Back to work this morning with a bump, one of our client’s suffered a major power outage over the weekend – the UPS closed the server down without issue, except when it was restarted the clients could not log in, browse the web etc. (HP server running Windows Small Businee Server 2003). I promised the client one of my engineers would be there for 8am to see if the problem could be solved before his staff got in. I got to go!
A check of the event log showed several errors all of which pointed to a problem with the IPSEC service not starting. I tried to start the service manually but that did not work. In consultation with an engineer from another company it was decided simply to disable to IPSEC service and restart to server. This worked in as much as it allowed the office to start working again (including several staff who connect and use terminal services) but it did not address what was wrong. The client was happy – even though user who access their email via OWA were unable to without the IPSEC service running – as by 10am his people were working. We’ll work the solution out later this week.
I got a call from another Swisscom tech support engineer today at about 2.30pm – who said he could not log into the device in my unit, so would be passing it back to Pine Lake onsite staff who would replace the unit. (I now wonder why this onsite team could not have visited me on Monday and swapped the device anyway – at least I would have been happy.)
Needless to say I did not get a visit today – now fed up wit this I am going to ask for a refund tomorrow and tell them to forget it.
Saturday evening – paid my money but no internet – I bought 7 days although that is really 6 days in the unit
Sunday – no high speed internet – 5 days left
Monday – no high speed internet – 4 days left
I went to the reception to report the issues with the sooo slooooow internet and got the expected “here is the Swisscom tech support number call them response”.
However the call is free when made from the phone in my unit – so I called them, and spoke to tech support who listened to the problem. I explained what I did for a living, he skipped any “play book” questioned, checked my IP and DNS with me. Ran some quick tests from his end and with in five minutes had escallated the call to the next level, with a promise of a call back to me later today.
Very good service – let’s see where this goes now.
I am staying at Pine Lakes, part of Diamond Resorts for the next week and as the resort advertised high speed wireless Internet access (and there is an access point in my chalet with a good connection) I thought I would spend the £27.50 on a weeks access. Not cheap but I thought it would work at least.
DON’T buy it if you stay here.
I have plenty of experience of connecting any device to any wifi network – this took nearly an hour to get the pages to come up and accept my expensive code (expensive if it doesn’t work) and once done it is dead slow. I have been waiting for nearly 15 minutes for my blog homepage to refresh on my laptop. Again if you stay here don’t buy it.
I will take it up with reception in the morning. Watch this space to see how they deal with it.
We are having trouble at one of our clients with their ADSL service and it has now got to the stage of getting a BT engineer out to check the line. Outside the office is a lake and whilst we are waiting on BT to pick up the phone and reset the service the water skiers are making ski jumps in the sun shine.
The down side of the whole ADSL not working thing is having to get BT involved. I had swapped all out network equipment as soon as there was an issue to eliminate that as a cause of the problem. I then called BT Tuesday afternoon and explained the situation to them, they carried out some tests and passed it onto engineering. Late in the day on Wednesday I got a call and had to explain the situation again and was offered an onsite engineer visit between 8am and 1pm or 1pm and 6pm Friday – I opted for the early slot and that was confirmed a few minutes later.
So Friday morning I am at the client’s site at 8am, at 9am staff arrived so I went off for a coffee and I eventually got a call at about 10.30 am to meet the engineer onsite.
Now I know BT will have good operational reasons for booking appointment times as they do (I do not really consider 8am to 1pm an appointment more like an intention to come) but I work with many support companies both large and small and BT is the only one to do this to me.
Anyway the engineer turns up – and after a few tests discovers we have a serious problem. He has trouble contacting various departments he has to speak to – and then he tells me about the system that means he has only two hours allocated to this job and if he cannot solve it in that time then he will leave and a new job raised and another visit organised (and I expect it will be either in the morning or in the afternoon). The even better news is that if that visit does solve the problem in two hours they will leave and another job will need to be raised! You can see where this system is going. Somewhere at some senior board level in BT or OpenReach they think this is good or even acceptable customer service!
On the up side each person who I have spoken to or dealt with in this system has done a good job, is polite, knows what they are talking about and are very helpful. As I write the engineer is down a manhole checking wires and testing at a furoius pace trying to solve my problem. The issue I have is with the system.
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