Cheap home CPE troubles

Mon Dec 27 16:36:37 UTC 2010

Send each customer out to buy this:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BE350G
problem solved.

Andrew

On 12/27/2010 10:10 AM, Mike wrote:
> Hi,
>
>     Well as is customary in our part of the country (Northern
> California), with the stormy weather comes brownouts and blackouts
> comes a massive influx of end users with locked up and malfunctioning
> home networking equipment. Every single time the power sneezes,
> massive waves of customers just 'go down' and then I get to pick the
> pieces all up by talking to each individual and instructing them how
> to pull the power and then plug it back in, or worse, their cpe needs
> to have it's settings restored since the internal flash memories got
> cleared or corrupted.
>
>     We see this in the cheap home gear all the time. Makes me mad
> since linksys/netgear/motorola got away with the customers money and
> incurs ZERO support costs or any apparent liability for their product,
> where we in turn get to deal with upset subscribers who have been
> 'down for days...' while all the time the solution - powercycling -
> was within reach.
>
>     Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning
> unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with
> unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear
> (eg: cisco 26xx, 8xx, pix, and the like), and doubly especially those
> with working standby UPS, we never ever hear from and they have
> extreme uptimes, but home users aren't willing to hear $500 - $800 in
> gear is required to 'make it work all the time'. They interpret that
> to mean that there's just something wrong with us since WE 'require'
> such expensive and exotic equipment in order to work right, and they
> would be better off somewhere else.
>
>     Any comments?
>
> Mike-
>