Teleconnect - problems galore

[Quillan]

You could try contacting a guy called jcaballero who works for marketing at Budget Telecom, if memory serves I think he is one of the big chiefs there. He posted twice on this forum giving tips and information on what was happening re the upgrades etc. If you click HERE it will take you to the thread then look for his post on the 29/04/2009 @ 17:15 hours. You can then use his email from within the forum to contact him.

Alternativly you might want to email [email protected] and mention his name Mr Caballero. You may also want to bring his attention to this thread as he is a member of the forum. Sorry its the best I can do and good luck.

[powerdesal]

[quote user="Quillan"][quote user="Cathy"]

[quote user="Quillan"]Eight months now in to my Orange service [/quote]

If you have a problem with the Orange service, how do you get it sorted?  Do they have an English speaking service? 

I can speak French but sometimes technical language alludes me and so I had been attracted to Teleconnect because of their English language service.

[/quote]

I am sure I had an email from them saying they had an English language hotline and I did use the one for French Telecom as they are basically the same company to find out why my box was late being delivered. The honest answer is that as its never gone wrong I have not had to bother.

[/quote]

During my recent leave I had cause to contact FT/Orange ref poor performance of the live box (drop outs, loss of service, days without broadband etc etc). I discovered they have an English speaking technical helpline, apparently it has only been in service a couple of months. They were brilliant. A long call resulted in an exchange number for changing the (faulty) livebox and a subsequent call back from them after a few days to check that we were happy and the problems were solved. Extremely good customer service.

[Quillan]

PD, I can't find it anywhere, I am sure it was either in an email or on the website but I did a quick search yesterday and could not find it. If you still have the number would you be kind enough to share it with us?

[powerdesal]

[quote user="Quillan"]PD, I can't find it anywhere, I am sure it was either in an email or on the website but I did a quick search yesterday and could not find it. If you still have the number would you be kind enough to share it with us?[/quote]

I will get back to you all with the number, its in the address book in France, I am in UAE. I will get it later today - Ins'Allah

[AnOther]

It is worth noting that in another forum and in response to my criticism of his excuses Mr Caballro wrote:

"To all suffering customers: please feel free to go and find another ISP. Obviously they will be far better than us."

I note that the actual post appears to have been edited or deleted but the remark was quoted in subsequent posts so still exists. He did later apologise for it but the fact that it was made at all, and by such a senior person, perhaps gives an insight into the whole organisation.

Thankfully some took his advice and others should follow it also.

 

[powerdesal]

[quote user="powerdesal"][quote user="Quillan"]PD, I can't find it anywhere, I am sure it was either in an email or on the website but I did a quick search yesterday and could not find it. If you still have the number would you be kind enough to share it with us?[/quote]

I will get back to you all with the number, its in the address book in France, I am in UAE. I will get it later today - Ins'Allah

[/quote]

English tech line 0800 364775

[Jay]

It seems to me it is the same few people who are suffering problems with Teleconnect time after time. Speaking personally I have had very few problems. My connection did drop out a couple of times when they did the server change and I had to reset the modem but after that it has been fine. I also have two friends in different areas that also have had no problems with Teleconnect. We use the VoiP service to call the UK often – again no problem. We are in a very rural area 3Km from the exchange.

It makes me wonder if there may be some other contributing factor for those of you that continue to have problems, such as a faulty line.

I had terrible problems with Alice but as soon as I dumped them and had my FT line reinstated the problems magically went away. You don’t have to look far on this forum to find people having major problems with Orange. It seems to me taking out a 12 month contract with another ISP is a risky business and if you decide to dump Teleconnect I wonder if your problems will go away.

[Bluebell]

Yes but it's so frustrating when you want to get on the internet or send an email and you can't. You get so fed up that it's worth trying anything. Here it's like not going out in the rushhour. Quite often we can't get a connection at breakfast time and teatime.

[Jay]

I know how you feel as I had months of problems with Alice and that was after I had been with them for several years. It is so annoying and frustrating. The thing is if you change ISP's and continue to have problems you will be no better off. In fact it could be worse as you don't have a contractual period at the moment. Would it not be better to badger Teleconnect until you find some kind of solution?

[AnOther]

[quote user="Jay"]Would it not be better to badger Teleconnect until you find some kind of solution?[/quote]Ha !

What do you think those afflicted have been trying to do for months [:-))]

My line has been checked twice by FT, a genuine fault from before the troubles and once again since, and it is 100%. I don't know what the problem is but in my own case I think I can categorically state that it is not my line and most who are now having trouble did not experience it before the so called 'upgrade'.

[Jay]

Why not change your ISP if you are so upset with Teleconnect - you have every reason to.

[AnOther]

Many have and I would too if it were not for circumstances outwith my control.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1730318/ShowPost.aspx

For the time being then, given the choice of TC @ 2mb +problems -v- another ISP @ 512k, I'll have to stick it out with TC, at least until I can get my stats corrected, but I rate my chances of that to be near zero [:(]

[Kitty]

[quote user="Bluebell"]Yes but it's so frustrating when you want to get on the internet or send an email and you can't. You get so fed up that it's worth trying anything. Here it's like not going out in the rushhour. Quite often we can't get a connection at breakfast time and teatime.[/quote]

Early morning and late afternoon/early evening are when I cant get connections (aswell as, sometimes, whole days).  Are Teleconnect periodically shutting down to mend the problem?

[AnOther]

[quote user="Cathy"]Early morning and late afternoon/early evening are when I cant get connections (aswell as, sometimes, whole days).  Are Teleconnect periodically shutting down to mend the problem?[/quote]

I can't say whole days Cathy, I definitely wouldn't put up with that, but 'er indoors is experiencing the same and has taken to doing a hard reset every morning and sometimes

again later in the day if it decides to stop working again. Everything

works then whilst she's on the computer but sometimes when she comes back later it's stopped.

The strange thing is that even when she can't get online I can

still see my router from here offshore so it is connected and working

but she can't actually do anything which points to some network problems

downstream from Teleconnect but I'm sure they are not shutting down as you suggest.

To do a hard reset poke a paperclip in the little hole beside the power plug for about 10 seconds. The router will click and reboot itself a couple of times. You will lose any customisations but you can make a backup first by going into the router then Management - Settings and saving the file which will be called backupsettings.conf. If you need to restore it then go to Update Software and browse for the file then Update which will put it back to before the reset.

Do you have a reason not to ditch them Cathy ?

I've already said that I would love to but for the problem of FT having my line stats wrong.

[Jay]

[quote user="Cathy"]

[quote user="Bluebell"]Yes but it's so frustrating when you want to get on the internet or send an email and you can't. You get so fed up that it's worth trying anything. Here it's like not going out in the rushhour. Quite often we can't get a connection at breakfast time and teatime.[/quote]

Early morning and late afternoon/early evening are when I cant get connections (aswell as, sometimes, whole days).  Are Teleconnect periodically shutting down to mend the problem?

[/quote]

They are certainly not shutting down, My connection is on all the time without problems. If they were shutting down everyone would be complaining. I still say you must have a problem with your line or modem/router.

[Bluebell]

We definitely don't have problems with the line as we had the entire house rewired, including telephone connections, when we moved  here in May. And as the roofers had cut the line from the telegraph pole we had that replaced by France Telecom.

[AnOther]

Same here Jay. My line is OK and has been checked by FT twice, once when I did have a genuine fault then again just to confirm it was not the reason for the current problems. A line or modem fault would not explain why, when it is impossible to access any Internet sites, I can still see my own router remotely.

You also ignore one of the most frustrating and aspects though which is that until the upgrade most of the people now afflicted had no problems whatsoever.

I am convinced that the problem is something to do with how TC interact with their backbone supplier which is why it is such a sporadic and seemingly random issue, somewhere something is not talking to something else properly and as it will almost certainly be downstream of TC themselves it may not be within their power to fix it or even diagnose where the problem is. One thing they have done on my router is hard code the DNS IP addresses which to me says that there is a problem with a DNS server somewhere. I hasn't made any real difference though and the hard reset puts it back to automatic.

One thing I plan to do when I get home is try operating through something like OpenDNS to see if that helps at all.

[tuppence]

As another disgruntled TC user, my main problem is that I can here the modem click off (i.e. the VOIP line light goes out) I can then count to ten and it comes back on again. When using the phone I wait to see if their dialling tone is heard before I dial a number. If that doesn't happen I wait a few minutes before I try again. I, like may others, was going to change to Orange, but having one or two friends who have had mega problems with livebox, I think I will stick it out a while longer with TC and hope [8-)] that they will eventually return to their pre-March 2009 service which I as A.N Other agree was very good. As a non techie I can't understand all these terms that you guys use so I'll carry on regardless[:)].

tuppence 

[AnOther]

Tuppence if that is all that is stopping you from jumping ship then my advice would be to get on the phone today, if it works [blink]

Although I personally hate the Livebox, millions use them on a daily basis without difficulty and in any case not all ISP's use them, in fact I'm not sure that anyone but Orange do, so you could easily go with one which doesn't.

[tuppence]

Sadly AN Other, according to degrouptest I have only 2 choices, Orange or TC, where I live. So for now at least I am staying put. My friend has been waiting for his ADSL line from Orange to be sorted now for 4 weeks and is still waiting. 1st it was the end of July now it is the end of August. The service has been very poor, so much so that they are thinking of moving ISP's.

tuppence

[AnOther]

My sympathies then [:(]

Maybe one day they'll get it together again.

[Kitty]

Once more I couldn't get online or phone the UK last night.  Most Sunday evenings seem to be like this.  My biggest problem is trying to get hold of someone at Teleconnect to sort this out.  Another morning ahead of trying to telephone them...

[AnOther]

Cathy, you should always be able to use the phone even though you might have to plug it into the wall directly but even so your calls will still go via TC and will be charged the same as if they were via VoIP.

I have found that calling after 2pm as their recorded message says is usually more fruitful.

Bonne chance.

[Bluebell]

Can you always do that, ie use the FT line for calls to the UK even when TC seems to be working? I always find the telephone plugged straight into the FT connection is much clearer. When receiving calls too. If the phone rings in my office (TC) I dash out and answer it in the living room where it's just FT.

[AnOther]

Yes you can. Even if you are full degroupee your line will always be connected to FT and you should be able to make and receive calls over it. I don't know precisely how TC are set up but in general the side which interfaces with FT for phone calls would be separate from the internet so should work regardless of that. Whether or how calls are charged will depend on your particular ISP's package. In TC's case all calls are on what's called preselect which means that they are automatically routed to TC in the first instance then passed onto FT but this is transparent to the end user. It's the same in effect as in UK where you could dial numbers like 18185 to connect you to a 3rd party provider for cheap calls except in this case it's automatic.

Simply because of the mechanics of the two systems direct calls will almost always be as good if not better than those via VoIP.

One point though. Strictly speaking you should not have a phone plugged in directly at the same time as the router. If you look at the setup leaflet TC provide it shows that the router should be plugged into the wall with the supplied adapter and the green lead from that going to the router. Any phones should then be plugged into the router. The reason is that the router itself contains an ADSL filter but if you put another filter in the FT socket to plug a phone into it can have a detrimental effect which can exacerbate problems with an already iffy connection. If anyone who is experiencing problems has a phone so connected then I suggest you try it as per the TC instructions.

You don't say how your other phone is actually connected Bluebel, but if it is just a parallel connection to the where the router is that is bad practice however if you have a good line you'll probably get away with it. If you are one of those having problems though I suggest you disconnect it to see if it helps.