Horrendous service

[JohnnyBeGood]

We went literally decades on the old Rogers cable service with only sporadic issues, usually just some pixilation on the TV. When our NextBox converter failed Rogers forced us to switch to ignite and the only thing ignited was our fire under us to look for another provider.

Within 2 weeks we had random TV and network issues so bad that we had to call support. Support told us the poor service was to be expected and was the norm. After complaining about that we received a call from Mr. Nand of the Office of the President who had me do tests in which he found nothing of course and gave lip service. We've been through all the stupid hoops of disconnecting my computer from my internal router and plugin it into their modem directly. I've been through it with the techs and I've been through it with Mr. Nand. They always see nothing and the problems always persist. I'm tired of Rogers techs demanding I rewire my network for every call only to find nothing or hanging up and being jerks if I try to tell them I've already been down that road in previous calls. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result and that's what dealing with Rogers has become.

Last night my wife had to give up trying to watch her soaps and the news due to sporadic error messages, pauses in the service and complete cut-outs on the TV. I won't watch it now, I only watch DVDs since the television service is that bad! 2am I start seeing Rogers modem restarts (in addition to the occasional 3am restart). The restarts occurred a couple times without warning bringing all internet and television service down. I can't stream without delays, I try playing a shooter game I can't walk across a room in the game for massive packet losses. I can't voip on Discord and even Discord is restarting and occasionally having trouble checking for updates on restart. When I ping Google.com repeatedly, I see some pings with 0% packet loss, some with 20% packet loss and some with as much as 49% packet loss and packet speeds upwards of 200ms! This is a network in failure!

I have 4 years as a front line technical support specialist with Epson Canada and another 3 years front line support with Lotus Development corp. I call Rogers support and the first little girl tells me Rogers equipment is fine its my hardware and when I try to calmly tell her making assumptions is frustrating, she just hangs up. I call back, the second guy says they don't care what my hardware sees and if they send a person out who finds no problem (in a situation with sporadic issues), I get the bill for the service call. Then he reports people in my area have weak signals. I'm supposed to gamble on the technical skills of Rogers staff who can't even keep the TV service running, to see an issue instead of just blaming issues on something that isn't associated with Rogers like they always do? That's just a scam to do service calls on my dime. NOT! This method of investigation guarantees issues will go unreported. 

I've saved all of the emails and screenshotted the performance. I've recorded the phone calls. I'm putting together a video demonstrating how horrific the service is and its going up on my youtube channel. Maybe I can get some satisfaction that way. In the meantime its time to start looking at other services.

*** Edited Labels ***

[RogersTony]

Hello, @JohnnyBeGood

I can imagine how frustrating it has been dealing with all of these issues since making the switch to Ignite.

It sounds like you are using your own router to provide Wi-Fi in your home. Regrettably, this is not a setup that our technical support teams can assist you with. You would need to revert to an approved setup for our technical support teams to diagnose your problem. Do you experience the same issues when connected directly to the modem instead of your router?

If there is a signal issues affecting your area or your line, as long as you haven't modified the line by adding splitters or a signal booster/attenuator there should be no charges for the service call. If the technician does not find any issues and deems the issue a result of your Wi-Fi router then there may be a charge applied. It is up to the discretion of the technician based on their findings.

We definitely want to help you get this working properly but you will need to use a supported setup before we can troubleshoot properly with you.

RogersTony

[mebe]

I still use Rogers legacy digital cable, but for several years I also had the Rogers legacy Internet (although it's still the same internet as far as I can tell, just with different modems, and perhaps a few other minor differences).
I had a great time using the Rogers Internet service in the past (300 speed), but since I primarily only used it for streaming, but no gaming, I'm not surprised that I had no problems with the service.
You mentioned that you previously had Rogers legacy digital cable, but does that mean you used another provider for your Internet?
If you had great internet coverage before you switched to Ignite, then you could always downgrade your Rogers service to TV only, and then use whatever setup the tech wants to use to get it to work.
It would also be good if you were given some kind of credit for the time your service is sporadically bad, just so you're less annoyed by the fact that you're paying for something that gives you more grief than joy. Perhaps the Office of the President gentleman might be better at dealing with the financial situation, while the techs invade your home and neighborhood looking for the solution to your problems.
The more frustrated a subscriber gets, the more likely it is that something special needs to be done to get things back on track, so that solutions can be found ASAP, before the bridges are burned, and all the roads leading away from the bad weather are closed.
A squeeky wheel often gets the grease, but the subscriber still often gets the grief to go along with that grease. Good luck. 🔨🔩🔨

[JohnnyBeGood]

Hi RogersTony,

In my years of frontline technical support, the first and most important rule was never to jump to a conclusion without examining the facts. It leads you down technical rabbit holes that go no where good. The second most important thing relates to reading messages and its advise that a teacher once gave me, "You have to read all the pretty words, not just the ones you think matter." Like these ones in the very first paragraph of the original post;

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@JohnnyBeGood wrote:

We've been through all the stupid hoops of disconnecting my computer from my internal router and plugin it into their modem directly. I've been through it with the techs and I've been through it with Mr. Nand. They always see nothing and the problems always persist. I'm tired of Rogers techs demanding I rewire my network for every call only to find nothing or hanging up and being jerks if I try to tell them I've already been down that road in previous calls. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result and that's what dealing with Rogers has become.

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So while your off on the Rogers tangent about my hardware, you can see you're just one more Rogers person jumping to a conclusion about something that has already been tested many times before. What's more, somehow you missed the lines talking about the TV service being so bad my wife couldn't watch her soaps. The TV is running directly off of the Rogers modem. Once again, missing details because you've already decided where the problem is. You can not come up with things to investigate if you've already decided the answer. 😉

Lets talk splitters and the like since you mentioned them. Rogers has been horrid about them for decades. I never owned any. Rogers would show up, add them and when an issue occurred, they'd show up, give ME . for installing splitters and promptly install what they considered "a Better one". I keep Rogers stuff pristine because I've learned that Rogers staff are never looking for the problem, they're looking for the first thing they see that they can blame things on and THAT becomes the cause of everything without a moments investigation. Sound familiar? 

I also mentioned the Rogers modem rebooting itself several times.. How did you factor that into your diagnostic thought process?

The Rogers Ignite TV box IS running directly off the Rogers modem wirelessly, NOT through ANY of my personal equipment. That's how the ignite I was sent is supposed to be sets up. If the TV has gone all stupid, while it could be the Rogers Ignite box, I'd say its also pretty good guess the Rogers modem that was feeding the TV through the Ignite box could be a more likely culprit then my router that isn't even involved with the TV and if the Rogers modem was the culprit, I'd say its a very good guess that the internet went stupid as well. That might also explain why the Rogers modem rebooted itself several times! Someone interested in solving the problem might have read most of this in the original post and asked which equipment the TV was running through.

But hey, you're response is in fact another perfect example of my technical support experience with Rogers so I've screen captured it for the video. 🙂

Thanks

[JohnnyBeGood]

Hi Mebe,

To answer your first question, I've been using Rogers service for my internet since the very late 90's. I've not used another provider. Aside from the usual periodic things here and there, I've had no issues over the decades. The legacy equipment was great for the internet.

The answer to your second question is in the second sentence of my post. Rogers forced us to move to ignite. They told us they couldn't provide a replacement for our failed cable box and that they would have forced us to Ignite soon anyway because the legacy network is being replaced with this junk. So we were led to understand there is no way to go back because the legacy network is going away.

As for credits for bad service, Financial solutions to problems simply justify the company to continue providing garbage for service with the excuse that you get paid back for bad service. It doesn't address the problem, it just pays you to shut up and put up with it. 

In my mind the network is in failure. They're keeping things so you can connect, so it looks like its running but the they're dropping packets all over the place and blaming issues on the customers. I think we used to call it the old shell game. Soon as we can get the emails moved and the new email address added to all of our services we're registered with, we'll start investigating other providers. The old Rogers is gone.

[mebe]

Hi again. I'm aware that you got pushed away from legacy (I was just thinking you might only keep IgniteTV as a standalone, even though it uses the problematic Internet), but if you had good internet and good wifi with Rogers legacy internet for years, Im assuming that Rogers should be able to get your Internet back to where it should be, perhaps with box replacements.
Still, you sound like you're ready to try something that requires less red tape and a much easier transition to something that actually works as it's portrayed.
Is the old Rogers dead and buried? It might be, but as long as the zombies here keep haunting these forums, I don't think that they are going to just let sleeping dogs lie.
Sure, some of the broken Ignite stuff is related to Comcast programming incompetence, while other things take constant tinkering or inquiries to sort them out.
I've already had my fun with American IPTV services, so my last hurrah will probably end up being legacy cable with Rogers. Once Rogers legacy tv is finally put out to pasture in my area, I'll just ride off into the sunset, grateful for the chance I had to hold onto something (for as long as I could), that I quite often took for granted in the past. By the way, I still think that the Super Sports Pack was the worst run theme pack that Rogers ever had ... Good thing that my sports addiction is now under control. ⚾🏀📡

[-G-]

@JohnnyBeGood  Sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with Ignite TV.  I have been an Ignite TV customer for many years now and have had zero issues with the service.  If your Internet service works well and your in-home network works well, then Ignite TV should work well.

Given that splitters have been mentioned, I presume that you have a conventional cable Internet service and that your Ignite gateway is coax-connected to the Rogers network.  What speed service do you subscribe to and what model of Ignite gateway do you have?

Last night my wife had to give up trying to watch her soaps and the news due to sporadic error messages, pauses in the service and complete cut-outs on the TV. I won't watch it now, I only watch DVDs since the television service is that bad!

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Which specific error messages are you seeing?

Channels on Ignite TV are delivered as unicast streams.  An HD stream consumes 10 Mb/s; a 4K stream consumes 25 Mb/s.  The traffic is send in bursts and there should be enough buffer depth to ride out minor packet loss on the network.  However, if there is not enough available bandwidth, end-to-end, between the streamers in the back-end and the Ignite set-top box, the STB will basically run out of data to process and you will get audio/video drop-outs.

The problem is typically caused by either a poor Wi-Fi connection between the STB and the Ignite gateway, a Wi-Fi network that performs poorly, defective hardware, or an Internet connection that has so much packet loss that data cannot be retransmitted before the STB's buffers run dry.  It can also be caused by problematic 3rd-party network gear.

If you can, try connecting an Ignite set-top box directly to the Ignite gateway using an Ethernet cable and check to see if the problems persist.

2am I start seeing Rogers modem restarts (in addition to the occasional 3am restart). The restarts occurred a couple times without warning bringing all internet and television service down.

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The following articles can help you to assess the health of your Internet connection:

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/Troubleshooting-a-Slow-or-Intermittent-Connection-Wir...

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/Troubleshooting-Latency-Wired-Devices/ta-p/462951

The most important thing is to confirm that your modem's signal levels are within norms.

Also, go to http://10.0.0.1/ , log into your Ignite gateway, go to "Gateway > Connection > Rogers Network", scroll down to the bottom of the page and check the Uncorrectable Codewords error stats; they should be zero, or close to zero, particularly on the OFDM channels.  If you have a large number of uncorrectable errors and the numbers keep growing, that's a problem.

I can't stream without delays, I try playing a shooter game I can't walk across a room in the game for massive packet losses. I can't voip on Discord and even Discord is restarting and occasionally having trouble checking for updates on restart. When I ping Google.com repeatedly, I see some pings with 0% packet loss, some with 20% packet loss and some with as much as 49% packet loss and packet speeds upwards of 200ms! This is a network in failure!

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How is your computer connected?  Directly to the Ignite gateway or through 3rd-party network gear?  Is this an Ethernet connection or over Wi-Fi?  If you are connecting through your own router, do you have any forms of QoS or traffic shaping enabled?  If so, have you tried disabling QoS?

Also, are you seeing this poor performance at all times of the day or only during peak hours?

What do your speed test results look like?

When latency, jitter and packet loss are problematic, it's usually due to an overloaded network in your area... but if that is the case, then Rogers should see this when they run their tests.  Did your support calls ever get escalated to a second-level tech?

If your modem's connection is healthy and no problems are seen in your neighbourhood, then it could also be due to problems with your in-home network.

Best of luck with your troubleshooting!

[Babylegs1]

I moved over to Ignite Boxing Day of 2018 and love it!! 4 years coming up and would never go back to boring legacy service… just saying

[odxd]

I had less downtime, and more channels with legacy. Which part of that is boring?