Be --> Sky. New user on Unlimited Pro - No rants, but a few questions...

[Isitme]

The CCs are Sky employees and will be paid. I am not sure about their actual positions in the organisation, but possibly they are Help Desk employees.

They have a bit of 'clout' but not to the same extent as the official technical help on other forums, such as Plusnets'. From what I have gathered they can send emails to the senior technical help staff, asking for a particular complaint to be escalated.

There are many who get their problems solved, but mainly by Super Users and members who are not Sky staff. The CCs seem to have a script of answers ready to paste into an a thread. Quite often the answer has nothing to do with the question and suggests they don't really bother reading the posts properly.

Telephone contact is probably the best way, quite often that is the advice of the 'live chat' team. They have a ticket system of a sort, but unless you are very lucky, your ticket gets closed after 3 days, solved or not.

Other than gaining themselves 'kudos' I don't think they get any sort of commission. I find the number of occasions when a post is terminated by the poster being contacted by personal message, puzzleing. It seems to defeat the object of having a forum when the solution is not made public.

One thing I have noticed, is that since the Official forum started the number of queries coming in to this forum has dropped. Whether that is a good thing or not, I don't know. One thing I do know is that queries here will receive neutral replies, with links to recommended products, which is not allowed on the Official forum.

It is good to see you are gradually getting your problems sorted out.

[Scubbie]

Any official Sky Staff member on the Sky forums will have the Sky logo and a tick beside their name. The Community Co-ordinators are a part of the on-line team which answers questions on the forum but their experience and knowledge does vary, as do their answers.

As with any other job, there will be different levels of management involved. The CCs are effectively similar to the people whom you will talk to on the telephones.

If you click the 'Help' button at the top of the Sky forum page, then click 'meet the staff' you'll see all the different groups listed, as well as the Super Users whom are not employed by Sky.

There is a dedicated part of the Sky forum is you have Sky Broadband Unlimited Pro. Many of those who migrated from O2 and Be were placed on this product if they were using some of the feature which were available (i.e. Annex M, Paired lines, fixed IP). If you are on this product check out that section as you'll get one of the specialists answering instead of a CC.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broa.../Pro-Broadband

The responses do vary, but they don't get commission on closing threads.

[seawright]

@johnnycab re: the problem with your your PC despite the yellow exclamation mark I take it that you can view the setup pages on your router?
If so can you try http://62.253.3.88/ address in your browser and let us know the results?
If all is well it should bring up a Google search page.

[johnnycab]

One thing I have noticed, is that since the Official forum started the number of queries coming in to this forum has dropped. Whether that is a good thing or not, I don't know. One thing I do know is that queries here will receive neutral replies, with links to recommended products, which is not allowed on the Official forum.

It is good to see you are gradually getting your problems sorted out.

Isitme - I appreciate your time to provide me with a comprehensive answer to my questions. I have my views on some of your comments but they are very similar and I will give Sky a chance and experience a bit more before presenting them. Thanks for the tips, insight and experience, it will definitely help me stay calm and annoy you guys more.

As for whether it is a good thing or not that there are less queries; in my opinion it is definitely a good thing. I prefer small communities, where the questions at least get answered properly rather than receive tangential replies like checking if there be dragons or gremlins under the bed rather than looking at the equipment ;--)) or no replies at all! BTW, I love TBB too for similar reasons.

Yes, the problems are slowly resolving themselves largely in part of the support from this thread/forum and some patience.

[johnnycab]

Any official Sky Staff member on the Sky forums will have the Sky logo and a tick beside their name. The Community Co-ordinators are a part of the on-line team which answers questions on the forum but their experience and knowledge does vary, as do their answers. If you click the 'Help' button at the top of the Sky forum page, then click 'meet the staff' you'll see all the different groups listed, as well as the Super Users whom are not employed by Sky.

The responses do vary, but they don't get commission on closing threads.

Scubbie, Thanks. On the contrary, I have found myself ignoring the Sky Logo/ticked posts as there seems to be no answers present within. Your info will help me to stop lurking just to learn the culture, which is a bit arcane and very different from any forum I have ever visited. IMHO, this is not say that there are knowledgeable folks present, just that the CC's do seem to undermine the quality of the output by the SU's, where it gets very hard to read or find important information buried by quarter-page posts with no content.

I will use the 'Help' button to acquaint myself before asking for it next time. But, for the time-being I will just stick here if you don't mind? ;--))

[johnnycab]

@johnnycab re: the problem with your your PC despite the yellow exclamation mark I take it that you can view the setup pages on your router?
If so can you try Google address in your browser and let us know the results?
If all is well it should bring up a Google search page.

Hi seawright, The problem has 'disappeared' now and I choose that word, because unfortunately I did a few things in succession and it could be any one of the following or a combination that solved it: new drivers - which initially did not help, disabled IPv6 for the adapter - although another PC still has it active and did not give me any problems from the outset, toggled adapters: ethernet disabled/wlan enabled (which was turned off by default) and let it run for a day or so and then vice-versa.

I think it might have been the last option i.e. toggling the ethernet/wifi that cured it by registering properly with the routers DHCP even though I had released/renewed IP address and made sure it was registering with the router's DHCP and showing up on the list previously. I also flushed the DNS cache. This is something I am unsure of and only a theory: my WAN Static IP changed for the first time in years and that might have been the cause of throwing an errant PC into a tizzy? why, I don't know?

When the problem existed, I could connect to the router page on the standard 192.168.1.1 address and had all LAN/NAT features, but I could not ping bbc.co.uk. The adapters properties showed that IPv4 & IPv6 did not have Internet Access. On one hand I am happy that everything is sorted, on the other a bit disappointed not knowing the exact cause in case it happens again. Oh well...

[Scubbie]

We always welcome friendly people to this forum.

There are some very good and incredibly knowledgeable people who contribute to the various threads, giving up their time freely. Their reward is the pleasure of seeing people smile afterwards.

Whilst none of the staff on this site are emploted by Sky, there are several who do so we do always ask people to be respectful as you never know whom you are actually talking to .

On the up side, this does mean that we don't give stock answers and if we can't solve it for you, or at least give you the something which you can do, as a forum the knowledge exists on where to point you. This might be to a specific department within Sky or it might be someone else.

[johnnycab]

Since my last post - I updated the firmware on the router and most of the dropouts and connection issues were resolved. I have been connecting at 19Mbps DOWN/1.12Mbps UP. The SNR fluctuates between 4-5 and the attenuation has come down from 25 to 19! The connection holds steady for number of days before a reset; but connects back at previous speeds. So far so good..

But today for all the previous rewards, a new and strange connection problem appears and has been wreaking a havoc - why oh why sky? ;--)) I am trying to retain my sense of humor, but it is hard. The problem is this: I am connected at the afore-mentioned speeds, however there is no internet access i.e. browsing, downloads etc. I can get access, if I drop the PPoA connection and re-dial or reboot - but the former seems easier and produces similar results. The connection lasts around 15 minutes before going into zombie-mode i.e. I am still connected but no access. I have done some reading on the subject and a found a fair number of similar posts here on this forum; not much of it is applicable in terms of troubleshooting as by now I have done almost everything from my end.

I am doing all my troubleshooting with a PC connected via ethernet to router which in turn is connected to the master socket. Any of you good folks willing to help me give a perspective on this?

[Isitme]

Have you checked if you can connect with wireless when the connection apparently drops? Its unlikely in your case, but there have been some reports about the ethernet connection stopping working on Sky routers but the wireless continues as normal. Resetting the router to factory defaults usually cures the problem.

[johnnycab]

Have you checked if you can connect with wireless when the connection apparently drops? Its unlikely in your case, but there have been some reports about the ethernet connection stopping working on Sky routers but the wireless continues as normal. Resetting the router to factory defaults usually cures the problem.

I have eliminated most wireless devices from the equation as they are not reporting any problems, along with wired devices. However, the most sensitive device on my network is the Galaxy S4 - which always complains if the quality of the connection or no internet connection is an issue by showing the standard Android 'connection is unstable' error. BTW, I am on a non-sky router i.e. Draytek Vigor 2820n - which thankfully allows me to drop the PPPoA connection and then re-dial it whilst the connection is still active, it is less tedious than rebooting; although I have done that too and a cold boot on several occasions today. It has the latest firmware with a complete reset and reconfiguration done about 10-12 days ago..

It seems the problem occurred in the early hours this morning; I am sincerely hoping it is somebody working at the exchange and the downtime is temporary?