Schools Broadband says no SLA breach after 8-month P2 incident. Thoughts?

[Wubbalubbadub]

Interested in views on this one.

 

We had an Schools Broadband incident relating to an overutilised NNI. The RFO supplied by Schools broadband records the incident as a P2 lasting 8 months, 11 days, with intermittent degraded performance and reduced throughput during peak periods, but states “Was the SLA Breached? No.”

The timeline includes repeated instances of the NNI reaching maximum capacity, including in March, May and June, before migrations eventually resolved the issue in July.

 

When challenged, their position is essentially that the overall core remained within SLA. However, they have also confirmed there was a monitoring gap on this particular NNI and they don't have the detailed performance data we've requested.

Am I being unreasonable in questioning how you can confidently conclude “no SLA breach” when the RFO itself records an eight-month incident and some of the monitoring evidence isn't available?

 

Interested in how others would read it.

rfo_event_1174 (1).pdf

[Rogueleeder]

I don't think you're being unreasonable, I'm going through the same motions with a different provider who has been serving us consistently below 100mbps of our Gigabit line since I got here 3 months ago, who knows how long it had actually been a problem. Our bursar and I sat down last week and reviewed everything and we have given them 2 weeks (its already a 3 month old ticket) to pull their socks up and fix it our we'll be going to a different provider. I've just put in new 10 Gig networking this summer and I want staff to see it actually working rather than seeing the same issues with call quality and bandwidth throttling. 

 

TLDR: If you're paying for a service and you aren't getting that service, that's an SLA breach in my mind (coming from an MSP background where we lived and died by SLA)

[Jawloms]

Quote

they have also confirmed there was a monitoring gap on this particular NNI and they don't have the detailed performance data we've requested

 

This does not surprise me at all from this company. While we were with them it was quite scary at times the information they couldn't lay their hands on. I recommend complaining about them to BESA. We did on one occasion and suddenly things started happening.

[DrCheese]

This doesn't surprise me.

The forum used to have a really long grumble thread about these guys that was.. deleted for some reason that went over years of substandard service & over-promises from them. @ZeroHour Where did it go? 

 

Home providers have to guarantee a set speed & Ofcom force them to automatically pay out if they don't meet it 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/service-quality/automatic-compensation-need-know

 

But Business to Business seems to be the wild west - There's no protection here.

Businesses often write their own SLAs and obviously make it almost impossible for it to apply to anything. Individual schools/trusts are too small to really push back on, so they get away with it

 

All this will end up happening in the end is the DFE will start forcing schools to use frameworks for Internet provision which will come with *much* stronger terms. The providers will grumble about it,  but like with Printing/MIS vendors it'll be a situation entirely of their own making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FN-GM]

8 hours ago, DrCheese said:

This doesn't surprise me.

The forum used to have a really long grumble thread about these guys that was.. deleted for some reason that went over years of substandard service & over-promises from them. @ZeroHour Where did it go? 

This decision is disappointing. EduGeek’s own About page states the following, and removing it directly contradicts that mission. It suggests that financial priorities are being placed above community values:
 

"EduGeek’s aim is to help those working with technology in schools, colleges and universities wherever they should be. Our forums cover everything from helping those with technical problems to school ICT policies, purchasing, planning, product recommendations and many others relevant areas."

[FN-GM]

Crickets..

[dmj]

This really should be with your legal team. Contract law is notoriously difficult to understand and they will (should!) have a good understanding of how to pursue this.