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New Business Fiber Customer - Having tons of issues with service/support

StephenWagner7
Friendly Neighbour

Hey there,

 

Don't know where to turn as support doesn't understand the terms I'm using, so hoping someone here can help me. I'll try to make this as short as possible to avoid a long read.

 

Picked up Gig Fiber for Business with 5 static IP add-on, to add as a secondary connection for my IT company. Installed yesterday.

 

I have a Sophos UTM (in the future will be upgrading to a Sophos XG) business grade firewall that I was hoping to configure with 3-4 of the Static IPs to provide services to the internet. However I'm getting a run-around with support as to how to do this because of some things that Telus does on their business Fiber network that I wasn't aware of.

 

1st Call - Ask for Static IP information, rep says they'll configure it on my firewall. I response "No, we do all the configuration internally as we can't allow 3rd parties to access our systems", they then says they do it remotely automatically (what???). I also ask if the IPs are on the same subnet, or different subnets and they didn't understand. Call went quiet (maybe she muted and forgot), and they disappeared. After saying hello numerous times and waiting I hung up.

 

2nd Call - Inform rep of the first call, I ask a number of questions. He advised me that Telus requires MAC addresses to be registered to get access to statics. After a long confused discussion he finally let it slip that statics aren't actually statics, but DHCP Reservations for IPs that don't change. I ask to have multiple IPs assigned to a single MAC if they are going to be on the same subnet. He wasn't familiar with the terminology I was using and it sounded like he was relaying what I was saying to a chat based system to a higher level of support as he kept asking me to repeat it so he could try to fully dictate what I was requesting in to the chat. After the confusion built up I asked if he could transfer me to a higher level of support, and he said he'd be happy to. The phone then transfers, rings, and "This extension is not in use" and then the call disconnected.

 

3rd Call - Advise the rep of first 2 calls, ask to transfer me to 2nd tier support. He declines and say's he'll get me sorted. We spend another 30+ minutes with the questions above, where I explain to him what subnets are, why I need to know, the fact I need multiple Static IPs on a firewall, etc... He's confused and asks me what modem I have and starts asking about that (which was configured in bridge, doesn't matter). After clarifying a bunch of times, I ask again to speak to the 2nd tier, and he informs me that customers are not allowed to talk to higher levels of support and everything must go through him or the phone reps. After a while he says that he can do what I need, but he must make some changes to my account and lead a Managed Services connection. I was confused and he wasn't making sense until he says it's going to increase the cost by another $450 to the plan to be able to use multiple static IPs. I kept asking him not to make any changes, he kept asking why, I told him I'm not authorizing these changes, and finally agreed not to make the request. Before ending the call I asked to register one of the Statics just to get me going, which I did get working, but I really need the other IPs I'm paying for.

 

The above calls took around 3 hours.

 

 

So my questions:

 

Does Telus only allow 1 Static IP to be used per device (per MAC)?

 

Does Telus require the DHCP Reservations to get access to what was advertised as a "Static IP", or can we hard code them?

 

If I add/configure more physical NICs on my firewall (to get passed the 1 to 1, MAC to IP limitation), will I be able to get IPs on different subnets so the routing functions properly?

 

What are other businesses doing that require the ability to host multiple services across multiple Static IPs on Telus on a single firewall?

8 REPLIES 8

StephenWagner7
Friendly Neighbour

Just an update, for anyone who is doing something similar to what I am...

 

I added another Virtual NIC (and MAC address) on the firewall today, called support and registered the Static IP to it. Enabled the NIC and configured Uplink Balancing, and all appears to be working.

 

The IPs are on the same subnet, but no transmit issues with the overlapping gateways.

 

Will be testing DNAT, SNAT, and Full NAT in the coming days. So far this is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

Hello Stephen,

 

I'm sorry to hear that you've had a horrible experience when calling in to get technical support assistance, however I am glad to see that your devices were properly setup for static IP's. In regards to your previous questions, I do have some answers to share.

 

Does Telus only allow 1 Static IP to be used per device (per MAC)?

- Yes. Each device (MAC) is assigned to it's own static IP.

 

Does Telus require the DHCP Reservations to get access to what was advertised as a "Static IP", or can we hard code them?

- Yes. These static IP's are actually done through MAC reservation and therefore must be setup as DHCP and not hard coded.

 

If I add/configure more physical NICs on my firewall (to get passed the 1 to 1, MAC to IP limitation), will I be able to get IPs on different subnets so the routing functions properly?

- All static IP's work on the same subnet and therefore can't be changed.

 

Lastly, the managed connection which was proposed to you earlier does in fact have a true static IP setup whereas our unmanaged connection only offers static IP's via MAC reservation over DHCP.

badkaren
Neighbour

I had different technical issues but the same terrible service from support. The first-line support crew should really

 

a) be trained to identify when something is beyond their scripts, and

b) be empowered to escalate the ticket to better-informed technicians.

 

It shouldn't be all on the customer to get the runaround for hours on end and irritated to the point of resorting to social media to get proper support for issues that are well beyond "Have you tried turning the modem off and on again?"

StephenWagner7
Friendly Neighbour

This experience has been such a nightmare. I've had even more problems since, now with billing.

 

I signed a 3 year contract on negotiated pricing. I received my first bill and it was almost double what the agreed price was (I have documentation confirming what was negotiated). They are charging me the non-contract rates, but saying it's on a 36-month contract.

 

Reached out to the sales person, who said she can't do anything but confirmed the price I negotiated. Told me to call accounting.

 

I called accounting a month ago and they said it would be fixed and I would be credited the overpayment, here I am a month later and received another bill that's almost double what it should be and no credit. I've e-mailed the sales person again. I'm going to reach out one more time to accounting.

 

I'm just utterly shocked at this entire experience... If anyone at Telus see's this who can assist, it would be very helpful right now (I have the original order that Telus sent me that has the price I should be paying).

Anyways, called in. Billing investigated and told me that the change was approved and made, however it can take up to 3 billing cycles.

 

He told me that I was sent an e-mail on Sept 21 that was supposed to inform me.

 

I checked my e-mail for that date and I had an odd e-mail from Telus that just had some images and said "Unmonitored and discontinued mailbox, This e-mail is no longer supported". It had no other information except for the generic contact number.

 

I informed him, he said he checked on his side, but it was all french so he couldn't understand the e-mail, he said he'd try to resend it (I never received anything).

 

Anyways, he said it should be corrected by the next billing cycle. I've been paying these in full as I don't want an account in arrears, so I'm hoping the overcharges and payments are credited to the account after the pricing is fixed.

Another bill issued 2 days ago, another bill where I'm being almost double charged. In 3 months I've paid for what should have been almost 6 months of service...

 

Accounting said this would be resolved on this cycle and it's not. I've filed a complaints case on the Telus website, and if this doesn't get resolved I'll be contacting the CRTC to see if there's anything they can do.

 

It's absolutely crazy that I have a signed agreement (and the original Telus order) stipulating what I should be paying, yet I'm getting charged almost double monthly.

 

Again, if anyone at Telus is reading this, please help.

AlexAtTELUS
TELUS Employee
TELUS Employee

Hi Stephen:

Apologies for this experience. I've sent you a DM requesting your contact info so we can get this sorted out ASAP.

 

HI Alex, I've replied with my information. Thank you.