Do's and don'ts when reporting problems to your ISP

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Do's and don'ts when reporting problems to your ISP

The following is a guide designed to help people who are having problems with their internet connections get them resolved as quickly as possible. It is presented as a series of 'Do's' and 'Dont's'. These are not authoritarian prescriptive finger wagging 'Do's' and 'Dont's'. You of course are free to do as you like. However by following these do's and dont's you will in most cases end up getting your issues resolved quicker than if you do not.

Do understand what it is that your ISP does and what it is that you pay them to do.

This has been covered in more detail here http://www.kibkomnorthcyprusforum.com/v ... 46&t=38610 but the 'short' version is as follows.
What your ISP does, what you pay your ISP to do, is move data between two specific points. Those two specific points are
1 - The end of your ISP's link out from North Cyprus to Turkey, that is physically in the South Coast of Turkey.
2 - The end of the cable that comes from the device on your roof and in turn plugs into the wifi router inside your house.

Do understand that your ISP has no direct control over what happens past point 1 above.

Do understand that your ISP is not responsible for what happens in the 'house side' past point 2 above and that such is not part of what you pay your ISP for. Now at Multimax we will always do what we can to help customers who have problems that are the 'other side' of point 2 but that we do so as a 'courtesy' and that such help is not what you are paying us for. The router in your house that is the 'other side' of point 2 above is your equipment not ours, under your control and not ours and that the distribution of data from this router into all the corners of your house is not something that you pay us for or that we can control.

Therefore

Do 'judge' us and whether we are delivering what you have paid us for or not based on what it is you are actually paying us to deliver as explained above.

Do 'hold us to account' for delivering what it is that you are paying us for and do do so with as much polite persistence as may be necessary in order to get any issues resolved.

Do not 'judge' us and whether we are delivering what you have paid us for or not based on that which is actually not what you are paying us for and that we have no control over, like how well any given streaming TV service may or may not work at any given time.

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Do 'test' if we are providing to you that which you are paying us for and do let us know if we are not, as often and persistently as may be necessary to get the issue resolved. With Multimax, as we do not sell our products based on a vague and unspecified 'up to' maximum speed but more on a 'hard' defined minimum acceptable speed, this is relatively easy to do. Any time, peak or off peak, we are failing to deliver traffic at a rate of 4Mbs or more between points 1 and 2 as defined above, we are failing to deliver that which you have paid us for. The only exception to this 'rule' is if you are getting less than 4Mbs at peak times because we have ourselves artificially limited the speed of your connection because you have exceeded peak time usage tiers for the product you are using. (more details here https://www.mmcyp.com/en/traffic-management.php)

Therefore

Do do speed tests using speedtest.net / ookla to a server local to North Cyprus like Extend's or Kibris Online's, for this as closely as possible tests and only tests that bit of the network that we do control and are responsible for and not those parts that we are not responsible for and have no direct control over.

Do not test your speeds using systems or servers that are not local to North Cyprus without understanding that the cause of any poor results may be within the part of the network that we are responsible for and can control but that it also might be in part we do not and such tests will not provide any useful information as to which is the case.

Do when testing your connection, as far as is possible and practical, remove as many elements past (on the house side of) 'point 2' above as you can to 'take them out of the equation and do tell us this is what you have done when reporting such results to us. So were possible do not test from a device that is itself connected via wifi to the wifi router in your house. Ideally test from a device that is connected to your router via a cable. Do try your best to ensure that when you do such tests there is not also other 'stuff' on your network that is also generating significant amounts of traffic as this will undermine the validity of the results of such tests and thus their usefulness as a diagnostic tool. The very 'best' way to do such tests would be actually to plug the cable (from exactly the point it is currently plugged in to your router, not from a bit further back from that, where it connects to the data/power splitter) that is the end point of point 2 above and that would normally go in to your wifi router , directly into a suitable machine or laptop. This will remove from the equation both the 'wifi' element and the 'router in your house' and thus any potential traffic being cause by devices other than the single one you are testing from and thus provide the very best and 'hardest' of results.

Don't test by using how well any given TV streaming service may or may not be working at any point in time as the determination as to if we are providing what we should or not. If you contact us and say 'my TV is buffering please fix it' we will of course make every attempt to establish if that is because of something we can control or not and if it is fix it. However do understand that in terms of providing us with useful information that will allow us to resolve any issues quickly , saying my TV is buffering is next to useless in diagnostic terms. This is even more the case if you tell us 'your TV is buffering' at times we have know general issues.

Do contact us as close as possible to the actual time that you are seeing us fail to deliver what you are paying for. Such issues are often highly variable in terms of when they do and do not manifest (ie can be seen by both you and us). Understand that we do need to 'see' the problem in order to be able quickly and effectively solve it.

Don't exaggerate when reporting problems to us in the belief that if you make out that the problems are worse than they actually are we will fix them more quickly. The reverse is actually true. Diagnosing such problems is like a form of 'detective' work, of piecing together parts of a puzzle. The more accurately you describe the problem to us the quicker and more effectively we will be able to 'solve the puzzle' and get the problem fixed. Exageration only slows that process down not speeds it up.

Do understand that our engineers are not trained or skilled in diagnosing and identifying network issues and such is not their job or role. They are 'experts' in climbing on roofs and drilling holes through walls and running cables and the like. Understand that before sending an engineer out to you we first have to establish what the issues is or most likely is so we can tell the engineer what it is we require them do when they visit you to fix the problem.

therefor

Do not expect or demand an 'engineer visit' as the first response to any problems. As soon as we have identified what the cause of issues is or the most likely cause is, we will as and when necessary send an engineer to you but we do not and will not do this as the 'first response' to you reporting problems to us.

Don't contact us with the notion and expectation that our first response will be to do everything and anything in our power to deny any responsibility and 'fob you off' regardless of if we are in fact responsible or not. Provide us with the best evidence you can that we are responsible and we will, if we can see that as well when we look, admit that we are responsible and make all and every effort to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Do understand that we do not as a matter of course lie. Understand that any time we say what we are seeing is different from what you have seen or are seeing, we do so because that is actually the case and not because we just want to 'get rid of you' as quickly as possible.