Numericable (Coditel) in Luxembourg – How something so little could change so much
Every now and then, your internet service provider’s service goes down. It sucks, but it happens. Over the past couple of months this has been happening too much to Numericable (formerly known as Coditel) in Luxembourg. Usually, I just sit and wait until it comes back up and use my iPhone to access the internet on my computer. This time the damn thing was down for hours and hours, so I decided to call their support line. After choosing language and service from their phone menu, I finally get a voice (in a different language than I chose) that tells me the waiting time exceeds 10 minutes and that my call will be terminated. So I go to their internet site. The re-branding to ‘Numericale’ is rather recent, so I still refer to them as ‘Coditel’. I go to coditel.lu and see this:
The whole thing is build up to tell me that I live in Brussels, Belgum and that their service is available in my area. No guys…I live in Luxembourg – that is also why I went to .lu and not .be. Furthermore, I thought you re-branded to Numericale, so why am I not re-directed? So, I go to numericable.lu myself, and get this:
Again, the title is setup to target people in Brussels, Belgium. At least the content on the website is designed for the Luxembourg market. Anyhow, I wanted to know if they post anything about their internet service being down on their website, as I could not get to speak to anyone. So I go to the ‘accueil client’ section which means something along the line of ‘customer section’. Nothing either…so I go to the ‘contact us’ section. Then I get this:
Baam – a nice google maps error, because numericable is not able to integrate google maps properly.
As to be expected by now, there was no message on the website about their service being down.
Here is what I don’t understand about Numericable
- Why don’t they just transfer the visitors from coditel.lu over to numericable.lu?
- Why don’t they adapt their .lu websites to target the Luxembourg market?
- If they don’t want to publish that their service is down on the internet, that is kind of understandable…after all their consumer customers are not able to access the internet and then read the message because it is down. But Jesus Christ – then have some voice on your phone system that confirms to the people calling that the internet is down (before they start messing around with their modems and computer settings) – it is not that rare that this is the case anymore.
Conclusion
Numericable is the major player in triple play (tv, phone and internet) in Luxembourg. Something as simple as this, should be a no-brainer. To me this is a complete and utter embarrassment.
The scary thing is that both sites, coditel.lu and numericable.lu, have an analytics tool (google analytics) installed. The reports that this tool generates, is able to perfectly outline the problem to Numericable…if only they would read/understand the reports. What we have here, is a perfect example of the 10/90 rule. The analytics tolls itself is only 10%, while using the tool to your benefit is 90%. I think it is fair to expect a business of this caliber to not make these school-boy errors. Please do your business a favor and check its website for mistakes like this. They are completely unnecessary and really harm the user experience – and thereby also you.
What you should do now
- Open a new browser window
- Go to your website by typing in the address manually without ‘www.’
- Now try typing in the address manually with ‘www.’
- Are both version doing what they should do?
If yes: Good – well done.
If no: You should get in touch with us and get the problem fixed.
Send us a message if you want your website to benefit from rightly used website analytics
Learn more about website analytics; what exactly it is and how it works
UPDATE 14-Dec-09:
Looks like Numericable Luxembourg fixed the redirection problem as well as the Brussels content targeting issue.
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Hi,
It is possible to change the Numericable modem to bridge mode, I did it based on instructions I found from French Netgear forum:
http://www.netgear-forum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=65615
It required a bit of technical skill, but according to the forum comments now the bridge mode is also available on the web interface at least for numbericable.fr customers. I would check whether this is true, but that would require disabling the bridge mode first.
Firstly, for 90% of TV you can see if you catch decent TNT for free or use sats.
Secondly Coditel probably wasn’t even aware they were down (they’ve never been AWARE of anything at all even before the digital age, all the more funny considering how they target the muscles from brussels) as they likely rely on customers to inform them of problems and as they don’t answer they can’t be informed.
Thirdly, I’m not surprised they can’t integrate google maps as rue de Chimay doesn’t exist, it’s rue Chimay.
Don’t forget that however high-tech, automated and sophisticated things may seem they will always rely on little employees not making mistakes or having mischievous ideas and as these little people are employed because the big people can no longer be bothered doing little things in their quest to grow bigger still, it is the fate of any outfit larger than 2 persons (a size where 1 can still undo/spot the mistakes of the other without creating confusion) that this will happen forever more.
Only last week a major bank sent me a credit card belonging to someone else no longer living at that address since at least 7 years, the little employee on the phone told me they could not discuss anything with me because of bank secrecy laws, I told them to send me the pin code as soon asap. Am sure her superior will be well-pleased with the way she followed standard instructions for customer service.
Like redtomato, I bumped into this article when researching IPv6 access in Luxembourg. I’ve been on Tango ADSL for 11 months and only had 2 disconnections in total. Overall I’m very pleased because it just works. I don’t need TV service since I don’t speak French nor German (let alone Luxembourgish). So I got myself a satellite dish.
But back on topic, I was living in an apartment with a shared Numericable 50Mbit internet connection, and as you said they were horrible, utter shite. Bandwidth was ok when it worked, but when it didn’t we would be disconnected for days on end! Also the Netgear router they supply is weak on the NAT side, so when you’re doing something heavy like large P2P transfers or online gaming, the router chokes the connection.
I had a bunch of good routers sitting around, so I wanted to disable NAT, FW and everything else on the Netgear, and just use it as a modem (ie. Bridged mode). I wanted my router to do the NATing and FWing, but the Numericable Netgear router cannot be changed to ‘Bridged’ mode… so if you’re reading this before you get your Numericable subscription, make sure you be careful! Needless to say, I had no such issues with Tango. They supply a bog standard Thomson modem/router/wifi AP, which you can simply switch to a bridge and let your own router do the PPPoE connection.
PS: sorry for going all technical, I just wanted the info to be out there in case anyone else is looking for it.
Hi,
I found your article by accident, looking when numericalble LU will switch to IPv6. It appears by the way that the helpdesk guy don’t even know what IPv6 is
anyway, I must admit that since I’m numericalble (april 2010), I got not a single problem … with the internet. Bandwidth is very far lower than 30meg but what I have is enough and anyway it’s the best bandwidth/price offer in lux.
However, I got only problems with TV. Not that I care much but if it’s included in the offer, it should work, shouldn’t it ? Since the beginning, I got almost all channels “access denied”. Call center says : take out the chip-card, swift off, swiftch on …blah… still doesn’t work. They haven’t called back.
Since August, a new firmware update came, since then, no image at all on my HDMI screen. I suspect that the resolution changed to 1080p, which is good for those who have a 1080p screen
Numericale délivre un service exécrable. L’image TV est hachée, le téléphone fixe marche une fois sur 2, internet est hyper lent. Et impossible de joindre le service technique tellement les délais d’attente sont longs.
Le problème c’est soit ça, soit payer le double chez les P&T pour l’ADSL.
Au luxembourg on est pas vernis car il n’y a pas de concurrence, que des monopoles.
1 seul provider ADSL et un seul en cable numérique.
Since march 2010 I’m numericable client.
There are only problems.
With phone line, with internet line.
I’ts sure I’m linked by contract for a year and I’m waiting March 2011.
If any one is interested in this battle for satellite dish right can write to me: callisto@tango.lu and visit my web site http://www.genco.org.
dears.
In Luxembourg there is domain from P&T and Numericable. This goes accordingly the fact that it is really hard to install satellite dish on coproperty. It is years that I ask myself why there is now law in Luxembourg to rule how a satellite dish right can be respected. Practically no application law in Luxembourg means no right to install a satellite dish. I’m personally fighting in a tribunal regarding satellite dish. Why ? I don’t want to pay subscription fees for a cable if I can get a lot more channels, free to air, with a satellite dish and an easy decoder DVB-S. If any one is interested in this battle can right to me: callisto@tango.lu and visit my web site http://www.genco.org.
This would give an alternative, avoiding to be slaves of cables TV.
Ciao a tutti
Callisto Genco
Just found your blog by accident as I was trying to find information on what appears to be latest Numericable f-up.
Before I start my rant though: I can only confirm what you said about their customer service. Having been a customer for close to 5 years now, I must say that service outages used to be even more frequent than they are today. The one time I phoned them up during one of these outages (I was on-call for my job on a weekend and could not really be without internet/phone), I was – after a bit of waiting for an English-speaking person – basically told to wait for it to recover. The Brussels-based customer service person didn’t seem capable of determining the status of the network in Luxembourg. Interestingly TV always works during these outages (unlike internet and phone), which makes me wonder why the do not use their info channel to notify about upcoming or emergent outages. Perhaps that would be too easy!
To my surprise I received a mailing from them last week, asking me to provide an email address and/or mobile phone number so that they can notify of future outages via email/SMS. This came as a rather nice surprise and is hopefully only the first step.
Then this morning, I was trying to make a phone call and the infamous French voice tells me that the connection could not be made. I try an alternative number – same thing. It is still not working this evening.
The monthly bill I received today seems to explain this in a rather blunt way: it contains an item “Frais désactivation au 12-01-2010″ (EUR 20.00). I don’t recall requesting any changes to my account, let alone deactivation. Other than that they are telling me that I did not pay a recent bill. Another EUR 6.00 reminder charges. Needless to say that I did pay.
I am off to the Numericable shop in the next few days and am curious to see what their response will be. It is good to know that PT is finally available in my area. So at least I know what *my* answer will be if they don’t budge…
Sorry for the rant.
Regards,
alex