Shockingly Poor Internet speed and service by MWEB

Please note that I have posted the complaint on 13 May. You have only tried to phone me today ********** You made 2 calls within a minute. So please do not reply as if you were trying to reach me since 13 May.... you also did not leave any messages on my voicemail

I am in a 5day course and my phone is on silent. If you leave me your nr I will return your call. Or at least you should try to get hold of me more than twice in one minute... this just speaks of your arrogant and abrupt attitude toward customer service... and of course that fact that you dont want to give your direct tel nr to anyone.

Please reply via email with proper feedback.... it is useless to say the line syncs @8mbps and that you have escalated the line issue to Telkom... you have not addressed my concern.

What you are doong now is nothing more than what you have done so many times in the past few months... why would you expect a different outcome now?

Maybe to assist, I require the following:

1. What measures will you put in place to follow up with Telkom?

2. How often will you follow up with Telkom and keep me posted on what is happening?

3. How will you ensure that Telkom does not sign off on this log without effecting a real solution?

4. How will you ensure that my billing is corrected, backdated according to my avergae 5mbps speed that I have experienced over the last 4 months.

Please reply via email

Thanks

Francois Strydom

(I can't seem to upload the graphs or a pdf version of this reply - so some graphs will not display below)

Hi Bjorn

Following our email conversation earlier last week….

My email below refers – I will highlight the following:

“Operating 20% of the time <6mbps, ¹ I rely on you to advise in this regard. It seems that towards the last few days it has improved – I don’t have a lot of faith in the sustainability of this improvement though seeing that these issues are coming as far back as 2016.

²I am willing to meet on site with technicians if you deem it necessary – please advise?”

From: Francois Strydom **********

Date: 2017/05/25 16:23 (GMT+02:00)

To: MWEB **********

Subject: Re: Ticket reference number - MWB **********

100%.

I can do Friday after 430 or Saturday before 10.³

My cell ********** 077

Will someone phone me so that we can finalize the appointment³? Wouldnt want to wait and then no one pitches...

Needless to say, that ever since Friday 26 May, when Openserve just pitched at my house without an appointment at 12:30, the line deteriorated. The arrogance of the Openserve people to be upset with my wife for not letting them in gets me… In these days we are living in, do they really think that I will allow a bunch of strange men into my house when my wife is home alone? Blatantly disregarding my request (see above nr 3) to make an appointment with myself. Apart from the safety aspect, my wife doesn’t know the 1st thing about the technical side of our problem with MWEB/Telkom – and therefore, they need to be here when I am at home. I was at home on 16:30 and on Saturday I waited until 10:00 AM as I committed to do – no one came to my house again.

Referring to ref 1 and 2 above, the line was running at an ave of 7.68mbps and my comment to you was that I rely on your advice. Telkom apparently advised you that they changed my exchange/line from Interleaved to Fastpath (after which I did say to you that the line speed increased substantially) – I thought that this was a fixed that would hopefully last:

From: MWEB **********
Sent: 23 May 2017 11:00 AM
To: ********** Francois Strydom
Subject: Re: Ticket reference number - MWB **********

Hi Francois Interleaved and Fastpath are configurations set on Telkom exchanges to manage error correction on the line. The exchanges are normally defaulted to Interleave to provide better correction of any errors on the line. According to the specialist , the profile needs to be manually changed , which is what the technician did. This lasted for one day only. The line automatically reset and it defaulted back to Interleaved , where it is currently at. I'm awaiting a response from Telkom on whether their software is at times picking up a condition on your line and trying to correct it , resulting in symptoms you are experiencing as dropped connections and reducing the speed to accommodate and correct.

You advised we continue with a site inspection (after you have referred it to the Telkom technician. I would almost say, as expected, Telkom/Openserve and MWEB failed to make an appointment with me successfully, to meet at my house.

After being upset with my wife, the Openserve people went into my neighbour’s yard where the Telkom pole is – spent quite a while there – don’t know what they did, but later on Friday I received this sms:

I gathered that even if they now ignored my request and specific time when I will be available, they fixed something – like they have done so many times before. You have no clue what they fixed, you just get an sms like this one. So I decided to do a few tests again – and not surprisingly, the quality deteriorated after their fix… so needless to say that I rep**** on the sms = NO. Please see below what the current stance if after the Openserve “fix” on Friday:

I received the following message from Telkom this morning:

I have no idea who Denis is, he did not contact me, speak to me or emailed me in the last week or more – no one from Telkom contacted me – I only corresponded with you. I have received so many of these messages before – I have them available on my cell should anyone want to look at it. So obviously I will just ignore this sms – because it is a waste of my time to go through this responsive messaging service where each time you provide a response, you get another sms with more questions on why you selected an option – as if I will ever recommend Telkom to anyone…

So basically, where I am at now, is that I am running at an ave of 6.64mbps since Openserve’s unexpected “fix” on Friday – before that it was 7.68mbps. This morning I lost connection at least once and I am wondering what Openserve did to my line now?

Once again, I rely on you, my service provider, to suggest the next step – however, it has become ridiculous to say the least, how I should keep on following up on something like this – expected to pay for 8mbps and then it goes like this? I don’t even want to hear about your policy of correcting billing afterwards when calls are closed – it makes me think of how the city council will incorrectly bill you, then expecting you to pay the incorrect amount, and then when THEIR error is corrected, they fix your billing.

I need a different solution from MWEB. I have been a loyal customer for many years – and it is shocking how MWEB just don’t care. In saying that, Bjorn, I know that you have been trying to help, but it seems we are still not getting anywhere.

Please advise what you propose in this regard?

Francois Strydom

This is the reply I got from Bjorn today: It is strange how he will "close" the HelloPeter complaint by himself without the issue being resolved.

See my next reply-post: this is my reply to Bjorn which is self-explanatory.

The bottom-line is AFTER Telkom now "fixed" the line, the speed dropped from 7.6 to 6.4 and Bjorn deems this acceptable to close the Telkom query and the HelloPeter complaint - referring me further to your call centre.

I need this escalated to a more senior person - clearly Bjorn is now tired of this difficult client.

From: MWEB **********
Sent: 31 May 2017 04:44 PM
To: ********** Francois Strydom
Subject: Re: Ticket reference number - MWB **********

Good Day Francois

So far , the line has been stable and syncing at 8MB.

There has been no intermittent or dropped connections either.

We haven’t had a response to the last email and need to confirm this matter to be resolved.

We are closing the query on Hello Peter.

Should you have any further queries regarding your fault, please direct them via our contact centre through email or telephonically on ********** 777.

Kind Regards
Bjorn Watlington
Escalations Coordinator
MWEB Technical Support

MWEB Connect
Tel: **********
Fax: **********
Email: ********** /> Website: www.mweb.co.za

My reply to Bjorn tonight:
Page 1
Hi Bjorn
My response to your email from today:
Your comment: “We haven’t had a response to the last email and need to confirm this matter to be resolved.” – it’s because I am testing it for a few days like you have requested: “With the last repair, will you be able to monitor the connection over the next few days to see if there has been an improvement with the stability?” Before I get to your reply, below the tests I have done so far: and average speed of 6.45mbps – unfortunately I do not have more time to do tests seeing that you do not want to wait any longer.
On your email from Monday:
1. “A follow up with the specialist this morning indicates that the technicians attended at the street distribution cabinet (SDC). They did not need access to your premises to troubleshoot further and a meeting with you would not be necessary.” So after Telkom INSISTED on a house-call to inspect who-knows-what, suddenly their technicians move to the SDC and decided an on-site inspection is not necessary….. and you accept that response following my email to you below where I have shown you that the line speed dropped from 7.6mbps on average (before you/Telkom insisted on an on-site inspection) to 6.6? Currently the line speed gets on ave 6.4 – deteriorating even further. Please advise why you deem this acceptable?
2. “From there(SDC), they localised the issue to cables leading from the street cabinet towards the exchange. They repaired the cable and changed the ports at the exchange.”
Please explain to me how it is possible for them to magically find this issue now, whilst there have been countless “technicians” attending to my house and the SDC – do they repair different cables every time? It sounds so fishy I can’t believe that you would buy their story. After the repair the line speed dropped – what type of repair is that? Please advise why you deem it acceptable that they “fixed” my line and now the line speed dropped 1mbps?
3. “ADSL however , does remain a best effort service , so interruptions and interference can happen at any point. What has been put in place to alleviate those conditions, is the Telkom optimisation software which tries to automatically correct and stabilise your line as best it can under those unforeseen conditions. This is not a remedy , but a measure put in place to facilitate the connection. If it persists , the only way forward is for another fault to be logged and Telkom to localise again. So at this point you are fed-up with dealing with this issue and suddenly, ADSL is a best-effort service? And on the other side you do not advertise it as a best-effort-service right? It’s only when a customers insists on getting what you charge him for that it suddenly becomes an inferior service? And you must be joking for thinking I will log a call again with Telkom…
May I remind you of your comment from a previous email: “The faults do not get closed until we confirm with you that it is working to your satisfaction” Please ensure the Telkom fault is kept open until they figure out how to get my speed up to 7.6mbps again – they should just UNDO whatever they did last Friday.
4. “We also have to take into consideration the state of the infrastructure at hand. Should there be more issues - taking into consideration the amount of repair work done already - and there is still no outcome, one may have to decide to downgrade to line speed that best accommodates what you are experiencing majority of the time. However, that too is not a guarantee or free of any error. Please explain: My line speed was 7.6mbps, then you insist on Telkom coming out – now the line speed is 6.4 – so now you want to downgrade my line speed (meaning my 8mbps package)? So you reduce it to 6 and then hopefully I will get 4? I am not sure I understand what you mean here because if this is what you mean, it is totally ridiculous.
5. “I hope this answers some of your concerns.” Let me summarize my concerns as follows: (1) Endless problems with my line (2) Telkom sent to my house MANY TIMES BEFORE (3) They replaced cables – more than once (so they say) (4) They say they found error and fixed it – just to re-appear a short while after (5) The ADSL line infrastructure is such a terrible best-effort-service and yet you feel that you can bill me for 8mbps when I get on average 6.4. So, NO – the answers unfortunately will not pay my bill.

My reply to Bjorn:

Page 2

From your latest email: “So far , the line has been stable and syncing at 8MB.” I can’t comment since I am at work all day and have limited time for speed tests – the ones that I have done shows an ave of 6.4. I can’t rely on this since, and I will reiterate it , my line was running at 7.6 after Telkom fixed the fast-path thing (whatever it is) and you insisted on a site visit, where after the speed is 6.4…. so this is not acceptable at all.

“There has been no intermittent or dropped connections either.” I wouldn’t know – not at home much during the week.

“We haven’t had a response to the last email and need to confirm this matter to be resolved.” It’s because you asked me to monitor the line for a few days…

“We are closing the query on Hello Peter.” I did not agree to this – the issue is very much open as far as I am concerned.

“Should you have any further queries regarding your fault, please direct them via our contact centre through email or telephonically on ********** 777.” So you want to end this comms and get rid of me … I can’t think why else you would comment as such. I would have thought that you would ask for my feedback after you asked me to monitor the line for a few days….

Conclusion: 1. Please answer my questions in the above email? 2.Please instruct Telkom to fix the line speed to what it was before they came out on Friday – undo their “Fix” 3.Please give me the contact detail of your superior/person that I can escalate this to seeing that I have reached the end of the line with you and my problem is not resolved. Other than what you have done to me, I will give to time to Friday 2 June to respond to me – failing which I will escalate it myself

4 days and no reply?

5 days...