Sophon Internet out of business?

[funlovinkid]

I've been using Sophon in the Jomtien area for 4 years now for my Internet service, and their phone number has always worked.  I noticed last night that my Internet was down, and I did all the things I could from this end to resolve the problem (like rebooting their router).  Having no success in restarting my Internet, I just gave up and went to bed, thinking that I would resolve the problem this morning after their office reopened for business if the problem was still unresolved at this time.

 

So, here it is now, Monday morning, and the Internet problem still exists.  And now I find that their phone number (038-423-000) is "temporarily out of service", something I've never encountered before - especially in the midst of an Internet outage.  Considering the fact that yesterday was June 30th, I can't help but wonder if they've just closed up shop.  Thank goodness for my AIS mobile data package, which is the only Internet option I have at home now.

 

Anybody know if Sophon is having serious problems which could lead to it having closed for business?

[manarak]

I'd suggest you pay them a visit at their shop on Pattaya Tai ?

[oxforddon]

I had that problem with their phone number. But I also have a LINE link to their customer service (SBN Marketing is the ID). At this time they are changing invoicing and payment to an email system for invoicing and that whole exercise could be interfering with other things.

[oxforddon]

PS they have three numbers ... 

038-423000, 084-8634448, 084-8634449

[funlovinkid]

4 hours ago, oxforddon said:

I had that problem with their phone number. But I also have a LINE link to their customer service (SBN Marketing is the ID). At this time they are changing invoicing and payment to an email system for invoicing and that whole exercise could be interfering with other things.

Thanks for the info, but I tried every imaginable permutation of "SBN Marketing" on LINE in order to add them for future reference, and I couldn't find them.  Is there any particular spelling combination I might have missed?

[funlovinkid]

3 hours ago, oxforddon said:

PS they have three numbers ... 

038-423000, 084-8634448, 084-8634449

Thanks for that, just added these numbers for future reference.  For what it's worth (5:30PM Monday as I write this), the Internet functionality has been restored again as of around 3pm, but their main phone number is still out of service.  So, I guess they're not out of business!  Bad customer relations move, though...

[oxforddon]

Sorry, that is what shows up on my phone for their LINE link and not sure now how and when I linked to it, but they did see my last message on June 25th. 

 

[4675636b596f75]

8 hours ago, funlovinkid said:

And now I find that their phone number (038-423-000) is "temporarily out of service",

Can't blame it on VOIP.

[gunner07]

Thanks @funlovinkid for the concern. Due to office renovation, our landline (038423000) was cut temporarily. We expect phone connection to be back to normal this week. Meanwhile, you can still reach us via the mobile phone numbers 084-8634448, 084-8634449.

 

We will roll out the LINE business account soon. Stay tuned! In the mean time, you can communication with our staff via the LINE account of SBN marketing 084-8634448.

 

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your understanding.

 

We want to the serve the Pattaya community the best Internet Service experience with excellent international gateways.

 

Regards, 

Gun Tiwapong 

CEO of SBN

[funlovinkid]

On 7/3/2019 at 12:29 PM, gunner07 said:

Thanks @funlovinkid for the concern. Due to office renovation, our landline (038423000) was cut temporarily. We expect phone connection to be back to normal this week. Meanwhile, you can still reach us via the mobile phone numbers 084-8634448, 084-8634449.

 

We will roll out the LINE business account soon. Stay tuned! In the mean time, you can communication with our staff via the LINE account of SBN marketing 084-8634448.

 

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your understanding.

 

We want to the serve the Pattaya community the best Internet Service experience with excellent international gateways.

 

Regards, 

Gun Tiwapong 

CEO of SBN

Thanks, Gun, but here it is, noon, Tuesday, July 16th, and my internet has again been down and out since last night, and I can't reach your people using any of the methods you mention above.  Although there is now a slight improvement in that I no longer receive the "out of service" message for your primary phone number, now it just rings endlessly, with no answer.  And your "emergency" mobile numbers are all redirected to a callback service, but I've never received a call back.  Not to mention that your feeble attempt above to provide me with the Line ID your company apparently uses never resulted in me successfully finding anything remotely related.

 

This is all in addition to the fact that, because I never received an invoice from Sophon for the month of July, I've been trying (unsuccessfully) for at least a week now to contact you in order to faithfully make the July payment - which I refuse to do unless I have an invoice number for reference purposes.  At the time, I didn't worry too much about not being able to contact you, because my internet was still functional.  Now, I don't have even that.  I communicate to you at the moment using the mobile data plan on my phone, and thank goodness for that.  How hard do you expect me to work to keep you as an internet provider?

 

Other than physically going to your shop, do you have any recommendations?  Smoke signals?  Carrier pigeons?

 

"Excellence"?  Really?  Is this supposed to be a joke?

 

Congratulations on executing the absolutely worst customer relations example I've ever seen, even in Thailand.

[KittenKong]

10 hours ago, funlovinkid said:

here it is, noon, Tuesday, July 16th, and my internet has again been down and out since last night, and I can't reach your people using any of the methods you mention above. 

Two of the biggest Buddha days of the year. Wait till Thursday.

[funlovinkid]

11 hours ago, KittenKong said:

Two of the biggest Buddha days of the year. Wait till Thursday.

True enough, and thanks for your observation here, but no internet provider should assume that their customers should be willing to wait out an outage, for any reason - any more than PEA should assume that customers can live without electricity during a holiday.  I'm not shooting the messenger here, but when the vendor provides "emergency" contact numbers, and then has no one answering these numbers because it happens to be a holiday, it certainly seems to defeat the purpose.  They apparently think that I should just be willing to accept a pat on the head whenever I do manage to re-establish contact.  It would probably be better if they didn't bother establishing "emergency" contact numbers in the first place, so that customers don't waste their time making multiple, unsuccessful phone calls.

 

Update on Wednesday: their office is open again, and they have resolved my connectivity problem, with another giggle and another apology - and an inquiry as to whether I've paid this month's bill yet.  In addition to the fact that they promised to call me back to confirm whether the problem had been resolved, only to apologize for having forgotten to do this when I called back a second time.

 

I mention all of this not so much as a means of venting my frustration with Sophon, as much as to help any potential internet customers considering using their services to make an informed decision.  In my case, my older condo building offers only the original coax cable and telephone lines for incoming internet access, which limits my options for an internet vendor considerably.  My friend living in a house a few blocks away is using 3BB fiber direct to his house, and he regularly tests his connection at 500/500.  I would leap to that option in a heartbeat if it were available to me in this condo building.  As it stands, at the moment, I'm living with incessant giggles and apologies.

 

And please don't tell me TIT.  Yeah, I know - I've been living here for more than a decade now.

 

[fforest1]

1 hour ago, funlovinkid said:

True enough, and thanks for your observation here, but no internet provider should assume that their customers should be willing to wait out an outage, for any reason - any more than PEA should assume that customers can live without electricity during a holiday.  I'm not shooting the messenger here, but when the vendor provides "emergency" contact numbers, and then has no one answering these numbers because it happens to be a holiday, it certainly seems to defeat the purpose.  They apparently think that I should just be willing to accept a pat on the head whenever I do manage to re-establish contact.  It would probably be better if they didn't bother establishing "emergency" contact numbers in the first place, so that customers don't waste their time making multiple, unsuccessful phone calls.

 

Update on Wednesday: their office is open again, and they have resolved my connectivity problem, with another giggle and another apology - and an inquiry as to whether I've paid this month's bill yet.  In addition to the fact that they promised to call me back to confirm whether the problem had been resolved, only to apologize for having forgotten to do this when I called back a second time.

 

I mention all of this not so much as a means of venting my frustration with Sophon, as much as to help any potential internet customers considering using their services to make an informed decision.  In my case, my older condo building offers only the original coax cable and telephone lines for incoming internet access, which limits my options for an internet vendor considerably.  My friend living in a house a few blocks away is using 3BB fiber direct to his house, and he regularly tests his connection at 500/500.  I would leap to that option in a heartbeat if it were available to me in this condo building.  As it stands, at the moment, I'm living with incessant giggles and apologies.

 

And please don't tell me TIT.  Yeah, I know - I've been living here for more than a decade now.

 

If your this dissatisfied just get 3BB to install your own private line to your apartment....Yea its gong to cost X thousands for the installation but 3BB is pretty good at fixing problems....

[KittenKong]

3 hours ago, funlovinkid said:

True enough, and thanks for your observation here, but no internet provider should assume that their customers should be willing to wait out an outage, for any reason - any more than PEA should assume that customers can live without electricity during a holiday. 

No power is one thing. No internet is another. No one ever died from a lack of TV torrents or Facebook or Youtube (as far as I know).

 

Even in Europe you would be unlikely to get any internet repair service coming out on Easter or Christmas etc., even if the call centre has some sort of token staff working.

 

I do see your point though.

[funlovinkid]

5 hours ago, KittenKong said:

No power is one thing. No internet is another. No one ever died from a lack of TV torrents or Facebook or Youtube (as far as I know).

 

Even in Europe you would be unlikely to get any internet repair service coming out on Easter or Christmas etc., even if the call centre has some sort of token staff working.

 

I do see your point though.

These days, the internet is more than just a connectivity service for entertainment - entire businesses and livelihoods are based on it.  Is it as important as electricity?  Probably not, and if it is, a redundant provider should already have been established.  So, your point is well taken.

 

However, in this particular case, no one was required to come to my condo to resolve the problem - and this is very typical.  Normally, all that is required from a support standpoint is to have someone "on call" who can remotely diagnose the source of the problem, and who can also very often resolve the problem remotely, and quickly.  If the local support person identifies the problem as relating to another vendor, then the support for that vendor is contacted.  I spent most of my career in IT support, so I know how this works - or doesn't.  I wore a beeper on my belt for years.

 

Aside from the outage itself, I guess my concern increased as I followed every possible avenue of contact made available to me, only to discover yet another dead end.  So, it appeared to me that there was a clear recognition on the part of the provider of the importance of having alternate methods of contact available for the customer - but not quite good enough to actually establish contact.  Consequently, I wasted even more time and energy than otherwise would have been necessary, following these dead ends.  And this, after having tried on and off for a week to establish contact in order to pay my overdue bill!  Anyway, maybe this helps put my experience into perspective.  Thanks for your feedback, which is always constructive.

[KittenKong]

1 hour ago, funlovinkid said:

However, in this particular case, no one was required to come to my condo to resolve the problem - and this is very typical.  Normally, all that is required from a support standpoint is to have someone "on call" who can remotely diagnose the source of the problem, and who can also very often resolve the problem remotely, and quickly. 

Sophon is a small local company with a fairly good reputation for prompt service. But even the best small company can have glitches due to holidays, staff shortages and breakdowns, and a breakdown or other problem in a small company can put their entire system out.

If that is an issue for you then it sounds as though you should be with a big national provider that can afford to have many redundant backup systems and staff on call all day and all night all year. But by all accounts you probably wont actually get much better service from most of them either.