Slow FTTP speed after AGL NBN performed Urgent Maintenance

[GBS]

Hello,

AGL informed customers that their or NBN issues which they tried to fix with the urgent maintenance from Thursday 20 Feb 2025 11pm are finally all fixed today, Sunday 22 Feb 2025. Two days later.

AGL sent notification SMS o Wed about Thu 11pm - 5am urgent maintenance. 

Then, on Fri 1pm another SMS saying it's taking longer than expected. 

Then, nothing for 29 hrs. Their status page was showing all green and NBN page for VIC, my area and my address were all showing all green.

My speed already dropped from 980Mbps to 56Mbps from Thursday. 

I called AGL support on Saturday morning and they tried to go with usual reboot, restart, reset approach which I already performed on Friday night and obviously didn't solve anything. Only to inform me that they internally know about and ongoing issue.

I argued that tech issues are ok to happen but their communication should be proactive since I just wasted 1.5hrs to talk to them and also troubleshooting myself since they said all good. Their call centre even plays a message saying all fixed.

Now, I call again Saturday 3.30pm and the issue is still ongoing. After again trying to sell me a story about my end is at fault, agent finally acknowledged the issue is still ongoing, measures my speed and confirms it is not expected. After back and forth frustration, I again insisted that their lack of communication is that is causing the frustration. This time though, agent gives me the correct page to monitor the status telcostatus page. It was showing performance issues for VIC.

I insisted that VIC is a broad term and I need them to double check if that's affecting my particular connection and got the answer, yes it is. I also insisted that their comms and SMs updates should be proactive and left the feedback. Whatdayaknow, 1 hr after the call I get the SMS confirmation about the ongoing issue and this time correct status page url. Beautiful. I continue to monitor that page directly. 

I monitored that page and around 9pm Saturday 21 Feb they finally update the page saying all is fixed and to reboot the modem. I do that.

Still the same issue and my speed goes up 100mbps max. Again, all speed tests which i performed daily for 2 years where showing constant 980Mbps. I am paying for 1Gbps FTTP so that was really good.

Now, I clearly see they are limited the speed from their end somewhere. 

I called 3rd time, Sunday morning (today) just to be told it is fixed and then not fixed. Explained that an I am already very frustrated and agent ensured me he will help me put. 40min into the call he starts sayhe cannot hear me although I was speaking and then he decides to hangup on me. I am sent to the survey agaian and I again leave my voice feedback. Forgot to day. First agent got low score, second got highest score and now the third one, again the lowest.

Again an hour after the call,  got SMS saying all resolved. I reboot again, speed still on 98Mbps, clearly limited. 

I cannot express enough how frustrating that is. I am AGL's loyal customer with elec and gas and internet and mobile and that's how they treat me.

It is clear that they either have some hardware issue, like gigabit ports failure on thei side jemve they only handshake on 100mbps or they are rate limited my link by software. 

Either of those requires an action from their side but nothing. It needs tier 3 engineers with access to all relevant equipment to reset my port since tier 1 is useless in this case.

How to you deal with that?

[Sheena_AGL]

Hi @GBS 
I honestly can't begin to imagine how frustrating this will be for you, and I am really sorry about his experience you have had with us.
I do apologize about this experience and the internet not working and the slow speeds.
We do value the feedback you have shared about the communication being sent out, and glad to hear you received further notification.

Yes we have still had some ongoing outages in VIC about the internet and we are still working on this.

We have since noticed, as you have advised you've been getting speeds of 56Mbps since the outage and this is also something we have a team looking into.

In regards to the speeds you've been facing, please try to use an alternative ethernet cable and see if there is a difference. You can also do a direct connection from the NBN Box to a laptop/computer and see if you get slow speeds through the NBN box.
If you are using an AGL modem, we can also make some configuration changes within the settings to help increase the speeds you've been acing.

I would like to advise for further troubleshooting and getting this escalated further, please call us on 131245, or contact us on our live chat platform for further assistance.

Warm regards, Sheena
AGL Telecommunications

[GBS]

Thanks everyone for responding.

Here is the update, I got covid in the meantime and decided I will not call AGL or follow any of their useless "suggestions" since I was and still too tired to deal with such a frustrating experience again atm.

So, without doing anything on my end for past several days, this morning I woke up and decided to check speed and voila it is measures 976Mbps directly from Eero. Back to my original speed.

So much about changing cables, hook it to PC, reboot Eero, rebooting NBN box (which cannot be easily rebooted since it has battery supply, so need to take cable out of NBN modem which is dangerously close to actual sensitive fiber cable)...

I have 25 years of experience in this field, I am CCIE, I am trained in Kepner-Tregoe troubleshooting methodology, I trained and managed teams in this space practically for decades now and believe me when I say this - it has bren extremely frustrating to speak to any layer of support in AGL, over the phone or chat, about this issue due to their lack of basic knowledge and understanding how technology works.

That aside, forget about technical details, but just the fact that everything is OK for two years, daily speed 980Mbps and then they do emergency maintenance on Thursday and suddenly all goes south (or probably from our Aussie pov, north) should already clearly tell you what is the culprit and save you from molesting your customers any further by asking them to follow your "basic troubleshooting" page again and again.

Now, the only question is how is AGL planning to reimburse this outage?