Clara.net - Where's the hell site?

[MovedGoalPosts]

Clara.net are supposedly one of the better ISPs and claim to have won Business ISP of the Year type awards. Me thinks they are resting on their past achievements.

Our office uses clara.net for the 2meg broadband, web hosting, email via a SMTP feed to our exchange server, basically anything net they get it. IT's got to be worth over a grand to them.

Yesterday morning our broadband died. It's been tempermental for a few weeks, but I'd put that down to me having a server setting wrong.

By lunchtime Monday, I knew for certain that our modem / router thingy wouldn't connect - no lights lit, stuck on a "idle" status. The phone "do it yourself fix" aka support wanted me to rule out the modem being faulty. Hangon, we pay for an engineer install service, so if the modem has died clara.net should be replacing it? Out I went to buy another, which as we use fixed IP addresses ruled out the el cheapo things. £60.00 lighter I have a nice Netgear thing that won't work either and that I don't really need, but can't take back since it's been opened and used

I'm on the phone again. No mention that they will pay for the modem thingy. Eventually they agree to contact BT for diagnosis.

Meanwhile everyone is screaming because there is no email, and clients are getting upset. We can't revert to dial up because SMTP feeds for email aren't set up that way, they just throw everything at you for your own server to sort out.

I'm phoning hourly. Will anyone stop reading a script from a screen Will anyone tell me what's happening. The boss is climbing all over me, and can't beleive I don't have any answers.

Eventually, lunchtime, when we phone again, we are finally told BT have said there diagnostics show there is "synchronisation" so there isn't a problem? How come we can't connect then? What are Clara going to do now? We seem to have to make all the running.

We aren't allowed to speak to BT themselves to find out what is happening, we have to go through Clara, but they are pants.

Try to get hold of my account manager - oh he left a few months ago - that'll explain why a website hosting wasn's setup properly then Would have been nice to be told of the new chap's name

Eventually this afternoon, I get a call from some bod in BT. They'll send an engineer Thursday afternoon That might not be Clara's fault, that BT don't have enough staff, but it's taken a day just to get to his point. Who knows if the engineer visit will find the fault?

I've been promised by someone that they will look into converting our SMTP feed to a pop account so we can at least get something, if they also sort out a dial up account for us. I'm not holding my breath.

That's enough for now

Clara at present it's nil points. Anyone know a proactive business ISP?

[Chris W]

what is the SLA that you have with clara.net ?

v poor service though

[MovedGoalPosts]

We are told there is no SLA with ADSL.

[Matthew]

I suggest you change your ISP is they cannot help you quicker than that.

[MovedGoalPosts]

This goes from bad to worse. Mid afternoon, and no sign of an engineer.

Start the round of phone calling:
Accounts manager "no idea what's happening, will makes some calls and get back to you" hour and a half later nada.

Now I call the tech support bods. "your accounts manager was going to call you, BT will be coming on Monday"

Not surprisingly I literally hit the roof. Our business is going down the pan. I'm literally having to massage the server as it just can't handle the volume of email via dial up, meanwhile the only analogue phone line (everything else is ISDN into a PABX so there is no way of conecting an ISDN modem) is effectively permanently engaged by the server so nobody can send or receive faxes. Some software we use to update website listings of available property, receive and submit electronic reports just won't work on dial up, and in any case 15 users into 1 dial up modem just won't go so anything internet is impossible.

After putting a rocket up the tech guys line manager's backside I do get called back. "It's a BT Wholesale problem. We're raising it with their engineering management. They seem to have a problem that their database shows an engineer booked for Saturday or Monday (two conflicting records so who knows if any are correct).

Effectively Clara are just giving us the brush off and blaming everyone else. It may not be there direct fault but they fail to grasp the fact that our contract is with Clara, not BT wholesale.

I keep getting told by Clara that there is no SLA because it's ADSL. In reality it's just that Clara haven't kept up to date with their products. A quick look at the BT Business Broadband site shows that for a similar monthy fee I would have a guaranteed repair in 24 hours. At this rate with Clara it's going to be at least a week!

Simple fact. Clara.net you are an absolute shambles.

Well www.claranethell.co.uk is still up for grabs if you want to start a site.

[Stuart]

Or even http://www.clarahell.co.uk

[James Henry]

Sucky service, sounds like you were blagged and passed from pillar to post.

The timescale for the BT engineer is fairly normal, ADSL faults are considered a low priority.

Some ISPs offer Total Care along with their business DSL products, which gives you a 24 hour SLA with BT once a fault is reported to them.

Hope you can get some more redundancy in place though so that if it fails again you won't be having such extreme problems. With 15 users and obviously connectivity being vital a single analogue line running DSL is placing a bit too much in one basket.

Perhaps see if the exchange is unbundled and see if you can get a combo DSL / ISDN backup deal going.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Rob C

<Snip>

Rob, I believe that Clara's MD is Steve Rawlinson so it may be worth a mail to steve.rawlinson@clara.net ?

HTH.

If you have any influence at all over the selection of your service provider, I would start pushing for Clara to be ditched as soon as possible. This is absolutely ridiculous.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Interesting, I seem to be getting badly chastised on other forums for having selected ADSL.

The argument, which was hinted at above seems to be that I am too reliant on ADSL, and am using it beyond it's intentions. People are indicating I should be on a leased line or something.

Sorry but the clara.net website uses words like "permanent" to describe it's ADSL service. It also describes the Engineer 2000 business service as for 10-15 PCs (I'm just starting to push that limit, but it is very rare that everybody is in the office). Nowehere on the Clara website, even in the small print do I find mention that they can't control how long it would take to do a repair. Nowhere do I find mention that they don't guarantee the service. In fact the only mention of repair is a wishy washy statement in the terms and conditions

Originally Posted by clara.net

7.1 Should You encounter a fault with the Service You must report this to Claranet and not to the Carrier at telephone number 0845 355 2020. Claranet shall investigate the fault and if necessary notify the Carrier

The whole website is misselling the service and misleading the customer.

It's quite simple. I'm not allowed to speak to the carrier, so I can only complain to my ISP, who as far as I can see have no ability to provide the service they have contracted with me to do.

[AdamD]

That's really, really poor service.
I hope you get it sorted soon

[MovedGoalPosts]

So today a BT engineer finally arrived. Took a quick look and dissapeared. Half hour later I get a phone call from him. "I'm at the exchange, I've run some tests and spoken to a helpdesk. The port on the exchange is down. They'll probably have to fit a new card. That's somebody elses job, I suggest you contact your ISP for an update.
By the way, I can see from the logs your had this problem since Monday. It's shocking it's taken this long to get it fixed."

So I still don't have a working connection

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Rob C

The argument, which was hinted at above seems to be that I am too reliant on ADSL, and am using it beyond it's intentions. People are indicating I should be on a leased line or something.

Sorry but the clara.net website uses words like "permanent" to describe it's ADSL service.

If they don't offer any guarantee of performance in the form of an SLA usually best to assume the worst. You did put all the eggs in one basket and give the benefit of the doubt, it happens.

If you can get a second analogue line and DSL link to backup the primary DSL link then do, it should go to a different card and probably a different DSLAM on the exchange and will offer a degree of resiliency.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Yep I'm certainly looking into that, although it's difficult to do much research without a viable internet connection.

There are issues and complications as to whether the backup connection could work for all my needs, especially email.