Mass "Walk Out"

[chuckalicious]

Why are we all still here?

F2S take it for granted that they can provide a massively substandard service and still charge us full price. We know how good it used to be. Those that made it good are gone. We all also know from the experience of others that any ISP that Pipex takes over goes to the dogs, and the dogs never give it back.

Last nights email issues is just another example of how their incompetence is ongoing. No company with even the smallest of IT depts can really get away with installing kit this unreliable, never mind an ISP.

I for one am moving ISP at the end of the month, to Zen, because, other than the lower useage cap, they now provide multiple mailboxes (which was my only reason for staying with F2S) at a slightly lower cost.

I can only imagine the penny pinchers at F2S see that we are all just staying and putting up with the crap that they provide, so maybe if enough people said enough is enough and cancelled, they'd do something about it.

So as of the end of this month, F2S lose 4 home accounts and one business account. I know it's just a drop in the ocean to them, but surely they'd notice if enough people did it.....

[pogo]

I've about had enough of F2S too - I "upgraded" to MAX a while back, which was a mistake (generally slower than 2Mb, unreliable at times) - now they've gone and messed things about again with this LLU thing - time to jump ship, it's taking 5+ attempts just to get a connection these days. What a pile of pants.

[mark2006]

All we want really is the incompetent morons who are now running f2s to walk out and pre-pipex to return.

[chuckalicious]

Indeed, that's all we need, but, do you see it happening?

If this carries on for another couple of months, that's a full year that F2S has been going downhill.

Next we'll be reading on the Register that F2S has called in the administrators... and the only administrators we want are the system administrators!!

[PaulBM]

So would people recommend Zen?

I have to setup a Broadband account for a friend soon, and sadly I cannot recommend F2S/Pipex anymore.

[keith_thfc]

Originally Posted by PaulBM

So would people recommend Zen?

I would.

[chuckalicious]

Regardless of where people go, I think it's important that we vote with our feet, because nothing else has worked.

[jje]

I have a product that costs £19-99 a month and is giving me no real problems . My only gripe is that MAX was misold in the regard of the up to 8MB pitch and the effect contention would have compared to pre MAX was not mentioned at all .
But that seems to be the same for all MAX products at whichever ISP you choose .
Move to ADSL 2+ has always been at the back of my mind however Be want another £ 4 month plus £2 a month for email making the product significantly more expensive than my current package .
Should F2S customers leave enmass ,YES then i have less contention on my line .Plenty of other ISPs out their if you are that unhappy then be gone i say .
jje

[kmount]

I doubt the contention is at f2s, probably your exchange, which would mean users leaving f2s having no effect on your connection.

Max is a complete farce, it goes down in history is almost as good as "unlimited".

[acidtechno]

I still like what I get for my money. So I won't be going just yet. I'm on the £19.99 20GB Cascade Home package.

I admit some of the problems have made me itch to leave sometimes, but I'll probably only leave if they decide to close F2S and give us the chance to migrate or be incorporated into Pipex, shutting down all our packages/prices. I might leave before then, depends if it can get any worse

If I did leave, I'd seriously consider zen, for £5 more a month for the similar featured package. Zen 8000 Active
http://www.zenbroadband.com/athome.aspx?page=455
plus you get unlimited uploads, 2GB webspace, but probably no database.

Eclipse did sound tempting, but they do too much traffic shaping which will result in too much poor speeds I expect, those on the cheaper packages are given less priority then those on the more expensive packages.

[chuckalicious]

If you're not getting any problems then great, stay and enjoy the way we all used to

I get some problems, always with email, yet others get many more problems than I do, however that doesn't mean I should put up with the shoddy service.

[stephen30]

I too had thought about leaving,but when my service goes downhill it is 9 times out of 10,caused by this-
According to BT's latest data the VP status of your exchange is RED.
A date of 06/10/2006 has been set by BT for the exchange to be upgraded.
Which seem to happen nearly all the time at this exchange.
The one time it was'nt the exchange it was my dodgy usb modem, that was soon binned!

Steve.

[John R]

Originally Posted by Chaz

Max is a complete farce, it goes down in history is almost as good as "unlimited".

Yep, I think BT rushed into it despite testing for a good long time.... The problems with the software should have been iorned out long before it was realeased to the masses.
But BT had to keep pace with the LLU operators who had stolen the march on them, thanks to Ofcom for ensuring that a level playing field to all providers was well tilted in the LLU cable opps direction.... Tis funny how Easynet and Bulldog could offer upto 8 Meg speeds for £9.99 to joe public yet BT can't even offer 512K wholesale to other isp's for that price...

As for LLU, again you can hardly blame the isp's for the lack of migration, look to Ofcom for not getting off their collective backsides and ensuring that a system was in place at the same time as normal MAC's were avaiable... Once again we see they force BT to do something but forget the LLU operators...
Now with isp's looking to keep costs down, which LLU gives them. Who is it stuffed the users. So if you want to vent on LLU migration issues get on Ofcoms back and hammer them.....
As to the email and other server issues, well what can you say.... I think there are many people who post here who could do a better job....

[jje]

Originally Posted by Chaz

I doubt the contention is at f2s, probably your exchange, which would mean users leaving f2s having no effect on your connection.

.

It was said a bit tongue in cheek .
My exchange has a very very high take up of ADSL .Probably due to covering a very effluent area with a very high take up of broadband services .

Probably worth pointing out on any MAX sticky or enquiry that the exchange will play a big part in your download speeds.

jje

[kmount]

It should be a nice balance, in that if you have a large uptake, there will be a large set of VP's back to the core. Often not the case though!

[Crafty]

Originally Posted by jje

It was said a bit tongue in cheek .
My exchange has a very very high take up of ADSL .Probably due to covering a very effluent area with a very high take up of broadband services .

I read that thinking you meant affluent, but then again LOL

[segedunum]

To be perfectly honest I'm pretty disillusioned with practically all ISPs, and BT as well in particular, and also many networking services companies in general.

I know F2S have had their problems, which I haven't noticed because my ADSL has been running for three years (I'm about 1 km from the exchange and my lines, attenuation and noise is good) and I don't connect directly to Freedom's e-mail servers. I have a server that downloads mails to a server I have here via pop every ten minutes and I connect my client to that, so the e-mail outage has generally passed me by.

As for the Max stuff, every ISP is having trouble with it and changing won't make a difference. BT just wasn't ready with it, and unless you are close to the exchange and have good noise and attenuation you're almost certainly going to have problems.

I do actually run my own mail server, and noticed the SORBS (evil twits) errors in my logs when sending to some ISPs like OneandOne. They used to be good OneandOne, but anyone who uses SORBS isn't worthy of your money. However, at least Freedom2Surf know about it:

http://www.freedom2surf.net/help/sorbs.php

And at least they recognise that SORBS is a very bad thing (and they know what it is!) and that some people do some things like run their own mail servers, which is more than you'll get from just about any other ISP.

[trvlr]

From what I read here (and in some of the other threads...), overall it would appear that many - but not all - of the irritations that are reported are related to "high speed" - 8Mb service?

I was having major (frequently predictable) disconnects, loss of sync, unstable service etc., all of which did start with the arrival of the dreaded Pipex in July...; and they got worse and worse recently to th epoint were it was more or less no service to speak of...

Thanks to input from folks various here - three that come to mind being: Chaz, JohnR - and Andrew, the latter clearly has influence in BT-land and elsewhere..., things appear to have been resolved - at least for the moment. I have relocated my router to the Master socket, put the entire house slave (extension) socket circuitry through a single filter - that is also in the Master socket and services the router too (obviously).

The line-loss is high... typically 50dB (BT suggest over 42dB is way too high...) - yet it has once or twice dropped to 15dB... Up/down rates are pretty to max spec'd as possible; line is flagged via router adls status as being good up to 6Mb...

BUT... I am on the 2Mb service (and since I don't use anywhere near 2Gig - I'm on the capped service; it does all I need for now).

Whether or not I'd have a stable/reliable service if I was on the 8Mb max service...; somehow I doubt it...

The arrangement of the slave/extensions cct(s). and the location of the router clearly do have a serious impact on stability - especially if one has high line-loss, and poor sig/noise figures... (Can't recall what they are currently for my system - not chez-moi just now).

Why it all started to go pear-shaped in July (Pipex date...) who knows; but there would "appear" to be a clear link between the decline in f2s stability in many areas of the UK and Pipex arrival...? Possibly BT is a-doing things too in assorted exchanges etc. that happen to coincide with Pipex arrival; possibly the Martians are hitting back at us on planet "erf" for buzzing their sky, dumping our assorted rovers, scanners etc. on their nice clean unpolluted planet??? Who knows... Whatever is going on, Pipex would appear to be less than concerned about the decline in service to/for f2s customers?

If my 2Mb service does start to go flakey again... and after any intervention fro Andrew and chums (and also f2s itself - and hopefully BT too) it doesn't recover (fast...) I too will doubtless join the exodus from f2s...; though quite where to go to next???

As I stated in my earlier thread (and in another's to which I added comments...) I had Pipex dial-up years ago. It was atrocious. erratic, unstable connections; poor access at almost any time; atrocious tech support (with the exception of one chap - who left Pipex in disgust with the outfit; he went to another isp who did at least seem to care...). I finally transferred to BT dial-up - and stayed there until I came to f2s last November.

In faireness to BT - unlike Pipex, BT dial-up was pretty stable - and appears still to be so...? Not so sure about BT-dsl services though from what I read around...

[Voorhees1979]

Re:Mass Walkout more like a handful walk out

The thing is. People only post if they have problems. Theres thousands of f2s customers like me who is on max and have no problems at all. The people who post here are mainly people who have problems, many thousands who never have problems dont know about this forum, if they did, they would all say "What are you talking about".

F2S is a good company who have never given me a major problem, ive had the few downtimes etc, same as any isp.

But my max is perfect same as many others, the point still stands, the F2S database is ALOT bigger then the people who moan here.

I raised a ticket the other day over the usages detail;s being wrong, got a responce within the hour. But the handful who keep sending tickets wonder why they dont get answered.

Seems some people here raise ticket after ticket and complain non stop. Take the right approach and sent a nice ticket, and it will get answered.

To me F2S are very very good, if you do have a problem like i have had a few little ones in the past, it has been dealt with in a very good manor.

As I said its only people with probs that post here, many thousands to not.

So if people say im gonna leave, then go. Stop talking about it on a forum and do it.

Sorry if this seems rude, but im a little tired of the F2S bashing, they are a good ISP and always have been to me and many thousands out there.

[segedunum]

Originally Posted by Voorhees1979

The thing is. People only post if they have problems. Theres thousands of f2s customers like me who is on max and have no problems at all. The people who post here are mainly people who have problems, many thousands who never have problems dont know about this forum, if they did, they would all say "What are you talking about".

I agree, which was my point above. If you go on to the support forums of other ISPs you'll probably get an awful lot of posts that make it look as if the ship is sinking - even the ones who people say they are moving to here

In the course of my job I deal with an awful lot of companies who have been generally good to me where others have complained (Lumison have been OK who I have a working 8MB service with), and other companies who have had the same kind of problems that people have said F2S has had. It just doesn't make the grass any greener on the other side because you will inevitably complain on some other forum.

[acidtechno]

Originally Posted by Voorhees1979

The thing is. People only post if they have problems. Theres thousands of f2s customers like me who is on max and have no problems at all. The people who post here are mainly people who have problems, many thousands who never have problems dont know about this forum, if they did, they would all say "What are you talking about".

There's a lot of people who post here with problems that are unrelated to F2S, not all of the posts are bashing F2S and blaming F2S, many are about BT and the max system, many are about hardware, many are for fun. There's many people who post who help out, who are with other ISPs not just F2S, this is not just a problem place but also a community of like minded people who all help each other out.

I should tell you there are many thousands of people who do have problems but don't know about this forum, it was luck I found it last year and I've been with F2S since 2003. I'd like to know how long you've been with F2S, what your internet use is like and perhaps what features you use.

not everyone makes use of all the features/services f2s provide and there are many lighter net users also, which decreases the likelihood of people noticing problems with their ISP. But for those people who need certain services working at essential times, essential to them, constantly, you see there is a serious problem with an ISP, especially if something is broken all night, or all weekend. People pay for services, if an ISP cannot provide them at a high enough standard and make profit, they should withdraw the services.

Originally Posted by Voorhees1979

I raised a ticket the other day over the usages detail;s being wrong, got a responce within the hour. But the handful who keep sending tickets wonder why they dont get answered.

I think I would call that lucky, to get a reply to a ticket within the hour, when other tickets go unanswered for days, weeks, months, or never in a few cases. I have faith that people do send *nice* tickets but after waiting too long, some people do send a follow up, but there's no harm in that, if you don't get prompt response then you have to make yourself heard otherwise some things just don't get sorted out. Are you accusing F2S staff of ignoring and possibly deleting tickets just because of the way they might sound? it's quite an accusation. Sometimes people don't always type the way they would talk in real life.

once people do get support they require, I know that the standard of support is very good, from what I've heard.

Originally Posted by Voorhees1979

So if people say im gonna leave, then go. Stop talking about it on a forum and do it.

Obviously you are entitled to your say, the same as anyone else, as they are keen to hear other peoples views and what they want to or might do.

Originally Posted by Voorhees1979

Sorry if this seems rude, but im a little tired of the F2S bashing, they are a good ISP and always have been to me and many thousands out there.

F2S are a good ISP, but not as stable as they used to be. And I see F2S more as Pipex name, not the independent F2S pre takeover.

support at all ISPs have been bombarded because of BT Max, so your comments do not just apply to F2S, and it is not the fault of the customer if they do not understand what they are doing wrong with their new connection, an ISP should be there to help educate new users more so they don't get bogged down with support calls. For example the BT video I posted was very helpful, but F2S never bothered to provide a link to that, another ISP made an effort.

while F2S are a good ISP for price and features, and good support when you get it, they are failing on providing stable enough systems and the support to those systems which is needed to keep downtime at a minimum.

this site is a good place, even if you do find people bashing F2S, many times through lack of knowledge, where they then go on to learn real reasons behind their problems are not always the ISP. So you see good does come from a place like this, and it is independent from F2S, so they cannot censor anything.

I'm still with F2S btw, so I'm not here (like many others) just to bash them

The service had gone much worse since the Pipex take-over, the SQL database is forever going wrong and this weekend my e-mail is hopeless.

The MAXadsl is nothing to do with f2s so I won't complain about that, what I find most annoying is that support has total vanished. I raised a ticket weeks ago and have not heard anything as of yet.

If you only use f2s in office hours it a good service, but seeing as the technical department also only work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday if anything goes wrong at f2s outside office hours NOTHING get done until just after 9.00am next working day. That means at weekend we get 64 hours with no service.

[trvlr]

It's true people only come here - when they have a problem; and probably there are other similar forums/fora for the other isps too. The reason they end up here (as did I and by accident...) is that they cannot get any response from the tech.support number. It is just not adequately staffed...

Inadequate tech support is a prime issue for all isps; and it's just the same in just about every other service industry. Does one stay with garage that doesn't service one's car properly? One may give them a fair run to see if thing improve, and if they do one may well stay with them. Likewise the car itself; if it doesn't do what it says on the can as it were... does one stay with make/model if the manufacturer fails to resolve the isues you may have with it? I think not... Similarly any major store/shop, contractor and so on... But one usually does give them a fair run...; just in case they are having a few problems that they are clearly attempting to resolve and quickly/suceesfully so...

Having sat on "hold" for almost for f2s (Pipex) support two hours on one occasion and then been cut off - the office closed...I cannot say I am impressed...

When it WAS f2s... the couple of occasions I had to contact f2s support (last Novemeber) were generally responded to in a short while; the chaps(s) seemed to know what they were about... Whether or not the chaps curretnly at tech support do know what's what... I can't say personally; never managed to get thru' to them. Which having said... based on comments here I am inclinded to take it/agree that they do know what they're doing, and do their best within a less than ideal setting... Problem for most folks is getting to them...

Since Pipex arived on the scene... service stabilty has suffered all over the place - judging by the info given by those who find their way here; tech support is clearly swamped...; and this all started to go pear-shaped/downhill last July - with Pipex invasion/absorption of what was a good isp...

And as I said earlier my experience with Pipex in the dial-up days was anything but good... and I wasn't alone then either...

Also - to re-iterate an earlier observation... - I suspect that many of the problems are due/related to the max service roll-out (the 8Mb service). I have not bothered with that, nor am I likely to until the whole dsl system in the UK is somewhat more stable at speeds over 2Mb...

Clearly there are major issues with all assorted isps, and BT etc.... Until they all get their respective acts together it will continue to be can of worms for many people; especially at speeds over 2Mb...

My less than ideal cabling from BT-land, and the dsl service I got from f2s, was apparently fine until Pipex got involved last July. It may have been border-line from the start, it may not have been. Who knows - no way to tell, as there was no way to get any response from f2s tech. support to start chasing it from their end. And without their intervention one gets nowhere fast... BT won't talk to the client re' dsl issues if it's not a BT dsl client... However once I arrived here... Andrew's intervention may well have prodded BT to look at their kit and doubtless f2s did similar. The end result for me was vastly improved/more stable service - at 2Mb.

Had I not managed to find this site - by accident... I doubt I would now be with f2s (or should I say Pipex). I will stay with the f2s 2Mb service - for the moment. But if it starts to degrade/go down hill again I will almost certainly dump it... Just where I will go then...????

I don't use the f2s email service; prefer to remain with the BT one I had previously and means I keep my long time held address.

I do drop in here occasionally to help others as best I can; usually going over the issues of Master/Slave sockets/wiring filter location etc... as that is a major issue for many. And having been helped here by several other f2s "clients" as well as by Andrew, Chaz, JohnR, I feel it's partly a way of sayng thanks chaps..., as well as chipping in few pennies towards the cost of the site...; a payback of sorts.

[chuckalicious]

I for one have never mentioned the MAX issues as a reason for leaving. I too suffer from it, but I'm well aware it's not F2S' fault. I am complaining about the database errors, authentication errors, llu issues, email issues etc. Just look at the home page of this place to see the number of frequent errors.

As for only people who have problems posting here, that's pretty true, as it is for almost all forums, however, I know full well that there are other F2S customers who have problems, and don't know about this place. This isn't official F2S stuff, so F2S generally don't tell users about this place, so how else will the standard home user find out about this place?

I for one am leaving at the end of the month when I move home, and I can't wait

[segedunum]

Originally Posted by acetone

The service had gone much worse since the Pipex take-over, the SQL database is forever going wrong and this weekend my e-mail is hopeless.

Now that's something that I feel is unforgiveable with F2S with their MySQL databases. There is no reason whatsoever for this to happen. If it was working well before there's no reason why it shouldn't work now. How hard can it be? You get a working set up and then you leave the damn thing well alone. It shouldn't be necessary to restart it, even out of hours, and if you need to then who needs to be in before 5:30? Ever heard of VPN access for people on call and off-site? Jesus. That doesn't fill me with confidence. However, amongst many web and e-mail hosting companies it's not unusual believe it or not.

Fortunately, I do Ruby development so my hosting is with people like Textdrive.

My e-mail has actually improved in terms of its appearance in my inbox these past couple of days or so, relative to the delivery time. However, as for the stability of the servers, I can't say. I don't connect directly via the POP or IMAP servers, but have a set up where my server here downloads mails via POP every ten minutes and I connect to IMAP running on my server.

This is partly done because I'm a control freak and can't be bothered troubleshooting other peoples' e-mail problems. My strategy is to grab the mail and get off as soon as possible to minimise the window of opportunity where I would have problems with a provider's e-mail servers. I've had this with people like OneandOne and others in the past, and I just cannot be arsed to spend my time phoning about it.