest and open they were in the early years, and is probably a reflection of their insecurity.
In the early years, I probably setup around 10 people on Demon, but I don't think I know anyone who still uses Demon now. Most of those left as a result of the incompetence of Demon's accounts department over the years (it's always been really dire, even in the beginning).
Contrary to my headers, I haven't seriously used Demon for about
8 years now, only as a maildrop and webspace. I use a commercial ISP in order to get the service level I require.
Entanet have* tech support lines which get answered promptly by techs with clue. Never used their news service (if they have one) though.
Anyone to recommend then please?...
Course all ADSL is finally dependant on good ole BT;(...........
Was this prior to 18 January 2008? I ask because that is the date when Tiscali migrated all Pipex customer service provision to the Tiscali call centre in India.
This sounds like what I've suspected for ages.
I know there are business providers, eg Claranet, who charge more and provide reasonable if limited service. But this is the point. If I pay a fiver a month for adsl, I don't expect much. If I pay £25, along with a number of other users, I expect the provider to be able to afford to employ someone who knows what they are doing. I can even put up with a bunch of engineers who can't do accounts. What I don't want is to be dealing with a bunch of accountants using words like efficiency and shareholder value while users get fed up with the service provided. Aging kit shouldn't happen. There should be a programme of maintenance and continual modernisation. Similarly, I get incensed in the way that water companies tell me that they have "invested" in a lot of new replacement pipes and this is a huge improvement that I should pay for.
It's not just Demon, it's the Post Office, British Gas, Scottish Power, BT.... The list goes on and on as Lesser Britain slides down the greasy pole to third-worldness or beyond. I'm becoming a grumpy old man, and am starting to write letters, but nothing seems to stop it all turning to crap.
Hello - it has been very quiet of late hasn't it!
Must admit I was getting a bit fed up that they didn't seem to even know there was a problem and it has been nearly a week now...
Ho hum
In article , Ed Sirett writes
In message , Ed Sirett writes
Interesting, I've not seen posts from anyone until yours. Shame, time to leave Demon I think. Customer service is now dire and Be are in my area for a couple of quid less a month so after many, many years....
No. I was considering changing ISPs when they sent me an letter telling me I was going to be cut off for doing something that they should have known I hadn't done - after 5 years of having an account with them - and giving me less notice than the length of my annual holiday. They have changed all their contact numbers to premium rate. They have changed the Ts&Cs to limit my use (but so have they all) - I could go on, but what't the use.
It's when you get a fault that you'll find out what the problems are.
Andy
I can't be certain except that it was earlier this year.
[Thinks]I'll have a look at the logging system on this machine.
28th March.
.. and I should have added - since I got and used the MAC code, PIPEX have emailed me at least 4 times with the intersting message "your broadband has gone live and you can start using the service immediately". And 4 times saying my service will be suspended in 10 days unless I pay up. Plus, once, just to be different, a 6 day warning...
And I forgot to mention one of the reasons why I was thinking about switching ISPs was that as the "fix" for a fault they dropped my line speed to 1mBit.
Andy
Perhaps Tiscali were late? Or one of their Indian call centre personnel speaks English with what appears to be a Dutch accent ...
I initially had BT Openworld Business. That was excellent. They generally noticed faults before I did, and they were fixed within a few hours even over weekends. Their news service started developing lots of missing articles. They relied on the BT Openworld residential news service, and the BT Openworld residential side was nowhere near as good as the business side. (Ironically, I took a full newsfeed from BT's peering newsservers at work and that was excellent, but sadly not what the BT Openworld news servers seemed to use.) However, at £65/month when other ADSL providers had dropped well below that, and with the newsservice not working too well, I switched to Andrews+Arnold about 3 years ago. They are mainly a business ISP (I don't think they expect support calls from windows users whose systems have stopped working). They only officially provide support Mon-Fri business hours, but unofficially support seems to be available weekends too. The news service is provided by Gradwell, and seems OK (gets the odd hickup for a few minutes occasionally). A+A are very honest with their customers -- like Demon were in their first couple of years, and I like to see that from a company. I believe A+A have deliberately priced themselves to dissaude new customers at the moment, to maintain quality of service for existing users whilst they wait for BT to get the new generation links working. I've got 3 ADSL lines with A+A around the family, and it's nice to be able to monitor and manage them from web pages, and get SMS alerts when they go down, etc.
In article , Andrew Gabriel scribeth thus
All noted thanks!....
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