Problems connecting to Lotro Servers for eircom customers

Lister1

All eircom customers are currently expierincing major lag with lotro servers. Codemasters have asked us to "contact the ISP, provide them with the location of our servers (Amsterdam) and inform them that only users of their ISP are having this issue". More details in the below thread. Any assistance is resolving the problems would be appreciated.


http://community.codemasters.com/forum/technical-assistance-forum-737/456550-character-failing-load-14.html

eircom: Mark

Lister1 wrote: »

All eircom customers are currently expierincing major lag with lotro servers. Codemasters have asked us to "contact the ISP, provide them with the location of our servers (Amsterdam) and inform them that only users of their ISP are having this issue". More details in the below thread. Any assistance is resolving the problems would be appreciated.


http://community.codemasters.com/forum/technical-assistance-forum-737/456550-character-failing-load-14.html

Hi Lister1,

Apologies for the delay in responding to you, I have escalated your post to see which department is best suited to investigate. I will let you know as soon as I have any updates.

Thanks, Mark

Lister1

Thanks Mark. Looking at Ants background he may be able to identify the problem himself.

Lister1

Any update for us Mark?

eircom: Tony

Lister1 wrote: »

Any update for us Mark?

Hi Lister
Mark is in training today but I have contacted him re this issue and he is awaiting feedback. Should have some update today or tomorrow.
Tony

Lister1

Any update today on the issue?

eircom: Mark

Lister1 wrote: »

Any update today on the issue?

Hi Lister1,

I am sorry about the wait but I have escalated the issue and I am waiting for a response. It may be early next week before I get a reply.

Thanks, Mark

shanous

What exactly do you mean by "escalating" the issue?

Welease

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/technical-assistance-forum-737/456550-character-failing-load-26.html#post6937258

Hi all,

After further investigation with help from own providers we have been able to confirm that the issue lies with the Eircom exchange. There are no faults with any of our services or lines, (if there were, more people from different ISPs, countries etc. would also be suffering).

The reason other games remain unaffected for Eircom users is that many other games use the TCP protocol and different ports to LOTRO, (LOTRO uses UDP protocol which is managed differently).

We are attempting to make contact with Eircom to see if there is anything they can do to sort out the problem but as yet have not had a response.
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It's been over a week now...

eircom: Tony

shanous wrote: »

What exactly do you mean by "escalating" the issue?

Hi shanous
due to the technical nature of this particular query we have reported this to the appropriate technical section for clarification and if it is an eircom issue then for resolution.
'Escalating' is the term we use to describe this process.
Hope to have an answer soon though.
Tony

shanous

As Welease says, Codemasters have confirmed that it is a problem on Eircoms end of things.
Has there been any major work/changes since last Wednesday the 16th of February that could have caused this issue?
It might help if Eircom can contact Codemasters to speed up the process as it seems they have been trying to get into contact but with no success.
I have a lifetime subscription with LOTRO but I know a lot of people have payed good money to play it but are unable because of this issue so please, do what you can as fast as you can.
Us customers are entitled to the service we pay for and right now, we are not getting it.
Thank you for the updates, I hope to see it resolved as soon as possible.

EDIT: Is this going to happen everytime a new exchange is upgraded? If so I'll certainly be taking my money to UPC.

Derrick

Hi All,

A copy of a post I put on the CodeMasters forum on this earlier today. The same plea to resolve this quickly goes to Eircom. I am still convinced that some talking and asking the forum members to assist with tests should resolve this.

Eircom people: Do you have any idea how many people this is affecting? The Codemasters forum board is lighting up on this. currently at 29 pages of forum and growing. I have been with Eircom from the start of when I was getting broadband about 6 years ago and I have been with Codemasters on Lotro for 4 of those years without any issues until the last week or so. I admire both companies although I wish it was easier to contact Eircom directly at times but really, both companies stand to lose paying customers here and the lack of urgency in the response time, particularly from Eircom is beginning to diminish my impression of the company.

Thanks,
Derrick


Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 4 CM and Eircom

---

Hi there,

I cannot post links yet but if you google eircom and lotro and go to the boards.ie link. An Eircom representative called Tony is helping one of the members of this forum escalate it through Eircom but not sure where Tony fits in the organisation and there is no evidence of direct contact between CM & broadband support in Eircom. There not a lot of interaction there and it should not be up to forum members to sort out what has to be a business-to-business issue. It may well not be CM's fault or indeed Eircom's fault but something between their two systems is not communicating and sure some basic phone contact to and from the right people could get this sorted fairly quickly as both companies stand to upset their respective customers. I am inclined to think it is an Eircom issue with UDP at this point but it can still only be resolved by both companies talking. Eircom has less to lose here as only Lotro is not working. Having played Lotro for 3-4 years now, I am hooked on the game and really enjoy it but I am not going to switch broadband providers just to play a game, no matter how good.

(CM did you use the broadband support number or Eircom's main number? Their broadband support hotline is 1890 260 260 which I have used previously and once you get through the initial call centre stuff is usually pretty good. I think the 1890 bit only works from Ireland though. You could wait a long time for an email response which is particularly woeful.

I appreciate the engagement from CM in particular and to a lesser extent Eircom (Tony being the only guy who seems to want to help) but I am not overly impressed with the relative lack of urgency to resolve the issue.

Please CM do what you can as quickly as possible before I defect completely to DDO and/or WoW . I will be posting a copy of this post on the Eircom boards site.

Thanks,
Derrick

Lister1

Any update?

eircom: Ant

Lister1 wrote: »

Any update?

Hi Lister1,

Thanks again for contacting eircom on bords.ie

I have no official update at the minute. Will check and advise shortly.

All the best,

Ant

Welease

Ant,

Do you guys have a timeline or SLA for responding to these sort of issues?

It's been about 10 days since the problems were initially raised, and not one single relevant update from Eircom.. That's a pretty poor level of support by any standards.

shanous

This is just not good enough. For a company of Eircoms size it defies belief for the Tech Support and feedback to be of such poor quality.
I rang the support line the very day this started happening, Thursday 17th, and the day after, Friday the 18th.
I relayed my issues and directed the "Technician" to the thread on the LOTRO forums and he said he'll have the senior members of the Support staff look into the issue asap.
Lo and behold 11 days later and we are still being told that there is no update.
Is this because NOTHING is being done about it?
Have you cantacted Codemasters to better understand the situation? Probably not as customer satisfaction does not seem to be a priority here.
If Eircom cared about the service they provide to their customers they should be climbing over each other to get this fixed.
Can we get a reply from an actual Technician on this issue? Or is it just Representatives that browse though here?

Still awaiting some helpful news but as ever, none seems forthcoming...

*rant mode deactivated*
One VERY dissatisfied customer.

eircom: Ant

Welease wrote: »

Ant,

Do you guys have a timeline or SLA for responding to these sort of issues?

It's been about 10 days since the problems were initially raised, and not one single relevant update from Eircom.. That's a pretty poor level of support by any standards.

Hi Welease,

Thanks for your query.

We are currently checking for updates.

Service level agreements are usually determined by network operations in conjuction with the communications regulator. For e.g : a P1 is usually assigned a higher priority, while a P4 has a lesser priority. This would also be determined by hours of service. For e.g : eircom Technical support are available untill 10pm in comparison and at weekends, whereas many support centres are generally closed at weekends or in the evening.
A general query may not necessarily have a SLA, although eircom Support will usually try their best to answer all queries as fast as possible.

As advised earlier today, my colleague is currently checking your query and will advise as soon as possible.

Kind regards
Ant

Welease

eircom: Ant wrote: »

Hi Welease,

Thanks for your query.

We are currently checking for updates.

Service level agreements are usually determined by network operations in conjuction with the communications regulator. For e.g : a P1 is usually assigned a higher priority, while a P4 has a lesser priority. This would also be determined by hours of service. For e.g : eircom Technical support are available untill 10pm in comparison and at weekends, whereas many support centres are generally closed at weekends or in the evening.
A general query may not necessarily have a SLA, although eircom Support will usually try their best to answer all queries as fast as possible.

As advised earlier today, my colleague is currently checking your query and will advise as soon as possible.

Kind regards
Ant

Thanks for the response Ant..

With respect, the support system seems to be failing customers.. Any calls to Eircom since 17th are just closed as Eircom say there isn't a fault.. And any posts here are treated as a general enquiry which have no SLA..

How can I (and the other customers with this problem) get timely updates to the problem? 10 or 11 days without any indication of whats being done, or possible timeline for solutions isn't acceptable.

I am happy to open a call with Eircom (I didn't bother last time as others had made contact which should have been sufficient (and CodeMasters have attempted to contact Eircom also)) if I means I will get more regular updates etc.

Please advise..

Thanks.

shanous

Ant, did you dismiss my post completely or did you simply choose not to read it at all?
Selective answering is not exactly an admirable trait, I would appreciate an answer to my questions also.

eircom: Ant

shanous wrote: »

This is just not good enough. For a company of Eircoms size it defies belief for the Tech Support and feedback to be of such poor quality.
I rang the support line the very day this started happening, Thursday 17th, and the day after, Friday the 18th.
I relayed my issues and directed the "Technician" to the thread on the LOTRO forums and he said he'll have the senior members of the Support staff look into the issue asap.
Lo and behold 11 days later and we are still being told that there is no update.
Is this because NOTHING is being done about it?
Have you cantacted Codemasters to better understand the situation? Probably not as customer satisfaction does not seem to be a priority here.
If Eircom cared about the service they provide to their customers they should be climbing over each other to get this fixed.
Can we get a reply from an actual Technician on this issue? Or is it just Representatives that browse though here?

Still awaiting some helpful news but as ever, none seems forthcoming...

*rant mode deactivated*
One VERY dissatisfied customer.

Hi shanous,

Thanks for contacting the Forum on boards.

I apologise for the delay in responding to your query.

We have checked with eircom Technical Support, but don't have a further update at the moment.

Kind regards
Ant

shanous

shanous wrote: »

Have you contacted Codemasters to better understand the situation?
Can we get a reply from an actual Technician on this issue? Or is it just Representatives that browse though here?

Still feels as if you did not actually read my post as the answer you gave has nothing to do with the questions I asked.

Lister1

Can you provide us with an update today?

eircom: Mark

Lister1 wrote: »

Can you provide us with an update today?

Hi Lister1,

Apologies for the wait, I have received a response from the section looking into this issue as follows:

We have logged a case with crown alley, remedy ref 3990238. They replied back looking for the following information.

"There is too little detail in this case to troubleshoot. Can the Lord of the Rings hosters advise what changes were made their side on 16-17th feb. They should have logs of attempted connections from our customers. Also, we need to see how the udp connections are happening. Are there connections made on particular ports?"

Can you provide the above information required please.

Thanks, Mark

Lister1

Mark,

I can pass the request on but if possible would you be able to PM me with the details(email address and phone number) of the person involved who is trying to resolve the problem as I would be much happier if they dealt directly with Codemasters rather then using myself as a go between.

Welease

eircom: Mark wrote: »

Hi Lister1,

Apologies for the wait, I have received a response from the section looking into this issue as follows:

We have logged a case with crown alley, remedy ref 3990238. They replied back looking for the following information.

"There is too little detail in this case to troubleshoot. Can the Lord of the Rings hosters advise what changes were made their side on 16-17th feb. They should have logs of attempted connections from our customers. Also, we need to see how the udp connections are happening. Are there connections made on particular ports?"

Can you provide the above information required please.

Thanks, Mark

So in essence, in 2 weeks .. no troubleshooting has been done because they dont have enough information?

super_furry

And haven't sought any information from Codemasters either.

eircom: Mark

Lister1 wrote: »

Mark,

I can pass the request on but if possible would you be able to PM me with the details(email address and phone number) of the person involved who is trying to resolve the problem as I would be much happier if they dealt directly with Codemasters rather then using myself as a go between.

Hi Lister1,

I will ask the person dealing with the issue and get back to you.

Thanks, Mark

Lister1

eircom: Mark wrote: »

Hi Lister1,

I will ask the person dealing with the issue and get back to you.

Thanks, Mark

Im still waiting for someone to make contact....

shanous

What do we have to do to get some ACTUAL technical support around here?
Almost 2 weeks of waiting is laughable really.
Lister1, thank you for trying your hardest, it seems all my questions are being ignored, I appreciate the effort.
Now if only the Eircom Reps could show the same desire to try to fix things...

(Vorongwë from the CM forums here)

eircom: Tony

Lister1 wrote: »

Im still waiting for someone to make contact....

Hi Lister / shanous
again our apologies for the delay in providing a conclusive reply to this problem. I can assure you that this issue has been raised with the appropriate technical support staff, however as yet the problem has not been identified to the extant that a fix can be implemented.
Though a few posts within this thread have pointed this as an eircom issue as yet we have not been able to identify where exactly this issue lies.
As soon as we have a response that does answer this issue we will post it here immediately.
We understand the frustration and will continue to push this issue to be resolved or explained as soon as possible.
Tony, Mark and Ant.
Moderators

Welease

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Hi Lister / shanous
again our apologies for the delay in providing a conclusive reply to this problem. I can assure you that this issue has been raised with the appropriate technical support staff, however as yet the problem has not been identified to the extant that a fix can be implemented.
Though a few posts within this thread have pointed this as an eircom issue as yet we have not been able to identify where exactly this issue lies.
As soon as we have a response that does answer this issue we will post it here immediately.
We understand the frustration and will continue to push this issue to be resolved or explained as soon as possible.
Tony, Mark and Ant.
Moderators

Maybe if someone from Eircom actually contacted CodeMasters then the issue may become somewhat clearer???

CM have attempted to contact Eircom (as per their posts) and received no response... Asking customers to contact CM for you is bordering on farcical now...