My ISP, iiNet, are currently offering a 3 month trial of the FetchTV service. I decided to take them up on this offer, just to see what it was like. The problems started as soon as I got my set top box. iiNet only support specific modems with their FetchTV service, before I received my box I was still using a different modem as that was more reliable. When the box came, I was going to switch over to their recommended one, set it up the same and away I would go with the new TV service.

I asked iiNet to deliver the box to my work as I didn’t expect to be home when it would be delivered, however, on this day I was. It was delivered to my work and all of a sudden at home, I was disconnected from the Internet. I had no idea why so I called iiNet. This is the only time I have ever had bad customer service with them (even with the DSL debacle they still gave me good service). If they just looked at their notes, they would know the issue, but no, they insisted it was something I did. Even though I didn’t change anything. What I didn’t know at the time, though, was that when they get confirmation of the FetchTV box delivery, they disable PPPoE on your account. Thus rendering my old, reliable, modem useless. I plugged in my BoB modem (the one they support) and my net was instantly back up, using Bridged mode instead of PPPoE. The problem with this, however, is that I can’t disable NAT and actually have a proper connection (I have another router that handles NAT, the border one routes direct). Apparently they’re still working on this, well, thanks for telling me.

After calling in to work and picking up my set top box, I got home and plugged it in. All was going well in the setup, I typed in my activation key and away it went. I looked at some of the channels, they loaded much faster than Foxtel on 360 and were much better quality. There aren’t that many channels on FetchTV, but that’s understandable considering it’s less than a third of the cost of the full Foxtel subscription. Fetch also mixes in the free-to-air channels with their own pay channels. They also advertise the features of the PVR as a compelling reason to get the service.

Now, my issues here are not with the Fetch service itself. They are with the set top box and how it works. I have had no end of issues with it. First off, there’s no 30-second skip button. Now I know this is because Fetch get their free-to-air EPG data from the Freeview service and they don’t allow PVRs with a 30-second skip button. But the Freeview EPG is horrible. We use DVB-T here in Australia, it comes with an in-band EPG. It is always more accurate than the crappy Freeview one. Shows regularly run overtime on the free networks here. The in-band EPG normally reflects any last-minute changes in scheduling. Of course, this affects any recordings you have scheduled. Because Fetch does not use the most recent information available, I am constantly forced to set it to record up to 30 minutes after the episode is scheduled to end, just to be safe.

Aside from the EPG are other terrible design decisions. The box comes with apps. These apps are made by Fetch and the ISP you get the service from. They are, to put it simply, horrible. Take the Twitter app as an example. I went to sign in to it and realised that I would have to use a T9 keypad to enter my details, even though there was an on-screen keyboard presented to me when I originally entered my activation key for the service. Now, for someone with an extremely complex password that I don’t even remember (I auto-generate and use Lastpass), this is near on impossible to accomplish. Not to mention there is no backspace button! When you don’t know a password that you’re entering, you can’t see the characters and it’s very long, you tend to make mistakes often. I had to go back and re-enter the damn thing over and over before I was sure I got it right. I pressed the login button and was told it was incorrect. So I entered it again, and again, and again. I then decided to go on Whirlpool to complain about this horrible decision to use the T9 keypad instead of a logical on-screen keyboard and found that people were told that the Twitter service didn’t even work! Well, again, thanks for telling me.

The problems don’t end there though. I have my Fetch box hooked up to my TV through HDMI and my receiver through optical TOSLINK. For some reason, that I am yet to understand. In the middle of the night I am woken by the damn box turning back on and blasting me with whatever happens to be on at the time. Even though I have set the volume on the box to be the lowest, tried muting, etc. I have had to resort to turning my receiver off just so I’m not woken up by it doing whatever the hell it wants to.

I think I can safely say that once my 3 month trial is near completion, I will be handing this box back and saying no thanks. As I have said, the service is good, the implementation is horribly bad.

Rating: 2/5★★☆☆☆ 

By far the worst experience I’ve ever had with this would have to be the mobile provider 3. They even have canned responses for their phone support. A couple of years ago, I couldn’t get to the net on my phone. I did all the normal things; reset the phone, check the APN. I then called up 3 support and told them that I was unable to access the net and what I had already done. Their response? A factory reset of the phone was required. I did not want to do this as I knew it was an issue with their network. I said that I did not want to lose all of my settings. Their response to that shocked me the most.

They told me that a factory reset will not reset all of the settings. I just sat there for about 5 seconds and hung up. Seriously, if you’re going to train your staff, at least tell them basic facts.

Funnily enough, after about 20 minutes, the net suddenly started working again. I knew it was an issue with their network, but their call centre staff were too stupid to figure that out. I decided to send an email to their complaints department about the treatment I had. I detailed everything in the original conversation so they could effectively follow it up. Try guess their response… To factory reset the phone – even after I said it was working fine now.

The reason I’m only writing this now, however, is because of this happening to me today as well. At home, I run a fairly complex network. This network has 2 subnets, one of which is fully routed to the outside world. What this means is that on the external router, I need NAT disabled otherwise it won’t route.

I recently bought a new router from my provider. This router is supposed to be their top of the line, best at everything router. However, it seems it is not. When I finally got online after waiting for 6 weeks (see the previous post), I had a chance to test out this new router. I had configured it weeks earlier so that I could just get straight online without any delays.

The first thing I noticed when I went online was that my mail server still wasn’t receiving mail. So I decided to try connect to it from outside and instead got a connection refused error.  I then thought I should check the external IP, to my surprise, it was actually the router’s IP and not the one it should be using. Of course, this means NAT is enabled. I checked the config and NAT was disabled. Obviously turning it off does nothing.

I decided to contact Belkin support (they make the modems/routers for my ISP) and tell them about the bug. Of course, they didn’t actually read the message. They just presumed I was like any other idiot who contacts them without first reading the knowledge base or FAQ. They asked me which ports I wanted to forward and whether I was trying to use DMZ.

Seriously, can’t companies just take an extra two seconds to actually read the problem instead of assuming it’s another idiot who can’t read? All this does is turn competent people away from your business. If someone sounds like they know what they are talking about, hand the message off to someone who also knows what they are talking about.

The first thing that needs to be done when activating a new DSL account is setting up the new phone line, even this was a challenge. The house I moved into is a subdevelopment of an existing block. The official address is number 110B, however it seems this is not the number utilities use to supply their service. The address they use is unit 2/110. It should be the same thing, but apparently it is not.

Once the phone line was finally connected on the 10th of February (should have been the 8th), it was now time to start the DSL activation process. I called up iiNet again and they got the ball rolling. However, it seems they didn’t push said ball hard enough. I checked the online toolbox for the status of the connection and that said it should be up by the 18th of February. That day came and went without any indication at all that there was a service activated.

I called iiNet again and apparently their automated system never actually put through the provisioning request. This, however, was not the worst part of the debacle. I was told when I called that an appointment had been made with Telstra to go to the exchange and connect my line to the iiNet DSLAM on the 23rd.

When the 23rd came, I got a phone call from iiNet saying that all should be good; I should be online as soon as I got home. After finishing work and arriving home, I plugged in my router and had 8mbps ADSL1 sync. Apparently the slow speed is to be expected when you first connect and I was told that it would improve in a few hours. How wrong they were. About one hour after I first connected, the net just dropped out completely. The router wasn’t even trying to get a sync from the exchange. It was as if the cable was unplugged or the port on the DSLAM was deactivated.

Once again, it was time to call iiNet. After hours of waiting on hold and waiting for callbacks, they told me that they had no idea how I even got online in the first place and that I hadn’t even been allocated a port at the exchange. This time they said that an appointment had been booked for the 26th. By now, iiNet had enabled customers to view all of the notes the customer service representatives have placed on a task assigned to the customers. I read some of these notes and just could not believe what they were saying.

First, iiNet requested port number 5 on a rack 1 in the exchange. Telstra came back saying port number 5 on rack 10 is in use. Of course, this meant that Telstra weren’t going to do the work in the appointment. iiNet then replied with a rack and port combination that couldn’t possibly be confused, port 8 on rack 9. Telstra replied saying the work will be completed on the 4th of March.

Well, the 4th of March came along. Once again, I got a call from iiNet saying that my service had been activated. When I got home, however, there was still no line sync. It was the exact same as it had been all along, not even trying to get sync. This is where I really started to get frustrated. According to their systems, my router had full sync. Again, hours on hold, waiting for callbacks. In the end a line fault was issued.

The very next day I received a call on my voicemail (couldn’t answer the phone as I was driving) saying that according to their systems, I had sync and they were closing the fault. I was furious at this. To add insult to injury, the call queue was extremely long due to an outage in some exchanges. I did eventually get a callback from someone who understood that it is not actually working and the fault was reopened. I received an SMS saying that I would be online on the 9th of March.

Again, the day rolled by, with no internet in sight. Also again, no DSL sync, not even an attempt at sync. I called up and according to them the line was fixed and that the only reason it wouldn’t be able to connect was that it was a faulty router. I told them that I had already tried multiple routers. I even turned my router off just to prove that it didn’t actually have sync. The demeanor of the customer service rep changed completely when I did this to actually believing me. So, once again, a fault was lodged.

I was woken up this morning by a phone call from iiNet. The rep told me to take a look at my router. To my amazement, there was a line sync light! The rep then admitted that he was really embarrassed at what had happened and that it was a stupid oversight on their part. I managed to get the reason out of him. Apparently the MDF racks in the exchange each have specific names. It appears that the whole time during provisioning, they were looking at the wrong MDF rack.

So, I am finally back online. From disconnecting at my old house on the 6th of February to reconnecting finally on the 10th of March. iiNet already credited me for the entire relocation cost plus one month for the downtime, they also offered me $40 credit today. During the entire time that I didn’t have DSL, I used my phone’s internet tethered to my PC. The problem with that, however, was that I only had 1GB of bandwidth per month. Not nearly enough. So I set up a spare server as a dialup router. It was hell at those speeds, but now I can rejoice at getting the fairly decent speeds of 15mbps down and 2.5mbps up.