Hi, I am posting here as I have been told that TPG has totally taken over Internode and most of Internode has been closed down only exits as a brand so all tech support is manged and controlled by TPG who have rotating call centres in Australia, Manilla and South Africa. There is no OnlinePortal/Website to get tech. support for Internode, not even an email address to ask for tech support via email.
Also the feature on the Internode Web site to track a support ticket has been removed and so I have no way of seeing progress on this job apart from calling up and waiting in the hold queue for up to an hour or waiting for over an hour for a call back.
Additionally I get a random person each time and although it seems the previous person took notes they seem to start from scratch and can only do very limited tech investigation apart from readiing how often my line has dropped out or been reset. There does not seem to be any willingness to carry on and investigate a tech issue once I hang up and the support call has ended. It seems I can call up and speak to a support person and they can do limited diagnostics. On the last call this was limited to checking the Uptime-database and checking how many times I had turned my Router On/Off.
I was advised that the VR1600V router was designed and set up to auto-configure IP and VOIP services at power up and that it was reasonable for me to turn it off at night and expect it to come back on the next morning.
My ticket # is 23239550 and was opened on Sunday 7th-Feb 2021.
The fault started at about lunchtime and I had no VOIP phone service for 4 days this time. Because nobody from TPG/Internode did any work in diagnosing or fixing the fault during the 4 day outage I expect the same fault to reappear anytme.
I have not been offered a credit for the 4 days of no phone service.
My service HFC-NBN. the phone service is an analog PSTN Telecom handset pluuged into PHONE1 on the ROUTER supplied by Internode. It is a TP-LINK Archer VR1600V. The VOIP setings were set by Internode and are retrieved at Power-On BOOT time.
The symptoms were No DIAL TONE but the DFTMF tones sounded when phone touchpad keys were pressed. There were strong audible clicks when putting the handset On/Off hook. No calls could be made in or out.
During this whole time the Internet (IP-Traffic) worked fine and there was no Internet outage.
The first person I spoke to was named Nembi (Sun 7th-2021 ~2pm) and she fairly quickly determed that there was a VOIP phone outage and that I had diagnosed this conclusively. After this the support call was ended and I received no follow up email that a ticket had been opened, no advice of any progress and no indication that anything would be done to fix the issue or an estimate of when service would be restored. In short It seemed that the job had just been dropped or discarded.
The last Tech support call I made was with Joshua and he wanted me to leave the Router on for 24 hours (My suggestion) to see if the line was stable. I explaned that the line was stable at the start of the call apart from turning off at Night by me and the random service drop outs through the day which average about only a handfull. When these happen I power-cycle the modem and router and things usually get back to normal pretty quickly.
My biggest concern is that it appears that TPG/Internode are no longer very willing or able to resolve tech issues or perhaps so many tech. staff members have gone that there are simply not the resources any more to do tech support apart from very simple tech. queries of uptime etc.
On my first call with Nembi she suggested that I turn the router Off/On which was embarrassingly simplistic but I felt for her as she is going to get so much flack from customers by offering this kind of well meaning but probably useless advice.
I cannot post this kind of query to Internode as they do not have a facility to do this.
Please TPG, am I expecting too much to want tech. support ? Or are the days of tech. support from TPG and its sub-brands long gone ?
Mark B
