If your internet goes down, you probably expect it to be a technical fault right? Your CPE exploded. Someone dug your fibre up. Maybe even a hungry rodent. But what if it turns out to be an admin problem?
That’s exactly what happened on Friday to a major finance company in London. Their head office of 400+ staff with 1,500 devices who were heavily reliant on Teams calls got cut off by BT without notice. Why? A billing error caused by a mismatch in the Royal Mail address database. Yes, seriously!
The Real Cost of a Billing Error
Despite having paid their bills, the company found themselves offline on a Thursday morning. All staff got sent home and their IT and operations team spent the day making a dozen calls to BT, each time being promised the connection would be back "within the hour." Guess what...didn't happen! It's now 5 days, and dozens of calls later, and still nadda!
By the morning of the second day of the outage they'd lost all faith in BT. They found us and we provided them with a plan of attack which was signed off at 12pm. By 2pm our techs were onsite rapidly assessing the premises to find the best 5G connectivity, and by 5pm they were online thanks to our disaster recovery service: 5x bonded 5G circuits delivering 1.25Gbps of bulletproof connectivity and public routable IP addresses for their Meraki site-to-site VPN.
This Happens More Often Than You Think
This isn't the first time we've seen this and I'm sure it won't be the last. Admin errors like this are more common than most people think. Here's why they are so catastrophic:
- Automated cut-offs: ISPs rely on systems that flag unpaid accounts, even if the billing issue is on their side.
- Lack of communication: You’re speaking to someone in accounts who doesn't have the ability to reinstate your service. They just send a ticket in to the abyss and wash their hands of it.
- No real urgency: Legacy ISPs don’t understand (or care) when an emergency like this occurs. To them, you’re just another moaning customer!
What You Can Do About It
To avoid becoming the next casualty of a billing blunder, keep these tips in mind:
- Double-check your address with Royal Mail: If it doesn't match what your ISP has on file, fix it before it breaks something.
- Use a named account manager: Find someone who can escalate issues fast (easier said than done!).
- Have a backup plan: Even if your primary service is usually rock-solid, it only takes one admin error to ruin your day (or week!).
The above tips go some way to help reduce your risk, but you cannot anticipate every blunder these lumbering ISPs and their creaky systems can throw at you. The only true solution is to get a backup line installed. However, if you get a fixed line backup that is running in the same riser and down into the same duct in the street as your primary it may prove to be as useful as a chocolate teapot!
The only true backup solution is to get a fixed wireless internet circuit installed into your premises. This bypasses all the physical risks and also provides built-in redudancy by bonding multiple 5G carriers together.
Don't wait until it's too late, get in touch and learn how we can ensure you never have to tell your staff to turn around and go home!
