Unifi sucks: Here’s why

Last year I moved into my new place, and had to apply for Yes! broadband because my place wasn’t Unifi ready yet. I blogged about how much I enjoyed the Yes! experience and even recommended it to most friends and family. That little love affair however took a turn for the worst when I discovered Yes! would experience a service interruption nearly once a month and the overall design of the Yes! service was lacking. So in the end I parted ways with Yes! and subscribed to Unifi instead.

My initial experience with Unifi was breath-taking, it was smoother and faster than Yes!, plus I didn’t have to connect a dongle to my laptop anymore (which is always a plus). I was happy with Unifi and even though I was paying a whooping Rm150 a month, I was happy to do so. I use the Internet for my work and I work from home a lot, so I need a reliable connection up and running in my house so that I can work. It’s quite a simple equation, no Internet = no work.

Then my love affair with Unifi took a significant turn for the worse, on the 30-Jan while my neighbors were blasting fire crackers on the eight day of the Chinese new year…my Internet connection died. All I could see was a red light on my Unifi modem, and that my friends was the beginning of a Chinese New Year Nightmare!

I placed a call almost immediately to Unifi. The person on the call center, walked me through a couple of steps that invariably didn’t work, and eventually said he would have to raise this to the technical team and I would be contacted within 24 hours. I can accept a downtime, so I said OK. Barely 4 hours later, I get an sms from Unifi saying that my fault was due to a wider network issue and that Unifi were working on it. I have to say, I was impressed at this point–I can tolerate a 1 day down time, and the Unifi communications were pretty good.

That changed, over the next 24 hours, I wasn’t contacted after that, so I called Unifi again. Again they told me they’ll contact me within 24 hours and they gave me a new ticket number–presumably they had closed the old one.

Then, about 40 hours after I first reported the incident I get a call from Unifi saying my connection was already up and they asked me to test the connection. I said I wasn’t at home. The person on the line said everything was already OK and they’re technical team had already rectified the issue and asked for my permission to close the ticket. On good faith, I told her she could close the ticket–BIG MISTAKE.

I had planned to attend a teleconference at 9pm that day, only to go home and find my connection STILL FAULTY. Now the red light on the modem wasn’t red, but I still couldn’t go online and I couldn’t attend my teleconference. I couldn’t work because Unifi lied to me.

So I made my 3rd call to TM in as many days, and AGAIN they issued me a new ticket number and AGAIN they told me that I’ll be contacted within 24 hours. I asked them to re-open the older ticket because my problem wasn’t resolved, and the call center agent said he couldn’t do it. I spent a good 30 minutes on the phone with him, going through steps like flush DNS and rebooting the router. If anyone from UniFi is reading this, I would just like to say–FLUSH DNS DOESN’T FIX A FAULTY CONNECTION!!

In my fit of anger, I told the agent (still rather calmly though) to call the technician and get him to fix the issue. He said he couldn’t do it as they’d all gone back home. I asked him what time do they come in and he said 9am.

So the next day, at 9am I called TM for the 4th time in 4 days, to report the fault, AGAIN they told me they’d contact me back in 24 hours, and again about 4 hours later I get an sms saying my fault is part of a wider network issue and the technical team is working on it. (sigh!)

Today marks the 5th day I’m without and internet connection at home and TM have yet to do anything.

This is without a doubt–unacceptable.

I wonder if P1 is any better.

On a separate note, I wrote a mail to tmceo@tm.com.my, which according to some sources is the ceo’s email. Not sure how much help he’s going to be, I’m not holding my breath.

DAMN YOU UNIFI, YOU SUCK!!