Connection Lag

[FONGO_steve]

Just to address a concern that came up earlier in the thread - we're hoping to have a few more staff actively joining us all in the forums over the next week or so to help us keep on top of all the threads with the growing size of our forum community. Right now Mike is actually our only customer service guy here - I work in a different part of the company and merely donate some spare time (usually before my day gets started) to help on as many posts as I can. I never ignore any posts, but sometimes I simply can't get to them all at once alongside my regular day-to-day work. Never hesitate to PM me if there's something you want my immediate attention on.

[TheHardy]

I think this is them saying they knew there was a problem http://forum.fongo.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5300

But I am not sure Let's hope the connections start being a bit more solid!

Acknowledgement and contrition - two nice things to see ... I like to think that they are serious when they say they are committed to improvements, so let's see what happens. One thing is true, they can't fix things if they don't know they are broken, so us making reports and doing a little troubleshooting of our own before and after posting DOES help everyone out in the long run.

SUGGESTION TO FONGO: add a "report a problem" interface to the website (other than using the forums), which could ask the appropriate questions, point at a FAQ or whatever, and make it easier for regular users to make detailed trouble reports .... just an idea...

[TheHardy]

Just to address a concern that came up earlier in the thread - we're hoping to have a few more staff actively joining us all in the forums over the next week or so to help us keep on top of all the threads with the growing size of our forum community. Right now Mike is actually our only customer service guy here - I work in a different part of the company and merely donate some spare time (usually before my day gets started) to help on as many posts as I can. I never ignore any posts, but sometimes I simply can't get to them all at once alongside my regular day-to-day work. Never hesitate to PM me if there's something you want my immediate attention on.

Thanks for clarifying that Steve, I am sure many other users were not as aware of this as some of our regulars...

It is good to hear that there is a serious commitment, and as we know, the forums are useful, but an non-urgent (semi) official support method ... mainly peer-to-peer (but hopefully more staff input soon, from the sounds of it).

Please consider my previous post, with a dedicated "REPORT A PROBLEM" type set up off the main web page, or even as a link on the forum home page layout.

[dks]

Well I'm certainly glad to see I am not the only one getting horrible service. I just joined at the wrong time. I was hesitant to joining and when I did it was on trial before I bought into the services and paid close to $100 in total including taxes for the FREE service. Since then, I can no longer call Waverley, NS so my parents are now a toll call. Yet Waverley is part of the Halifax/Dartmouth free calling area. I'm with Videotron who have utterly excellent Internet service. I have the 30 Mbps flavor and never had Videotron go down on me once in 11 years. In any case, maybe they did something today because I'm not seeing as many UNREACHABLE messages.

I did join CallCentric today and have not had a single UNREACHABLE from them since 7 am this morning. I'll be trying them for a while to see how well they behave. I don't mind spending money for a service that works and who I can call for support. I cannot get support from FPL, was unable to get dialtone or incoming calls most of the time over the past month, and this all started happening after paying to switch my line over. I was not forced. I did it with the trust that I'd have some service as boasted. However that hasn't been happening. So I'm off testing another company.

Unless they straighten this up, I don't know who would use Fibernetics for their business or residential service. Others may not share my opinion but I don't have money to throw out the window and that is exactly what seemed to happen. It's also not clear that joining them means you won't get tech support unless you buy their ATA. I don't recall reading that anywhere before buying the config file. The first time I call to report this horrible issue I'm told to basically get lost. This is exactly what happened. There's no exaggeration, and I am not going to sugar coat it.

[WilliamY]

WHAT IS GOING ON? Just finished one call, then 'Can't connect to login server' occurs again. Its been on and off numerous times again today. Reboot ATA, it connected again. after making some calls, hang up, then 'Can't connect to login server' occurs, then reboot, then...

EDIT1: now can't even connect to login server after rebooting..
EDIT2: it connected again after a while.

Something definitely went worng at FPL servers.

[FONGO_mike]

Just to address a concern that came up earlier in the thread - we're hoping to have a few more staff actively joining us all in the forums over the next week or so to help us keep on top of all the threads with the growing size of our forum community. Right now Mike is actually our only customer service guy here - I work in a different part of the company and merely donate some spare time (usually before my day gets started) to help on as many posts as I can. I never ignore any posts, but sometimes I simply can't get to them all at once alongside my regular day-to-day work. Never hesitate to PM me if there's something you want my immediate attention on.

Just to add to what FONGO_steve said, although we will be getting more staff on the forums to help, this is not an "official" medium of support. We come on the the forums as often as we can, but this is in addition to the standard work we do on a daily basis. We can not always respond to every posting, but we do answer as many as time permits. If you look back to some of our posts, you will also note a lot of them are outside of standard work hours (when we are at home and have some time we can chip in off the clock)

we do indeed plan on bringing a few mor staff memebers to help out as we are still growing by leaps and bounds. (Just an idea, Dell voice is already over 100k users) We can always be reached via PM (guaranteed we will see them)

A friendly reminder, in the event of service outage, it is always best to try and contact a customer representative by phone for fastest form of help possible. Keep in mind, please, that our agents work very hard but do not officialy support third party hardware. they are however, always keen to do everything in their power to help to the outmost of their ability's

[slvrsi]

started to go down for me today at 5 for no reason? Unable to register... has anyone else seen this? Thanks...

[hanke]

No registration currently with server. Service appears to be down as of 1755 hrs. EDST.

UPDATE - Seems to be operational as of 1805hrs. Calls working now.

[WilliamY]

As of 5:36pm, Can't connect to login server, its been on and off numerous time since 5:00pm, now its completely off.

[tbrummell]

Yeah, down since 5:30pm according to my server. Guess that fix mentioned above didn't work, eh?

[tbrummell]

Test calls go to vmail at least, that's something!

[TheHardy]

Well I'm certainly glad to see I am not the only one getting horrible service. I just joined at the wrong time. I was hesitant to joining and when I did it was on trial before I bought into the services and paid close to $100 in total including taxes for the FREE service. Since then, I can no longer call Waverley, NS so my parents are now a toll call. Yet Waverley is part of the Halifax/Dartmouth free calling area. I'm with Videotron who have utterly excellent Internet service. I have the 30 Mbps flavor and never had Videotron go down on me once in 11 years. In any case, maybe they did something today because I'm not seeing as many UNREACHABLE messages.

I did join CallCentric today and have not had a single UNREACHABLE from them since 7 am this morning. I'll be trying them for a while to see how well they behave. I don't mind spending money for a service that works and who I can call for support. I cannot get support from FPL, was unable to get dialtone or incoming calls most of the time over the past month, and this all started happening after paying to switch my line over. I was not forced. I did it with the trust that I'd have some service as boasted. However that hasn't been happening. So I'm off testing another company.

Unless they straighten this up, I don't know who would use Fibernetics for their business or residential service. Others may not share my opinion but I don't have money to throw out the window and that is exactly what seemed to happen. It's also not clear that joining them means you won't get tech support unless you buy their ATA. I don't recall reading that anywhere before buying the config file. The first time I call to report this horrible issue I'm told to basically get lost. This is exactly what happened. There's no exaggeration, and I am not going to sugar coat it.

DKS: I can understand where you are coming from, and I think you got a raw deal out of it. I do. It is unfortunate that Fongo has had the problems it has, as it was a decent enough service at a decent price before (for the config/ATA). The Waverley issue has been talked about, and there has been no real clarification other than they adjusted their calling area -- I share your frustration at the Fongo-calling area not matching up with the traditional wireline calling area (LCA) ... I have made many many posts on this, and still cannot get my head around it, to be honest. To me there is no rhyme or reason why if they offer calls into the main ratecentre (Halifax in this case) that they cannot include all of the traditional LCA .. however, this argument has been all but lost so far. Maybe more staff and at least one person coming here out of the Rates & Routing group can clear this up!

The poor customer service ... ongoing complaint. Support is "inconsistent" at best. Some people (mainly the ones that do not post much) get decent or good customer service; only the ones that don't seem to take the time to post. So it skews opinion a bit, and that is just the way it is. So long as Fongo can take the negative feedback and learn and grow from it, it is not futile -- I know that does not make your situation any better, and for that I am truely sorry. If there was something that I could do as a fellow user, I would try to do it ...

Non-support of non-Fongo-ATA's ... I agree that they should clarify this a bit more; most of the reps will be able to help you SOMEWHAT with the issues, and us fellow forum members can help a whole lot more too, as most have played with oddballs and config issues and such (not me personally, as I am not using an ATA). Even though this is an UNOFFICIAL support forum, most of the suggestions here go over and above what Customer Support can offer as we have a lot of real world users here that have been through the time and pain of it all.

Sorry to see you go, but I completely understand why and all ... I hope that your new provider is able to live up to your expectations and provide you with trouble-free service!

[dks]

I cannot have a non-working phone service. For a solid month it's been bouncing up and down every 5 minutes and this goes on 24/7. During my test phase I had zero issues, and I monitored the logs daily.

As far as support goes, the issues are obviously not with my Asterisk server. I've even hooked up an ATA temporarily and it was the same thing. As of today, I've got 3 VoIP connections with 3 different companies. The only one behaving like a teeter-totter is FPL. The customer service person I spoke to was as enthusiastic as a snail. The minute he took my name and address he looked to see if I purchased an ATA from FPL and then immediately said, "You have no support with us because you did not purchase one of our ATAs". Regardless of the issue being FPL servers or infrastructure issues - the fact that I didn't buy an ATA disqualifies me from any customer service, according to this clerk. The tone in his voice was very unprofessional. His attitude was, "Suck it up princess". By the time I got off the phone my head was pounding and I was very frustrated. After all, I've been very patient over the past 5 weeks of having intermittent phone service. That was my one and only experience with FPL Support. Needless to say I was not left with a good impression.

How does this sound...I'll give you free phone service if you first give me $50 plus tax for a config file and if you want to keep your number just give me another $25 plus tax. Once I get your money, I'll remove your most called number from the free list, and I'll ensure your line only works 50% of the day. Are you ready to hand over your money?

[FONGO_mike]

The customer service person I spoke to was as enthusiastic as a snail. The minute he took my name and address he looked to see if I purchased an ATA from FPL and then immediately said, "You have no support with us because you did not purchase one of our ATAs". Regardless of the issue being FPL servers or infrastructure issues - the fact that I didn't buy an ATA disqualifies me from any customer service, according to this clerk. The tone in his voice was very unprofessional. His attitude was, "Suck it up princess". By the time I got off the phone my head was pounding and I was very frustrated.

dks, can oyu give the number you called from, the date and time (if possible) we would like to look into this. (please send it to me via PM)

[TheHardy]

DKS -- as per what Mike said, even if you are leaving Fongo/FPL, if you had really crappy service and got bad CS information, it _IS_ good for them to track that down (ie your calls in) and see who the rep was so that they can undertake any remedial training or see what they can do better on their end ... I know the motivation to "give a crap" at this point may be low, but at least you may help out the rest of us to avoid future hassles! Or you may wish to keep a free account/non-paid-config for doing PC calls at some point too ...

[tbrummell]

And when the WAF goes down, so does the service provider.

Well, the WaF took a hit last night. She missed an important call from her mother. We got the voicemail emailed to us, but the call didn't actually hit my Asterisk server. Strike 1.

[dks]

I have sent Mike a PM with all of the details of the call including exact date and time.

[TheHardy]

I have sent Mike a PM with all of the details of the call including exact date and time.

DKS: thanks for taking the time and effort to do so! As a fellow user, I appreciate that you did take the time so that hopefully they CAN fix/upgrade their customer support!