Superhub : superhub2 - did customer service rip me off?

[General Maximus]

talk about being cheap. Given all the problems they have had you would have thought they would be glad to get rid of them and swap them out for shub2s

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Paddy63

We have to swap like for like and all Shub1s are refurbs.

That makes the call centres and forum support self-sustaining.

[General Maximus]

true. I am absolutely fascinated to know at what level that decision was made and I would love to see the empirical data used to make the decision. What is the cost of running call centres, sending techs out and paying for the refurb vs saving all the money just mentioned plus negative PR. Given the constant willy waving on tv adverts about wireless routers and unbeatable wireless performance, especially when shub1 is famous for the complete opposite, you would have thought VM would want to take every opportunity to put customers on shub2 to keep everyone happy.

If anything (and if I was a top VM bod) I would say "25% of all calls are due to know shub1 faults. If I get rid of shub1 and replace it with shub2 I can reduce load on call centre, get rid of 20% of staff, still leave myself with an extra 5% and save £Xmillion a year".

It baffles me it does, or as Leonard would say "I am befuddled".

[Sephiroth]

Spot on, mon General. Although they do the maths by deducting the number of Forum complaints from the total customer population (silent majority) and deuce that the SH1 is a wonderful device.

[SimonB79]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Spot on, mon General. Although they do the maths by deducting the number of Forum complaints from the total customer population (silent majority) and deuce that the SH1 is a wonderful device.

The tech guy swapped my SH1 for another afew weeks ago when my internet conked out ... He said because I use it in modemmode and have a good Linksys router I didn't need a sh2 lol

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by SimonB79

The tech guy swapped my SH1 for another afew weeks ago when my internet conked out ... He said because I use it in modemmode and have a good Linksys router I didn't need a sh2 lol

Actually, not an unreasonable call by the tech. I should have mentioned that in modem mode, the SH1 does the job you'd need.

[Kushan]

I think a lot of you vastly overestimate the number of people who genuinely complain about the SH1. It's a terrible device, but the sad truth is that the vast majority of people just don't realise how terrible it is. For a lot of people, they only had a modem before so getting a free upgrade to wireless is a bonus and if it's a bit flaky, well that's just wireless.

I know quite a few people, even some people who should know better, that have a SH1 and are happy with it.

This is why it's still in use, it doesn't actually generate that many support issues, relatively speaking. The vast majority of support calls are usually a genuine fault in the area or user error.

Even when some people do have issues, a lot of them cannot be bothered to push it enough to get it changed. That takes more effort than just dealing with it and that's another thing Virgin takes full advantage of.

Personally, I think it's a side-effect of most ISPs having terrible customer support. Virgin these days are one of the better ones, but TalkTalk and BT are bloody awful. As they're the biggest, quite a lot of people are "used" to it.

[Sephiroth]

Well said, Kush.

[mmm]

Originally Posted by Martin Dee 11

Its just letting you know that its established the Time Of Day.

Yes, but why CRITICAL, the only use will be for log messages - which get the month wrong, and probably time in UTC not BST. Maybe TOD becomes critical because of previous failure?

Network Log
First Time	Last Time	Priority	Error Number	Description
 10/04/2015 07:05:24 	 10/04/2015 07:05:24 	 Critical (3) 	 2436694080 	 TOD resynchronisation failure 
 10/04/2015 07:05:24 	 10/04/2015 07:05:24 	 Critical (3) 	 2436694077 	 TOD server unavailable 
 27/04/2015 17:59:26 	 27/04/2015 17:59:26 	 Error (4) 	 68000403 	 ToD request sent - No Response received;
 27/04/2015 17:59:29 	 27/04/2015 17:59:29 	 Critical (3) 	 2436694078 	 TOD established

[arcimedes]

I can think of one reason. If you don't know the time how will you know if DNS entries are valid and you need to do a new query.

[qasdfdsaq]

The Superhub does not store DNS entries.

[Kushan]

Having the correct time is exceptionally important when it comes to computers. DNS is just one thing that requires the correct time, security (SSL and such) will rely on the correct time, DHCP will rely on the correct time (to a degree), there's quite a lot of things that can break and fall over if the time isn't set correctly. Results vary depending on how far "out" your time is as well.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Having the correct time is exceptionally important when it comes to computers. DNS is just one thing that requires the correct time, security (SSL and such) will rely on the correct time, DHCP will rely on the correct time (to a degree), there's quite a lot of things that can break and fall over if the time isn't set correctly. Results vary depending on how far "out" your time is as well.

While that is all true, none of it applies to the Superhub. Furthermore, the Superhub does not function as a time server for any other devices on your network.

Interestingly enough the Superhub 1 (not sure about the 2) uses a real-time operating system. Precision RTC timekeeping is an inherent feature of the device itself, making external time even more irrelevant.

Many consumer routers don't have any externally referenced clock at all.

[Kushan]

Are you sure about that? I thought ToD was required for correct negotiation of the DOCSIS config?

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I thought ToD was required for correct negotiation of the DOCSIS config?

It may be, I don't know.

But it's not required for DNS, DHCP or SSL (or rather the Superhub doesn't do SSL).