phattieg
join:2001-04-29
Winter Park, FL
 ·Verizon Wireless B..
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to rizzo2dial
Re: [SunRocket] SR Down-No outgoing calls
To all those people saying:
"I too would like noodler (or somebody at SR) to clarify the cause of yesterday's outage and follow-up with how SR will prevent future occurrances."
I retort, what will that accomplish. You feel some explaination of technical difficulties you can't comprehend in the first place, and then some assurance that the technology, which has failed with them and many other providers from time to time, will not fail again. Ok, do this. Go out, and buy a car (technology), or anything else you use daily (reliability), and expect it to never need repair, or unexpectidly break (outages). It's a cheap phone, live with it. |
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skip718
join:2005-03-04
Staten Island, NY | reply to mph300
Sunrocket SUCKS
I have been down with no incoming or outgoing service since july 11, called sunrocket got no infor from the customer service rep about how long it will be down. Is anyone back up? |
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yitz98
join:2003-05-06
ISRAEL
| reply to phattieg
PHATTIEG -- Well said!
That's essentiall the bottom line. Anyone who wants to use a technology like VOIP must know ahead of time that it won't be perfect. If you don't you will be dissappointed. All those people that speak (post) before they think should just not post.
Skip718--from what I've read and experienced myself, my SR is back up and working just fine. Perhaps, like I'm sure happens to many, there is something with your ISP or your local LAN that was overlooked and is causing your problem. |
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chrispix
join:2004-08-25
Rowlett, TX | reply to skip718
I was back up the evening of the 11th in Dallas. No issues since |
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SliderNC
Master Of Disaster
Premium
join:2002-12-12
Cornelius, NC
clubs: 
 ·Windstream
| reply to yitz98
said by yitz98  :PHATTIEG -- Well said! That's essentiall the bottom line. Anyone who wants to use a technology like VOIP must know ahead of time that it won't be perfect. If you don't you will be dissappointed. All those people that speak (post) before they think should just not post. Skip718--from what I've read and experienced myself, my SR is back up and working just fine. Perhaps, like I'm sure happens to many, there is something with your ISP or your local LAN that was overlooked and is causing your problem. For the people who are in the technology industry and deal with VoIP all day long like myself, an explanation makes perfect sense. I'm also not claiming to be an expert either.
I know that the technology is flawed and that it will never be perfect.
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Litre is French for give me some f***ing cola before I break vous f***ing lips.
My LiveJournal |
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yitz98
join:2003-05-06
ISRAEL
| said by SliderNC :...an explanation makes perfect sense... Don't get me wrong, as an SR customer, I also feel the need for better coomunication by SR to its customers during incidents such as these. |
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BillRoland
Premium
join:2001-01-21
Ocala, FL
clubs:
 ·Cox HSI
| reply to phattieg
said by phattieg :To all those people saying: "I too would like noodler (or somebody at SR) to clarify the cause of yesterday's outage and follow-up with how SR will prevent future occurrances." I retort, what will that accomplish. You feel some explaination of technical difficulties you can't comprehend in the first place, and then some assurance that the technology, which has failed with them and many other providers from time to time, will not fail again. Ok, do this. Go out, and buy a car (technology), or anything else you use daily (reliability), and expect it to never need repair, or unexpectidly break (outages). It's a cheap phone, live with it. People appreciate the effort at transparency, even if they have no idea what technology behind it is or how it works. I submit to this forum that if you take two companies, one who has a big outage and is completely silent about it to their customers, and one who has two or three big outages and quickly notifies their customers about the outage and the suspected causes, that the customers of provider #2 with more outages will probably be more willing to cut them some slack. People appreciate good customer service, and can be very understanding of technical problems, but you as a company have to meet them half way.
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"Don't steal. The government hates competition." |
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SliderNC
Master Of Disaster
Premium
join:2002-12-12
Cornelius, NC
clubs:
·Windstream
| said by BillRoland :said by phattieg :To all those people saying: "I too would like noodler (or somebody at SR) to clarify the cause of yesterday's outage and follow-up with how SR will prevent future occurrances." I retort, what will that accomplish. You feel some explaination of technical difficulties you can't comprehend in the first place, and then some assurance that the technology, which has failed with them and many other providers from time to time, will not fail again. Ok, do this. Go out, and buy a car (technology), or anything else you use daily (reliability), and expect it to never need repair, or unexpectidly break (outages). It's a cheap phone, live with it. People appreciate the effort at transparency, even if they have no idea what technology behind it is or how it works. I submit to this forum that if you take two companies, one who has a big outage and is completely silent about it to their customers, and one who has two or three big outages and quickly notifies their customers about the outage and the suspected causes, that the customers of provider #2 with more outages will probably be more willing to cut them some slack. People appreciate good customer service, and can be very understanding of technical problems, but you as a company have to meet them half way. I agree 100% with you. A company with good customer service will always retain their customers. I believe that although customer service does not create a profit for a company, they are an integral part at keeping those profits rolling into the company.
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Litre is French for give me some f***ing cola before I break vous f***ing lips.
My LiveJournal |
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zznate
join:2004-10-08
Mount Rainier, MD
| reply to mph300
A lot of valid points are being made regarding our communication of outages. We do have some upgrades in the works on fleshing this out more.
That said, this most recent outage was inexcusable. As noodler said, we had recently made some massive upgrades to capacity that we thought would get us around this hump once and for all. Unfortunately, after several days of flawless operation, an unexpected condition arose that combined with a hardware failure to produce a catastrophic outage. That is about as much as I can give you.
Going in to detail on these outages, and figuring out how to phrase customer communications during and afterwards is a huge discussion point for us internally. Essentially we are trying to balance the security of our network (in some cases, like this most recent one, giving you more detail would give an overview of our hardware and network layout - an unacceptable risk as far as I am concerned) with providing you folks better information on the what happened and why it wont happen again.
Communicating this stuff effectively to such a large, diverse audience is hard to figure out and we are trying. We are listening to you guys and already have some enhanced communications capabilities in the QA pipeline right now (this from some of the excellent feedback last month).
Thanks again for all the supporters out there as well as for the critics. These forums particularly have provided us some of our most valuable feedback.
(georgepan, thanks for calling this particular thread to my attention.) |
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SliderNC
Master Of Disaster
Premium
join:2002-12-12
Cornelius, NC
clubs:
·Windstream
| A simple explanation like the one posted above goes a long way with any customer. I would never expect you to give me your network architecture or server specs as that compromises your company's security, just as I would not give anyone mine. A simple email or network status page would be more than enough, as this is what most other companies with high availability systems do.
Although I am at fault for not using the builditbetter email address, I will start using it now and more often with ideas that I think will make this service top notch. I'm sure you guys know most of them by now anyhow.
Thanks for the update and posting here. It's very much appreciated by the SunRocket users here.
--
Litre is French for give me some f***ing cola before I break vous f***ing lips.
My LiveJournal |
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koam
Pink Pecker
Premium
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
clubs:
·Shoreham Telephone
 ·ViaTalk
 ·surpasshosting
| reply to zznate
zznate thanks for the information. I don't think anyone expects a specific technical explanation of outages. But we do expect that the web site will at least acknowledge that there was an outage, that something is/was being done about it, that steps are being taken to prevent the same thing, and that the entire company is being prepared to handle such an issue more professionaly than SR did this week. This would include getting some status and information on the website during and after a crisis and adequately informing and training telephone and online support staff to communicate effectively with customers.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned in a while is that when service goes out, thousands of users have to come HERE to this forum to find out there is an outage. This of course should be immediately handled at the website, and as the first recorded message we'd hear on the SunRocket 800 number. (There is no use in customers trying to fix the issue in their homes when it's something that they can't fix - if they had that info they'd know they can sit and wait rather than fiddle with something that's not broken.)
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Danieli Consulting LLC, Strategy and Branding »kdanieli.com |
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Hilbe
join:2002-12-13
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·VoiceStick
| reply to mph300
I think we should also be kept up to date on new/upcoming enhancements so we can have at least an idea of when or why we may be down. I put in this suggestion to builditbetter for some sort of "coming soon" or "status" page.
This does not have to be overly detailed or give away too much information, but just a nice overview. For example, on the "My Home" page if we logged in and saw "Upcoming Network Upgrade - 7/9 12:00am ET" a lot of us would be more sympathetic to an outage. In my company all the users get emailed ahead of time of upcoming upgrades/changes to prevent everyone from freaking out if something goes down.
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Hilbe
»www.sunrocketforum.com |
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burris
Premium
join:2000-08-22
Miami, FL
·VOIPo
·AT&T Southeast
·ViaTalk
| said by Hilbe :I think we should also be kept up to date on new/upcoming enhancements so we can have at least an idea of when or why we may be down. I put in this suggestion to builditbetter for some sort of "coming soon" or "status" page. This does not have to be overly detailed or give away too much information, but just a nice overview. For example, on the "My Home" page if we logged in and saw "Upcoming Network Upgrade - 7/9 12:00am ET" a lot of us would be more sympathetic to an outage. In my company all the users get emailed ahead of time of upcoming upgrades/changes to prevent everyone from freaking out if something goes down. You pretty much summed it up....Coming from the world of telecom, I can empathize and sympathize with SunRocket.
As I have said before, stuff happens and since "every" carrier is at one time or another at the mercy of others, failures will occur....
The key to this entire scenario is called communication, and when SR finally figures out that keeping their customers up to date with current problems as well as maintenance scheduled in the future, they should rise to be one of the top companies.
Back in the days before competition, the major players weren't too concerned with anything but prompt payments from their customers and their lack of concern was evident, but maybe the picture has now changed....
Anyway, I really have been pleased with SR for the last 6 months and if they communicate better, I think many more will join....
burris |
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georgepan
join:2005-05-09
Wesley Chapel, FL
| reply to mph300
zznate-
Thanks for the response. I've been banging my head against the wall with CallTech's Level 1 support, so I thought asking a self-identified engineer directly may give most of us more of a clue. Communication is the key. I've had good luck with "Lindsey" from CallTech's customer support who has been very responsive via e-mail on tickets and such in the past. Others had bad luck calling CS, so hopefully they can tighten that up in the future.
Noodles made it appear that some major upgrades are right around the corner, basically to be unveiled within a week or so. Is that something you can confirm at this point? |
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schipperke
join:1999-11-29
Potomac, MD
·PHONE POWER
| reply to mph300
Jeffry?
They'll just change his name and ask him to tone it down.
As far as Sunrocket losing customers over a 5 hour outage and other sporadic service, I felt the same way about AOL's service (I was a first year AOL subscriber during the BBS modem days) and refused buying the IPO Doh! |
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Richard09
join:2004-09-30
Washington, DC
| reply to SliderNC
said by SliderNC :A simple explanation like the one posted above goes a long way with any customer. I would never expect you to give me your network architecture or server specs as that compromises your company's security, just as I would not give anyone mine. A simple email or network status page would be more than enough, as this is what most other companies with high availability systems do. Although I am at fault for not using the builditbetter email address, I will start using it now and more often with ideas that I think will make this service top notch. I'm sure you guys know most of them by now anyhow. Thanks for the update and posting here. It's very much appreciated by the SunRocket users here. I totally agree with this post. An update like the one from zznate is very helpful. While the outage didn't exactly make the happiest camper, it does make me feel better knowing that they are aware that it was unacceptable and are working to correct the problem in the future. |
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koam
Pink Pecker
Premium
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
clubs:
·Shoreham Telephone
·ViaTalk
·surpasshosting
| Yes, it's still unacceptable that the member portal web site still ignores the problem. By the time they get around to emailing the members, it will just be reminding everyone of a week-old nightmare. The time to communicate and apologize is right away and then move on.
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Danieli Consulting LLC, Strategy and Branding »kdanieli.com |
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georgepan
join:2005-05-09
Wesley Chapel, FL
| reply to mph300
kdanieli-
During the outage when I checked on the website it was first down, then showed nonsense about my account status (referred to me as a new user.) The web portal itself is probably not a good place for a "System down" disclaimer, as it can be (and in this case was) affected as well. The best spot would be the CS phone number. When I called in and requested member services I did get a disclaimer about network problems.
I still think an e-mail to all users about the outage should be forthcoming. zznate PMd me that the user "noodler" is actually Sunrocket's Chief Software Architect, so his "word" should carry some weight here. He posted that SR is in the midst of tripling capacity and that some new features were forthcoming. I do expect an explanation e-mail but will give "noodler" the benefit of the doubt that it may be combined with an announcement of the changes/upgrades into one mail posting. |
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artisticcheese
join:2004-11-09
Carrollton, TX | If you can not login to account then where do you want them to put "outage" message. Right on front-page to scare away potential customers? |
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koam
Pink Pecker
Premium
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
clubs:
·Shoreham Telephone
·ViaTalk
·surpasshosting
| reply to mph300
I just received this email from SunRocket:
On July 11, SunRocket experienced intermittent network issues that caused service and website outages. These outages were a result of an unexpected network error. SunRocket technicians have fixed the problem, and service is restored. If you are still experiencing problems, please turn off your gizmo, wait 30 seconds, and turn it back on. If after rebooting your gizmo you are still having difficulty making or receiving calls, please call us at 1-800-786-0132. We sincerely apologize for these problems and remain committed to delivering you the best quality possible in Internet Phone Service.
Thank you,
SunRocket Member Services
1(800)786-0132
this was in response to an email I sent them on Monday. It wasn't an email they sent to all members.
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Danieli Consulting LLC, Strategy and Branding »kdanieli.com |
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