Bug Fixes Incoming - 13 May 16

[#1]

See message #27.

@rongtw I believe further fixes are still in development

[#2]

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@Anotherone wrote:

do you really expect it to have changed

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 Yes, because -

• It is always easier to correct software sooner rather than later.
• We have been reporting and documenting problems for two months, so there's plenty to get on with.
• The forum is virtually unusable for some of us, so desperately needs fixing.
• Many of the obvious issues are easy to correct, e.g. removing white space, etc.
• The forum is advertised as Plusnet's new and improved flagship, so needs to be great NOW !.
• @jaread83 said "why does everyone keep thinking that we are ignoring you guys?", so I assumed something was being done.

So if NOTHING has changed, and NO action list exists, and NOTHING is being reported as being worked on,  is it really so hard to understand why I think we are being ignored ?

[#3]

Now how many years have we been Plusnet customers? You know it'll happen soon, just like the new Provisioning system, the New Billing system, the new......, oh and one I'll lay money on very soon, the new prices

[#4]

And that is exactly my problem !.

Do we believe that somebody at Plusnet can actually be bothered to put in the effort to make this Forum usable SOON ?

In which case it is probably worth hanging around and helping report problems and provide constructive feedback, while in the short-term putting up with the constant error messages, lost replies, rich text editor malfunctions, excruciating slowness, and R.S.I. pain from excessive scrolling past empty space.

or

Is this yet another half-cocked project to be consigned to the infamous Plusnet fail list, to be looked at in the indeterminate distant future - when the mythical resource fairies visit ?

In which case, we all know nothing is EVER going to improve, and therefore we either simply put-up and shut-up regarding our ruined forum, or just walk away and at least save ones own sanity.

[#5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

• The forum is advertised as Plusnet's new and improved flagship, so needs to be great NOW !.

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"We're excited" = If there's anything wrong with the forum it's no longer Plusnet's fault !.  In true Plusnet tradition, staff can now say "it's our suppliers problem" - (Lithium).

"improved Plusnet community" = Expect support mainly from other Plusnet customers, as the Plusnet staff now rarely visit, or provide any worthwhile assistance with anything that's not on their official "standard replies" crib sheets.

"New features" = New error messages to discover and collect every day, then be amazed and frustrated correcting the unexpected random output from the Rich Text editor.

"fresh look" = Yes it's full of wasted blank space, awful high contrast colours, and requires excessive scrolling - guaranteed to give your carpal-tunnel the burn.

new "feel" = 'retro' 1999 56Kbps 'dial-up' speed simulation - with page refreshing that feels soooooo sloooooooowwwwwww,  just like grandma used to talk about in the good old days.

[#6]

12 hours since my last post , how many replies from PN ,,, ZERO  !!!!

looks like we are stuck with the forum as is   the fixes were just applied to placate some people and then we have been hung up to dry .

We were told Lithium would roll out their fixes on a fortnightly cycle ! looks like the rider has fallen off

Typical loads of promises and sorry,s But NO action

[#7]

Hi all,

Myself and @LouisaMartin have been discussing whats happening next and our priority right now is chasing the software vendors about the bugs that are affecting you all (authentication errors, being signed out randomly etc). I beleive we have raised support tickets for nearly all of the major bugs and we have them working to resolve these issues as quickly as possible.

When it comes down to bugs that I can personally fix.. there aren't all that many of them as all I can do is change things at a visual level and I don't have access to the backend code. There are a few bits I am looking to improve (granular search being one of them) but If I could fix some of these core product bugs myself I would be on it like an attack dog going for a tasty steak. Unfortunately that isn't the case so we have raised the support tickets and Louisa is managing those.

I am currently working on a lot of other projects here and I do what I can inbetween when I got some time, the visual improvements are coming but we do need to go through a proper process and get our ideas refined before implementing them. Once some of our ideas have been fine tuned I will be allocated some time to get them done and get a bit of feedback over on the staging site.

Changes are coming (I promise) and I will communicate with you all details of the things that are changing with a deadline. I apologise profusely for those bugs I cannot fix, we are chasing them up though and Louisa has been very straight forward with the approach and doesn't hold back when it comes to raising questions to Lithium.

[#8]

There are several problems with that -

This new forum has been live for two months, most of the bugs were reported in the first few days, and you are STILL "chasing the software vendors" ? - WHAT ? 

Everything in the above reply was said a month ago, and NOTHING has changed ! - WHY ? 

You are still missing the point about visibility on what bugs are actively being chased, and which aspects are currently being worked on.  It is immensely frustrating as a customer looking at this, not knowing which bugs to report or spend time documenting - when we have no idea whether a fix is in the pipeline, or whether the 'issue' has been rejected.

For example, what is being done about the excessive CPU load when rendering pages on lower power mobile devices and older PCs (which doesn't occur on other websites).  Can you tell me where you have replied on this forum as to how this issue is being resolved ?. 

Do you have a ticket raised with Lithium to convert this all HTTPS website to normal mixed HTTP+HTTPS, so that those of us with ultra slow broadband can make use of network level HTTP caching ? (which works well with many other websites). 

Have you raised the issue with Lithium of moving the forum onto a dual stack server, so that this forum is future proofed by using IPv6 ? - for those of us who mainly use IPv6 (>85% of my internet traffic).

The list is endless, but nobody looking at this forum has any visibility of what is or isn't being worked on.

[#9]

@jaread83,

I find it so very sad that yet again you have been left trying to defend the indefensible, rather than those responsible for this appalling state of affairs coming here to apologise for the sorry mess they have left this project in.  A broken product from a provider who seems totally incapable of fixing it in a timely fashion.  The project manager was told very clearly through the the trials that this lithium product is a heap of dung and not fit for purpose.  Whilst your skinning has brought about some saving face, under the skin things are still a mess, largely unchanged from the go-live version.

Has anything really changed from your previous "we have no control over lithium" statement?

@MauriceC, sadly I suspect that bonus payments around here are not based on doing the right things and making a real difference to customers, but rather on towing the party lines and hiding supplier failures.  Indeed I very much suspect that being honest about supplier failures is very detrimental to achieving bonus payments even when other than being honest about the cause of problems, performance has been excellent.

Whatever the facts about this project, I'm sure it will by now be reported as another glowing success in someone's CV, to boost their career up the BT slippery pole.  I'm coming to the conclusion that many of the things failing in PlusNet's delivery have a BT mole involved.  For my liking PlusNET has far too many ex or still active BT staff in core decision making posts.  Given enough time of "the BT way of thinking", PlusNET will no longer be so much better than BT, which was the reason BT bought out PlusNET in the first place.  PlusNET used to make BT look like muppets - sadly PlusNET is getting more like BT rather than BT learning how to do excellence of the standard of the origional PlusNET operation.

[#10]

I have said this before , we are getting stringed along with the hope we will give up asking for fixes that will never happen soon !!   with the hope we will stop complaining

[#11]

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@LouisaMartin wrote:

As we don't have full time Web Dev resource on Community, we'll be doing our releases fortnightly @Anonymous on the opposite fortnight to the main website releases. 

This allows the web dev team (i.e. @jaread83, @mtrinder and others) to share their time across a number of other Digital areas and by doing our releases fortnightly, they can allocate their time and resource better.

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What happened in reality with these fortnightly bug fixes ? -

13th May - A collection of trivial and inconsequential fixes released, none of which addressed priority issues.

27th May - No fixes released - FAIL !

10th June - No fixes again - FAIL !

24th June - Prepare to be disappointed ?

As we have now come to expect, Plusnet has FAILED to deliver AGAIN, and the forum is still a nightmare to use.

[#12]

This is a test reply

[#13]

Nibiru said 24th June - Prepare to be disappointed ?  Do we have to wait that long ,,,,,,,,,  i am already peeved with lack of forward movement

[#14]

Surely it should be well known the Plusnet fortnights are somewhat longer than ours?

[#15]

I thought we were both using B.S.T. ?

I'm using British Summer Time,

and Plusnet use [Removed] Timescales !  

Moderator's note by Adie (Dvorak) removed avoidance of swear filter