Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem - Page 6

Web-Junkie · 06-09-2004, 20:52

In situations like this I cheer myself up by reading a Letter of Complaint someone posted in the Newsgroups:

Quote:

Letter of Complaint
Dear Cretins:
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm monitoring.

During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative and seek to rectify these difficulties -- or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website. HOW? I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes -- an activity at which you are no doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools -- such as drill-bit, and his cerebrum.

Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over four weeks my modem arrived, six weeks after I had requested it -- and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35% -- the hours between about 6 pm and midnight, Monday through Friday, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection.

I have made nine calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals who are, it seems, also highly skilled b0ll0ck jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answering machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman. And several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care. It's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music.
Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought British Telecom was sh-it; that they had attained the holy pi-ss-pot of god-awful customer relations; and that no one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else, is there?

How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bast-ards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order. BT -- wan-kers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.

Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief and will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit -- they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day. May it be the last in your miserable short lives,you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twits.

Although funny, it's sadly near to the truth I suspect!

Note to the mods:
Sorry for altering a few words to get around the profanity filter, but it doesn't look or come across as well with a load of ***** all over it!!

I can hear the mods now: "Banned for a week young man"

Web-Junkie · 09-09-2004, 13:34

Whoo! I rang NTL today to try to find out what the hell they are doing about this upload problem, after being passed around I managed to get through to fellow named 'Alan' at the local faults office.

As a result of 'Mick' the engineer who visited me last week and told me NTL have a network problem, 'Alan' informed me that 'Mick' has since been gathering information about the fault and has passed it onto his manager to look at. At this point the don't know what the problem is but affects 'a few thousand' people he said.

So there is definitely a problem but it won't be fixed overnight! Was given the 0800 052 2000 number to call so I could find out the current status of the problem. So I'll be ringing that number every week to see what's going on.

Nothing more to do now but grin and bear it!

Ashover · 12-09-2004, 23:44

Tomorrow I will be calling NTL to have an engineer to attend and I'll ask The Rifle to do the same. The more people creating a fuss and dragging engineers out, the better chance of getting NTL to do something about it.

It's now 3 weeks since TS promised to ring me back and I'm sure that they will and didn't just promise that to get rid of me.

Neil · 13-09-2004, 09:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Web-Junkie

In situations like this I cheer myself up by reading a Letter of Complaint someone posted in the Newsgroups:

Although funny, it's sadly near to the truth I suspect!

Note to the mods:
Sorry for altering a few words to get around the profanity filter, but it doesn't look or come across as well with a load of ***** all over it!!

I can hear the mods now: "Banned for a week young man"

LOL @ WJ-It was actually me that first posted that letter way back when on NTHW.com.

Ah-the memories! I believe that the letter was later modified & sent to Sky/BT etc etc!

Ok-back on topic.

Web-Junkie · 13-09-2004, 14:29

@Neil: Thanks for giving me a bally good laugh then. I love humour like that

Did you post the one about 'If NTL ran a pub' by any chance?

@Ashover: Yep, definitely report the problem as it may make them more aware of it, but it 'appears' they are aware of it and may not need to send an engineer, unless they haven't twigged people in the same area are reporting the same fault yet and go through the whole 'we'll ring you back' scenario

DeadKenny · 13-09-2004, 14:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Web-Junkie

Yep, definitely report the problem as it may make them more aware of it

That's what I thought, but just trying to get in contact with them is near impossible.

If they do realise there's a wider problem, shouldn't it be listed on the Service Status Page?

I've given up anyway. I said last time when I had all these hassles that if it happens again I'll be off to BT, and so it seems my life with NTL is going to come to an end this time. The application has gone in for a BT line. Oh well (still, don't count your chickens yet, chances are my line will fail ADSL tests and I'll be back

)

slider · 14-09-2004, 00:59

Hiya all ntl users im new in this forum, rencetly ive been having problems with my broadband 1.5 meg upload speed since the 1st august 2004 its always seems to bounce up and down all the time i present a show on a radio station so thats why i need my upload stream to be running at a steady stream but its not even now 13 sept 2004 still having the same problems with my upload stream ive ran a few test's and it shows my kpbs is one minute at 228kbps then it drops to 4kbps and so on but its not just now and again its all the time and ive rang tech support over and over again and nothing seem to be getting done can any one help as i can't broadcast my radio show with my upload stream being like this.

slider.

Ashover · 19-09-2004, 15:38

The NTL engineer is coming out to me on Thursday and he will tell me what I already know - there's a network fault somewhere!

At least it will be an acknowledgement that there is a problem, something that nobody seems willing to officially admit to us.

Web-Junkie · 19-09-2004, 22:21

Ashover, don't forget to take his name and TEC number so you can quote them when chasing NTL for a progress report.

I'm going to call them Monday for a progress report as it's been over a week since they confirmed to me there was a fault, let's see if they have an ETA on a fix.

steve_smith · 20-09-2004, 16:24

These upload problems seem to be going on and on, and affecting a lot of people in a lot of different areas.

It would be interesting at some point if we could help NTL establish if this is a network wide problem, or restricted to certain areas of the country.

A lot of people at NTL have looked in to my upload problem, and no-one seems to know why it's occuring. They also seem to be a bit puzzled as to why I see it as a problem when download is working fine. Had people out to check the quality of the cable connection, and everytime it all checks out fine. Also had my cable modem swapped out.

This to me is the bigger issue. Those of us who use upload a lot are affected by this problem, but a regular user is not even going to notice it (how many people actually regularly send big emails or maintain websites?). So if you are the only one in your area complaining about the problem, they are going to think it's your connection, rather than looking for an area fault.

I am currently compiling an Excel spreadsheet of ping tests at different times of the day to various sites. The figures are pretty consistent: the more bytes I send out, the more chance there is that they won't reach their destination. Approximately 20% packet loss when sending 1000 bytes, and approximately 35% packet loss when sending 2000 bytes. Hopefully this will be useful to someone at NTL when they next call me back about my ticket.

Steve.

Web-Junkie · 21-09-2004, 01:28

Without an Upstream you wouldn't have a Downstream as the requests you send UPSTREAM via your Web Broser, FTP program, Newsreader, e-mail program etc, are acknowledged and sent back DOWNSTREAM to you and so on until you receive the data you requested.

So when a packet of data goes AWOL during the UPSTREAM transmission phase, you sit like a lemon waiting for your web page or whatever to receive the acknowledgement back to your request, but it never receives it because NTL have lost the packet of data, so you have to resend the request. This is what's happening because of the UPSTREAM problem, and NTL don't see that as a problem???

I gave up phoning them today, tried a couple of times 20+ minutes and then had to go out. Can't say I want to keep racking up a lousy phonebill from the same company that's screwed my connection for nearly 2 months now!!

steve_smith · 21-09-2004, 07:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Web-Junkie

Without an Upstream you wouldn't have a Downstream as the requests you send UPSTREAM via your Web Broser, FTP program, Newsreader, e-mail program etc, are acknowledged and sent back DOWNSTREAM to you and so on until you receive the data you requested.

Yes, but in my case, small packets of data like this seem to make their way through with little or no problem. It's only sending larger amounts of data that cause a problem.

My ping tests kind of prove this. Pinging with 50 bytes results in little or no packet loss. But take that up to 2000 bytes and you're looking at 35% packet loss.

I know that larger amounts of data are actually sent as a series of smaller packets. So it's almost like some machine somewhere is misbehaving and not being able to keep track of whos sending what.

Very strange, and no-one at NTL seems to have any idea what is happening.

Steve.

Web-Junkie · 21-09-2004, 11:37

I know you understand all that network stuff, it was for the benefit of others (Hint, NTL) who may read this thread

steve_smith · 21-09-2004, 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Web-Junkie

I know you understand all that network stuff, it was for the benefit of others (Hint, NTL) who may read this thread

I wouldn't claim to be an expert

I made the point to NTL that since small packets get through OK most of the time, the average user wouldn't notice the problem. If they get a "page could not be found" error every now and again, they'd most likely just hit refresh and not even think about the cause.

This nightmare for me could nearly be over. I read that BT have just launched this long reach ADSL thing. Typed my phone number in to the ADSL checker, and I can now get 1Mbit ADSL

Previously they couldn't even guarantee 512k would work, so that's quite a big change.

I don't want to change from NTL. For one thing, it's going to cost me a lot of money. I'll have to pay an activation fee, and also replace my wireless router for one which supports ADSL. However, this "don't know whats wrong" attitude has been going on for nearly 5 months now, and I'm getting fed up with it. At the first engineer visit, they said if it didn't improve, they would replace the cable out to the street cabinet to see if that helps. 5 months later, that hasn't even happened.

However, since I can download at the full speed of the modem, I would guess the cable isn't at fault. Not being an expert, my guess is that some piece of kit somewhere back down the line is either faulty or overloaded and is dropping packets. Its all the more frustrating because I only live a couple of miles away from NTL's local office (where I believe the local network terminates). Can't imagine there is that much kit between there and here. If I lived dozens of miles away, I could understand it...

The local network manager from NTL who promised he would call me Monday to find out whether things have improved has not called back, so now I have to play this waiting game again.

If any NTL techies out that could help me out, before I get completely fed up and decide to cancel my account, then it would be very much appreciated.

Steve.

steve_smith · 21-09-2004, 14:27

Now my connection is completely shafted again, just like it was all day on Saturday...