EE: Yes, our broadband service is a total clusterf**k – but we promise to improve EE has promised to get its act together after admitting what many of its customers knew already – its broadband service simply isn't good enough. Reg readers may recall that Blighty's communications watchdog has repeatedly roasted the telco for being the most moaned-about ISP in the UK. In July, Ofcom whacked EE with a £1m …
Back in the day, when I used to work for BT Internet in Thurso (hi kids!), we used to actually get *trained* in what caused what problems in dialup networking, and general phone line diagnosis.
I'm fairly sure that's not a thing now - too expensive.
That said, we had consistently the highest customer satisfaction scores nationally out of all the helpdesks, because most of the people employed there actually felt they understood what they were supporting and could explain that to the customer so they knew what the problem was and how we were going to fix it, rather than reading from set scripts and claiming that they'll move the satellite for you and hanging up (yes, that happened to a friend of mine who had BT internet recently). And that was a 50p/min line FFS, not one of these newfangled freephone things.
Oddly, having competent, engaged staff makes a surprising difference to how customers feel they are being treated.
Steven "been there, done that" R
Actually been on EE unlimited fibre since February and not had any real reason to complain (to EE that is, son however has developed a data burning habit of watching Minecraft videos). However, knowing about the vagaries of broadband, I've maintained my Three mobile broadband router and that does get used at times (son isn't allowed access :) ). But then been wardriving whilst walking the dog and am under the impression that I'm potentially the only EE customer on my local exchange which only got fibre in the autumn of 2014, so (it is likely) all the kit is new...
@Zmode - "a year later..."
That s my concern once the BT takeover goes ahead and BT does a Sky and merge EE's network into its consumer broadband network - which in this case will be much simpler as EE don't have any LLU's and have simply created a virtual network over BT wholesale services. Ho hum!
EE own land fibre in some big cities, and they were going joint pay on some more with 3 network
if EE did`nt close most of its towers they could have used 4g to pass some city hops and have lower ping then BT
a year later when EE starts killing your connection when your all watching a family movie during peak time
What if a hospital in the middle of a virus outbreak, would instead of hiring more doctors and nurses, hire a boatload of low paid boiler room phone spokesdroids. Some one needs to kick this group in the behind and give them a hard dated performance stipulation or go to jail.
(the wife liked the free international calls) I've found speaking to the call centre.... People.... Is an exercise in restraint having broken a good phone before getting annoyed with them.
I have however found that their email team by comparison actually gets stuff done without being condensing or running through a script without trying to diagnose the issue (your routers shit and keeps crashing, have you installed an anti virus on your computer lately? Which one, my phone, tablet, 2 laptops server. Desktop and skybox, which all can't get on to the router because it's crashed again? Yes....... *impotent scream of rage*)
...that had to file a small claim action against them before they even admitted an issue, it does not surprise me.
Apparently setting up the much touted VoIP service for free calls was extremely difficult and technical and needs specialist equipment to do any sort of fault finding.
Guess what my job is...
Orange sent a bailiff round (about 2 years after I left them) to collect on the phone number they had given with my account (while waiting for them to move my number across), seems they hadn't stopped it and had been charging me for several years worth of monthly fees on it. Knowing they are part of EE was enough to keep me away.
I suspect that they are not even that good. No broadband service send out a router - the problem was clearly at their end and fixed itself 10 minutes after they said they'd send out the new box, but that was too late to stop it coming.
I have never used it so they wrote asking why, no easy way to explain it was barely suitable, though I did try it recently when we had another run of crap service. Predictable it was no better though it took 20 minutes of messing about to even get it usable, wrong local network range, wrong DHCP range, etc. I went back to original router and service has slowly improved to normal limited speed, not snail speed. The voice system is terrible and I did not find email any better. Now I do not bother to contact them.
Mobile is only for use when you are moving right? Just do not bother inside the house.
their broadband is fast when it works, getting dropped off the network is the problem, which can probably be fixed with a £10 unlimited bandwidth booster, they are bringing in soon so you don`t have to stay over your limit on your phone until next month
insta half a billion to buy some new proxies
“I’m not going to offer any REFUNDS JUST because broadband customer service has simply not been good enough. I promise I WILL USED WORDS LIKE 'all of our customers that service is our top priority' WHILST NOT SPENDING ANY MONEY ON ACTUALLY FIXING ANYTHING," said EE customer service MANAGEMENT DRONE Francoise Clemes on Tuesday morning, SHORTLY AFTER SPENDING HIS FAT PAY CHEQUE ON A BIGGER YACHT
I switched from Orange BB when I ditched their mobile service, truth is my BB had been rock solid and at the advertised speed for around 7 or 8 years (Or thereabouts)
I went to plus net and it was a complete nightmare, my service dropped at least once a week, the speed varied between 8 meg (should have been around 16) and 2 over the course any given day... plus net were a nightmare to get hold of and could only ever offer a "reset your modem" fix (Although tbf they did eventually send a BT engineer who found no problem to fix) I ditched them as soon as I could. I'm now on EE fibre and its rock solid.
I find it strange how things can be so variable given that all that generally changes is the name on the top of your bill.
"I find it strange how things can be so variable given that all that generally changes is the name on the top of your bill."
It's a lot more complicated than that. ISPs can resell a BT product, of which there are a range, or they can install their own kit at the exchange. They also choose how much backhaul to buy from BT or another telco to carry the traffic off to a peering point. The pair of wires to your door is only one part of the equation.
I must be lucky.
I've been on EE Fibre Unlimited since just before last Christmas (it was a nice unexpected Christmas present for the kids), and I've never had a reason to call their broadband support.
I've occasional had routing issues for an hour or two, and I decided to put an alternative DNS server in the DHCP config, but so far that's all.
I suspect that they're using the BT OpenReach infrastructure. I do have times when I get some slowdown, but that's probably a result of back-haul contention.
Recently re-read Going Postal by Terry Prattchet, ( if you haven't read it, you should, even if you've only got a passing interest in I.T. But why would you be here if you weren't interested in the cut and thrust world of I.T.? I digress... ) he got it totally spot on.
You could show it to the board of directors ( insert name of crappy ISP here ) but I suspect they'd think it's a guide, not a satire. Some of the phrases used in G.P. are near identical to EE spokesdroid.
P.S. SKY T.V. made a not bad TV film version a couple of years ago but the book is far superior.
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