Status page (or lack thereof)

[rich_a]

Well I think it's clear from todays catastrophe that F2S desperately need to make a status page available on the f2s webpage! Today we were subjected with 12 hours of service outage with no official confirmation to tell us that it was an f2s problem, no confirmation that they were working to resolve the problem and no kind of forecast on when service would be resumed.

Even the worst ISPs I have had the misfortune to be with (*spit* tiscali *spit*) have some kind of status indicator for users to refer to in times of need.

I'd also like to praise this website for being somewhat on-the-ball with regards to this outage - in the lack of any official support, it was nice to have somewhere which acknowledged the problem and provided a useful forum in which to let off steam.

All the best,
Rich xxx

[Justin]

Originally posted by rich_a@Nov 23 2002, 06:51 PM
Well I think it's clear from todays catastrophe that F2S desperately need to make a status page available on the f2s webpage! Today we were subjected with 12 hours of service outage with no official confirmation to tell us that it was an f2s problem, no confirmation that they were working to resolve the problem and no kind of forecast on when service would be resumed.

Even the worst ISPs I have had the misfortune to be with (*spit* tiscali *spit*) have some kind of status indicator for users to refer to in times of need.

I'd also like to praise this website for being somewhat on-the-ball with regards to this outage - in the lack of any official support, it was nice to have somewhere which acknowledged the problem and provided a useful forum in which to let off steam.

All the best,
Rich xxx

Hi Rich,

I agree that they do need a status page, something along the lines of Zen's status page (http://www.zensupport.com) would be good, although I doubt that they would go that far if they considred putting one in place. They did use to have one, but we later found out, that this was a static HTML page, that always said services up and running even when they were not, which made it a bit useless to be honest.

Although they do not Officialy work weekends, there should be at least someone checking every now and then for outages and problems, and if there is updates, and service announcements should be made on what the problems are, why they are there, and when they will be fixed.

Tiscali are the worst I've been with without a doubt, when I was there they didn't have any status page, they kept promising it, but it never came (this was just after LineOne was intergrated into it, and the "Support Team" Suddenley stopped visiting the support forums. Tiscali support are useless though, with their Cut and Paste replies, at least you get a personalised reply with Freedom2Surf.

Thanks for your kind words about this website though, we did set-up for that very reason - due to the lack of official support from Freedom2Surf themselves, and thought that we could fill in some of the gap that there was in this area. Does get pretty heated at times, but tonight I've been pleased with the activity in here, and think that we've handled the situation as well as we possibly could.

Cheers

Justin

I agree. F2S DO need to sort out some sort of Status page, and soon!. I mean, even a one line post, to let us know that the fault was known to them would have been a start!.

It really would take little effort for them to update it, since the website could be updated via their own connection at home if something happened at the weekend, they don't even need to go into the office to update it. There is really no excuse for poor customer service, but it's really the only thing that F2S are really good at.

[Justin]

Originally posted by Bogsdollocks@Nov 23 2002, 07:57 PM
I agree. F2S DO need to sort out some sort of Status page, and soon!. I mean, even a one line post, to let us know that the fault was known to them would have been a start!.

It really would take little effort for them to update it, since the website could be updated via their own connection at home if something happened at the weekend, they don't even need to go into the office to update it. There is really no excuse for poor customer service, but it's really the only thing that F2S are really good at.

Hey,

They've always been like it, right from the beginning in 1997, lack of information has been a big problem, and still is. I guess the fact that they only have 5 employees is a part of the reason why this is not done like we would like it to be.

But a status page is very much needed, Freedom2Surf did used to post updates on their forums when they had them about a year ago at weekends, and also in evenings, so it can be done, it's just a question if they want to do it.

Also, it's fairly obvious if they have a problem I would have thought, as they do have connections at home and are on the same service, I mean surely they wouldn't use another ISP, would they?

Cheers

Justin

[Stewart]

They need a status page really badly if you ask me, but then again, they probbably wouldn't update it even if they did have one, they have never been a great company for keeping their customers informed.