Current Boadband OUTAGE?

[kiat]

Ongoing today in Louth, Lincolnshire for 6+hours.  Anyone else? 

How did we know when BT will fix their service issues?  This page shows it was reported over 36 hours ago with zero updates. An ETA by midnight. I'm not holding my breath.

https://www.bt.com/help/check-service-status#tabpanel-broadband

 

[pippincp]

Do I take it you are now complaining because you are being informed rather than being left in the dark?

I would've thought if the eta wasn't met that would be the time to complain.

[DavidM]

Hi @kiat and welcome back.

Great to see you again. Has the broadband problem in your area been sorted yet?

Cheers

David

[kiat]

@pippincp How is that helping? No, during the outage our household and our neighbours were not informed. BT left it to us to constantly make the effort to pull information

[kiat]

@DavidM thanks, the outage was over on Sunday evening. Here is our experience and my suggestions to BT to raise their costumer service to an acceptable level.

Bear in mind we are all being encouraged to depend more and more on our internet connection - gone are the days that the internet is just for browsing...

• IoT device networks, where many devices and systems need an internet connection to function
• children's homework
• adults WFH
• online shopping
• entertainment: BT Sport, I Player, Netflix, Prime, etc...

Experience

• a localised outage in our postcode lasting around 30 hours
• zero information on the cause of the outage
• zero information on how suffering householders can work around the outage
• zero information if this was an outage as a result of planned works
• zero information on the scale of the outage (how many households were affected in the area)
• zero pushed information during the outage
• the BT outage website changed their ETF (estimated time of fix) three times and not in a good way: 23.59 Sunday, then 19:00 Sunday [better], then indeterminate [worrying].
• within, as far as we can tell, a couple of hours when the ETF changed to indeterminate (i.e. "we are now telling you we have no idea when we will fix our outage") the page was fixed
• no timestamps on the outage notices, so we could not know when they were issued
• no pushed information to us, by SMS, email, WhatsApp, automated phone call or any other method
• I recieved an SMS message from BT around 12 hours after  the outage was fixed, saying they believe the outage is over and suggesting we reboot our router if we still do not have service
• no follow up information on why the outage happened
• no offer of compensation, given we paid for over a day's service which BT did not supply us with
• zero transparency

Suggestions

• Implement a culture of transparency and timely pushed information
• Pushed updates. BT inform the affected householders by their preferred contact method that (a) there is an outage, (b) if this a planned or unplanned outage, (c) an ETF, (d) the URL where to find out outage information if inclined, (e) time of next pushed update [within 2-4 hours], (f) URL to suggested workarounds, (g) URL to complaint and escalation processes. Note: BT did do one pushed update, but this was after the outage, way after and next to useless.
• Automated phonecalls are always possible
• A simple method for costumers (there will be a minority) who want to opt out of receiving pushed outage updates
•  Put timestamps on the outage page when the last change (update to ETF) was made
• List the changes made during the lifetime of the outage on its page, so every customer can see the progression, not just a snapshot when they happen to view the page
• Offer a suggested list of workarounds with caveats, e.g. for systems (e.g. IoT gateway) connected over Ethernet to the BT router, reconfigure a WiFi repeater that also has an Ethernet port to a WiFi client that then connects to your mobile phone Hotspot: this enables the entire IoT network to get back online [I figured out how to do this during this outage and it worked, though put strain on my phone's data plan]

[pippincp]

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@kiatwrote:

@DavidM thanks, the outage was over on Sunday evening. Here is our experience and my suggestions to BT to raise their costumer service to an acceptable level.

Bear in mind we are all being encouraged to depend more and more on our internet connection - gone are the days that the internet is just for browsing...

• IoT device networks, where many devices and systems need an internet connection to function
• children's homework
• adults WFH
• online shopping
• entertainment: BT Sport, I Player, Netflix, Prime, etc...

Experience

• a localised outage in our postcode lasting around 30 hours
• zero information on the cause of the outage
• zero information on how suffering householders can work around the outage
• zero information if this was an outage as a result of planned works
• zero information on the scale of the outage (how many households were affected in the area)
• zero pushed information during the outage
• the BT outage website changed their ETF (estimated time of fix) three times and not in a good way: 23.59 Sunday, then 19:00 Sunday [better], then indeterminate [worrying].
• within, as far as we can tell, a couple of hours when the ETF changed to indeterminate (i.e. "we are now telling you we have no idea when we will fix our outage") the page was fixed
• no timestamps on the outage notices, so we could not know when they were issued
• no pushed information to us, by SMS, email, WhatsApp, automated phone call or any other method
• I recieved an SMS message from BT around 12 hours after  the outage was fixed, saying they believe the outage is over and suggesting we reboot our router if we still do not have service
• no follow up information on why the outage happened
• no offer of compensation, given we paid for over a day's service which BT did not supply us with
• zero transparency

Suggestions

• Implement a culture of transparency and timely pushed information
• Pushed updates. BT inform the affected householders by their preferred contact method that (a) there is an outage, (b) if this a planned or unplanned outage, (c) an ETF, (d) the URL where to find out outage information if inclined, (e) time of next pushed update [within 2-4 hours], (f) URL to suggested workarounds, (g) URL to complaint and escalation processes. Note: BT did do one pushed update, but this was after the outage, way after and next to useless.
• Automated phonecalls are always possible
• A simple method for costumers (there will be a minority) who want to opt out of receiving pushed outage updates
•  Put timestamps on the outage page when the last change (update to ETF) was made
• List the changes made during the lifetime of the outage on its page, so every customer can see the progression, not just a snapshot when they happen to view the page
• Offer a suggested list of workarounds with caveats, e.g. for systems (e.g. IoT gateway) connected over Ethernet to the BT router, reconfigure a WiFi repeater that also has an Ethernet port to a WiFi client that then connects to your mobile phone Hotspot: this enables the entire IoT network to get back online [I figured out how to do this during this outage and it worked, though put strain on my phone's data plan]

---

Ha ha! Dream on, there's always halo 3+ available to you.

[kiat]

Isn't one of BT's goals for maintaining this forum is to gather feedback?  Otherwise its pointless.  I'm not going to waste my time in future, if its just a place to whinge.

The fact they sent me an automated SMS well after the outage was over, shows that they can do it during the outage (and prior if it was a planned or potential outage).  That would have saved me and the neighbours time, slavishly trying to find out information from their webpage via our other devices.

Can't wait til my contract is nearly up and move to a provider with better customer service.