Context:

On July 20, fiber cable was installed in my neighborhood. The mechanic said I could contact KPN for switching to fiber optic cable once another person came and set up the white box.

On July 21, there’s a person came by, setting up the white box and checked with the signal. He mentioned everything was good and it would work after another appointment.

On the same day, July 21, I called KPN about switching the cable and had an appointment made on July 28. In that call, the support mentioned that my contract looked strange and he needed to do changes on the system to make it works.

On July 28, a mechanic came by and installed another black box on top of the white box. For some reason, the connection light is off and the alarm light is on. He went out to checked something and came back, telling me that he didn’t have the access to a box outside. KPN would contact me and another senior mechanic could come and check it that day or the next day.

After a couple of hours, I only received sms, saying I need to schedule another appointment. After a quick check, the earliest possible day is August 10, which is in almost 2 weeks. I reached out to KPN again about this and addressed that

    1. the issue related to the appointment wasn’t fixed and I didn’t get any proactive contact from KPN about this issue and details other than a sms asking me to reschedule a date myself

    2. if there’s an earlier date possible for the appointment

    3. please send someone with the access to “the box outside”, who may be a senior person (all the information I got for 3. is from the mechanic who visited earlier)

Since nothing he could do besides making an appointment on the earliest date, August 10, another appointment is made on August 10.

On the evening of the same day, July 28, my original internet, which was via copper cable, stopped working! Tried turning off and on, resetting, nothing worked. Also waited and hoped it would be back after a while. Unfortunately, after the weekend, it still didn’t work. So I reached out to KPN again on the Sunday midnight, July 24/25.

The support told me that on the system, it showed I would only move in on August 10, so I shouldn’t have had the internet at all. Besides, he mentioned he’s been working in KPN for 5 years and the only thing they can do was sending me an emergency router. After asking him to check the emails and maybe other logs, he said it was on KPN and it was some kinds of exception he had never run into before. And again told me the emergency router was the only way out.

I received the emergency package on August 2 and finally got to connect to the world. However, the portable router easily gets overheated and crashed, which causes troubles during online meetings from time to time.

Yesterday, August 10, another mechanic came by and replaced the black box. The connection light was still off and the alarm light was still on and red. He said the same thing as the previous mechanic that he didn’t know what happened, KPN would contact me proactively and another person would come and check it yesterday or today.

Having the previous experience, I asked him if there would be a way to make sure it would happen and what if it didn’t happen.

After his call with someone, he said I was the first one in the neighborhood to use the fiber optic cable, so it may take a couple of hours to work, maximum one day. He also mentioned it could be an issue on another end of the fiber, which was in the center cause he had checked with his colleague and the connection and signal seemed to be good between the black box and their system. He gave me his number after I asked him what if another exception happened. And I told him I would only call him if it still didn’t work this morning.

Today at noon, unfortunately the alarm light is still on, so I called the mechanic. He said his colleague saw there is already a ticket opened on the system and gave me another number for checking further information. After calling the number, the person who answered the call said the status of the ticket is on hold. He wasn’t sure the reason and said he could send me to the contractor who is responsible for the fiber setup.

However, since I couldn’t fully understand dutch, I was dropped during the voice assistant.

After that, I reached out to KPN support again. After three attempts, I got to talk to a customer support. He said from what he could see was another appointment had to be scheduled and another mechanic would come by. After I gave more context about what I’ve been through and asked what the appointment would be about, he called the technical department and got no details about this issue, which the technical department didn’t know anything about this. He then told me what he could do is to help me schedule another appointment and he would hang up if I wasn’t going to schedule one. While I was suggesting, in order to get more details, maybe there would be another department who may be the owner of these kinds of issues, I got hung up.

So, my questions are:

• what have been sure not the root cause? so that the same checks don’t need to carry out again
• which part of the connection needs to be investigated further? so KPN knows what action to take next
• who or which department I should contact to get the overall picture and figure things out? instead of having another mechanic coming and only replacing the black box again
• can’t I have the internet on copper cable back before the fiber issue is resolved?
• can someone from KPN contact me proactively to sort this issue out?

Since I work from home and have online webinars, I need it to be resolved as soon as possible! Besides, I’d like to get some compensation since I’ve paid so much for the internet and not being able to use it. Such A BIG WASTE of MONEY!