MOAN

[gusgormen]

I rang KC yesterday, i was on hold for 25 mins without speaking to anyone.  i put the phone down considerably fed up.  Thats a poor show. it's not like they are trying to make money on an 0845 number.  Just pi55 poor customer service.

A phone call at 4pm should be answered pretty swiftly.

hang your heads in shame...

[Scotty]

That a shame you had that problem, can't say it's ever happened to me when I've rang them - they're usually very good.

[Ace247]

Yeah same here, always been very helpful and dealt with problems immediately...strange they kept you waiting!

[Scotty]

I think you should try calling them again. I imagine you will have better success.
You probably got stuck within the call holding system, we all know what technology is like, and it doesn't work brilliantly all the time.

[Ace247]

Just seen a feed on Twitter from KC asking customers to join in a Poll, they would like to know if people would like Video Conferencing facility which would allow them to talk to customer direct! 

[Scotty]

Wow, that would be excellent.

They're going the extra mile with customer care! They will be the first ISP to do anything like that in the country.
You've got to remember that this is only possible because they're managing one city. KC get a lot of stick, but you will never ever get anything like this from BT or Sky.
Its indian call centers with indian operators who struggle to understand you everytime.

[el-ahrairah]

Also gives a chance for a free webcam chat with a possible sexy young kc girl. Ok you might get a big fat hairy bald guy but if you phone enough times you may eventually get through to a nice looking young lady 

[richardmyers]

Given most of the time you call them when the net is down or running slowly, if the system is internet dependent then it's not going to work too well... Also considering a fairly good portion of people don't get speeds that are actually good enough for streaming video, if it's even remotely decent quality it'd just stutter and buffer.

[el-ahrairah]

Given most of the time you call them when the net is down or running slowly, if the system is internet dependent then it's not going to work too well... Also considering a fairly good portion of people don't get speeds that are actually good enough for streaming video, if it's even remotely decent quality it'd just stutter and buffer.

Actually that's something i had totally overlooked, Glad you brought it up and the points are completely valid. And to be honest i agree.

[Ace247]

Yeah fairly good points there rich...

[Scotty]

Thats a good point Rich.

Maybe it will backfire, and I also bet they won't throttle their own call centers, so it could even have negative effects on the rest of us.

[Sean]

I had the same problem.

Karoo no longer respond to my emails, all I want is 4oD to work, so I had to phone them.

Anyway, I phoned them up and it took 20 minutes until I got through.  Then all the person would do is up my profile (yes, up) because apparantely changing from my 6meg profile to a 7 one would resolve the problem.

This is despite 1) 4oD streams being no where near 7mbps, not even 3 and 2) my line cutting out above 6 on the nights.  When I told him this wasn't acceptable, he did, to be fair, arrange a callback from a colleague (I actually told him I wanted a full month's refund if my internet cut off that night after they were closed and for every subsequent night 4oD didn't work).

The colleague explained the issue was down to the statement they already released, but could not explain why it worked if I encrypted it as there was no traffic shaping.  She arranged a further callback for last Tuesday, which never happened!

[el-ahrairah]

I will mention one thing on this matter, 4oD does have regular problems when it comes to streaming, Whether that be karoo throttling on an evening or 4oD themselfs not having enough capacity to cope.

I have a perfectly fine connection and yet on an evening i often struggle with 4oD.. Just something i've noticed is all.

[Sean]

I will mention one thing on this matter, 4oD does have regular problems when it comes to streaming, Whether that be karoo throttling on an evening or 4oD themselfs not having enough capacity to cope.

I have a perfectly fine connection and yet on an evening i often struggle with 4oD.. Just something i've noticed is all.

Yes, because they are shaping it, whether deliberately or not.  iPlayer works for me at the times 4oD doesn't.

Run the exact same stream over SSH and it works 100% fine.  Hence it rules out 4oD unless there is something very perculiar about 4oD(Akamai) shaping it their end for Karoo; it's exactly the same IP serving the content as I checked, and the trace route is identical when leaving Karoo's network and my VPS's network.

[richardmyers]

Isn't iPlayer Akamai too, or it used to be... That is odd though, that iPlayer works and 4oD won't.