Category: Faulty modems

Replacement modems for customers with no coverage

I had a call today from a Jump partner who was unsure about whether she could issue a replacement modem for a faulty one, when the coverage checker was indicating no coverage or capacity at her address.

The short answer is ‘Yes, you can’. When it comes to replacing faulty modems, we want to make this as seamless as possible, so there really isn’t any need to do a coverage check at all.

Unless of course if the customer has moved to a new address and not notified Skinny. But if they are at the same address and they already have Jump service, then you should just be as helpful as possible in getting them a replacement modem.

If all Jump customer played by our “rules”, partners should not even be involved in issuing replacement modems – this is for the Skinny Care Team to do when a customer calls them with a suspected faulty modem.

But we know customers don’t always follow the rules, so they turn up on your doorstep and you have to take it from there. C’est la Vie! That’s life!

Could there be some confusion about handling returned modems?

After three partner calls today about modem return processes, I thought it might be helpful to restate current procedures.

A Modem Returns Form must be completed for every returned modem. Any modem that has been issued to a customer and returned, or any partners who experience problems when assisting partners set up a new modem, must be put through our modem returns process. Please do not contact Skinny about these, by email or phone. This just wastes your time and theirs, as queries inevitably come back to us at DIAA.

We do our best to try and stop partners having to deal with returned modems at all. Please stress with your customers that they should always contact the Skinny Care Team on 0800 475 4669 to report any faulty modems; the Care Team then completes the Modem Returns Form, saving partners the time and effort.

We know this doesn’t stop your customers just turning up on your door-step saying their modem is faulty, and thank you to all partners who do their best to help. We also know that some Skinny Care agents incorrectly advise customers to go to their nearest Jump partner – we are trying to fix this with the Skinny Jump team with regular reminders. But there will always be some agents who get it wrong, especially if they are new ones, and we must accept that that is life – none of us are perfect.

Helpful tip: If any customers returning faulty modems claim that Skinny told them to go to a partner, please ask your customer the day and time when they received this advice and if possible the name of the Skinny agent that told them to do this. All calls to the Care Team are recorded for training purposes, so if these details are known the Skinny Jump team can find the recording of the call and find out what is causing the wrong information to be given – it is not always the fault of the Care Team; some customers can be very difficult, as I am sure you well know, even when they are benefitting from such a wonderfully subsidised service like Jump.

So what happens next? Modem Return Forms populate a shared GSheet that is used by the Skinny Support Team to advise the next steps. If the modem is truly faulty, they will ask us (DIAA) to send a replacement and recover the faulty unit for repair. By the time this arrives, normally within 2-3 days, the faulty modem has been delinked from the customer’s account, and the customer can proceed to set up the new modem with their same email. If they have residual funds on their old account they can also call the Skinny Care Team and ask for these funds to be transferred (they can not do this if they use a new email to set up their new modem).

Some partners have reported challenges when completing Modem Returns Forms as they don’t have all the details to hand. Don’t be put off – if there are any data fields you don’t know, then simply enter “not known” and the form will let you proceed to the next field. What is most important is that the Broadband number is entered; if you don’t have this then we you suggest you just contact Shelley (0800 463 422) and ask her to send you a return courier bag, as without a Broadband number, the modem is automatically faulty. The Skinny Care team can not initiate the modem reset and de-linking process if they don’t know the Broadband number, so there is no point in carrying on with our wonderfully thought out processes – just short-circuit straight to Shelley.

I know this seems like a lot of words to explain things – if you prefer a better version please work through Tawera’s fabulous new online Jump training modules. I know many of you are and are enjoying the experience.

Possible delays with Jump modem de-linking

The Skinny Care team has advised that there could be some delays in de-linking and resetting modems; some staff have been temporarily diverted to assist with call queues.

Their goal is to action all de-linking/ reset requests lodged through the Modem Return form within 36 hours.

This is just a heads up in case your customers expect you to arrange instant de-linking of faulty and returned modems. Do remind them that the correct procedure is to report the fault to the Care team and this will trigger a replacement modem being couriered to them. By the time it arrives they can be 100% sure that their faulty modem has been de-linked and they can use the same email to set up a new Skinny account with their replacement modem.

When are Jump modems unsuitable for re-issue?

A Jump delivery partner was cleaning out a storage cupboard today and came across three “reset” modems; they were “pretty old and not looking in the best of condition”; one was missing cables and another had very dirty cables. The label with the Broadband number had come off the other modem and had been stuck back on with cellotape.

In her assessment, as well as the person who assigned the modems to the storage cupboard in the first place, these modems were not fit for reissue. Hence they had been assigned to the storage cupboard awaiting a courier bag to return them for repair or recycling. But after about 6 months, when no courier bag had arrived, they were discovered by another staff member.

So what went wrong with our Modem Return process?

When a customer reports a faulty modem to the Skinny Care Team, the agent does their best to fix the problem remotely, but if they determine the modem has a technical fault, they complete a Modem Return form to arrange for a replacement to be sent and the faulty unit recovered.

However if a customer just turns up on a Jump delivery partner’s doorstep with what they claim is a faulty modem, partners have to take this at face value – we do not expect you to try and diagnose the problem or fix it in any way. All we ask partners to do is to complete a Modem Return form and wait for Skinny to reset the modem so that it can be re-issued, or assessed as faulty so that it needs to be returned for repair, e.g. because the SIM card has expired.

Now comes the interesting part. The Skinny Care team can not determine the physical state of the modem; some returned modems have been used as an artist’s canvas (not always to everyone’s taste); others have missing parts and many are physically dirty. Some even come loaded with cockroaches!

So we need Jump partners to make a judgement call – is the modem physically suitable for re-issue? For our library partners, this is something they are used to – at what point are books withdrawn from circulation and send for repair?

Even if the modem gets the green (technical) tick from the Skinny Care Team, partners may need to override the ‘reissue’ judgement with ‘return for repair’, based on a physical assessment.

If it is just a missing ethernet cable or even a missing power supply, we (DIAA), can send you a replacement. But if it is dirty or defaced, then the modem is immediately classified as faulty (based on being unsuitable for re-issue to another customer).

One of the questions asked in the Modem Return form is “Why is the modem to be delinked and reset?”. If you feel the modem is unsuitable for re-issue, please add a comment to this effect. This will result in a recovery courier bag being sent to you. If we don’t have this information, we act on Skinny’s technical evaluation, which often means the modem is relisted in your Google sheet ready for reissue, but in reality it is sitting in a cupboard.

To cut a long story short, please keep an eye on unallocated reset modems in your Google sheets and please advise jump@diaa.nz if the Google sheet does not align with actual stock on hand. And remember, reset modems should always be issued before new stock.

Jump customers being referred by Skinny Care Team to Partners for replacement modems

This shouldn’t be happening, but I get regular regular reports from partners that it is. Our agreed procedures for handing faulty and returned modems are clearly set out on our website.

The Skinny Care agents rely on a knowledge base to provide advice to customers when they call, so the Jump team went on an exploratory mission to find out where the agents were getting this wrong information.

And success! They discovered a rogue flowchart that was directing Skinny Care agents to some obsolete information that instructed them to advise customers with faulty modems to return them to a nearby Jump partner. Needless to say, this has been corrected. Thanks, River.

Thank you also to the partners who alerted us to this issue. We always welcome feedback on processes that are not working as they should. We can then try and fix them.

URGENT ALERT: Missing Digit in Jump BB number

Two partners have reported today that some modems in the latest shipment have a missing digit in the Broadband number, which is printed on the transparent sticker on the side of the modem. This means they can’t be issued – you will receive an error message, as the BB number will not be recognised.

All partners that received a new shipment of modems this week could be affected, so please put aside any modems without 11 digits in the following format “0204 xxx xxxx” until we get this resolved.

I have asked for further shipments to be suspended until we understand how this error is occurring and how we can fix it.

Partners who received modems this week include:

Glen Innes Library; Hastings War Memorial Library; Papatoetoe War Memorial Library; Kaikohe Library; Mangere East Library; Rotorua Library; Otara Library; Otahuhu Library; Dargaville Library; Ranui Library; Hornby Library; HB Williams Memorial Library Gisborne; Grey Lynn Library; Linwood Library; Kaikohe Library; Waverley Library Plus; Te Kete Aronui – Rototuna Library; Glen Eden Library; Porirua Public Library; Dunedin City Library; Onehunga Library; Hamilton Central Library; War Memorial Library Hutt City; Shirley Library; Step Ahead; Highland Park Library; Pukete Neighbourhood House

Missing BB stickers on Jump modems (or are they really missing?)

Two partners have been in touch this week, reporting that the transparent stickers with the broadband number and verification code were missing when they removed a new modem from its box.

I encouraged them both to check the box in case the stickers had come off in transit and in one case, this was in fact the case. No such luck with the other one.

So what to do if you discover a missing BB sticker?

First of all, check the box. You might find it stuck to the inside. I have discovered that it can come off when inserting or removing the modem.

If you can’t find the sticker, then clearly you can’t use the modem, so enter whatever details you do have in a Modems Return form and we’ll get a recovery courier bag on its way.

Modem de-linking: spotted by a resourceful librarian

In my enthusiasm to blog on matters relating to Jump, I have been caught out by a resourceful Auckland librarian. He was using his research skills to brush up on the modem delinking process and discovered one of my blog posts from 2020 explaining this. However, when he went to our Stepping UP website he discovered a totally different explanation.

The problem is that things change. Yet old blog posts, like many other online things, tend to hang around well beyond their useful date.   In fact if they hang around too long, I guess they will be picked up by OpenAI systems like ChatGPT or Bard and then get shared as mis-information. So what is the truth? A question I suspect we will be asking a lot more in the future.

While some of the advice in my 2020 post is still relevant, the detailed procedures were replaced by the flow chart on our website around the middle of 2022.  There was a blog post about this change too, but anyone searching on ‘de-linking Jump modems’ wouldn’t find this because it doesn’t use the keyword ‘de-link’. Instead it celebrates the launch of new procedures for handling faulty Jump modems.

Just in case anyone is unsure about current Jump modem fault handling procedures, here it is in a nutshell.

The default procedure is for customers to contact the Skinny Care Team in the first instance if they are having trouble with their modems.  Our back-end processes then take care of themselves with the modem either being fixed remotely or a replacement and recovery courier bag being sent directly to the customer.  The other path involving Jump Delivery Partners is for when customers don’t follow this procedure and turn up with a faulty modem at a delivery partner.  In this case we ask partners to complete the Modem Returns form and await email advice from the Skinny team that the modem has been reset and is available for re-issue, or if it is faulty a courier bag will be sent to the partner for recovery.  It can take up to 24 hours for the old modem to be delinked from the customer’s account and this must happen before the customer can use their same email to set up a new modem.

So as much as I hate to say it, my 2020 blog post is of historical interest only and should be ignored by present day partners.  The new procedures completely replace the need for partners to call the Skinny Care team or send emails to the Skinny support team.

But this is also a challenge for information specialists. In a digital world how do we ‘retire’ old and obsolete information. Does anyone really have the time to keep reviewing the past and correcting these things?

But the really good news is that people, like the Auckland librarian who raised this issue, are still around, and what do they do when they find conflicting information – they seek out the truth.

Replacements for faulty Jump modems

It appears that from time to time a Skinny Care agent refers a customer with a faulty modem to a Jump Delivery partner for a replacement modem.

This is not the currently agreed procedure.

During the last six months the Skinny Care Team have correctly processed over 400 requests for replacement modems, but every now and again it appears one or two agents inadvertently advise customers to contact their local Jump partner for a replacement modem.

When this does happen and a customer turns up for a replacement modem after having reported the fault to Skinny, partners are welcome to supply a new one, provided of course that you have stock available. Just complete a Modem Returns form to record both the faulty modem details and those of the replacement.

If you don’t have stock available, please make sure the customer really has reported the fault to Skinny. If so, a replacement will be sent by DIAA directly to the customer along with a pre-paid courier bag to return the faulty unit.

Our standing instruction to the Skinny Care Team is that they never refer a customer to a Jump partner if they require a replacement modem. This will continue until such time that all partners have sufficient modem stocks to start supplying replacement modems again.

Modem returns from Customers who are not in JUMP coverage

I have been advised this week by partners of two instances where customers are seeking replacement modems but their addresses now fail the Skinny Jump address coverage check.

My advice in both instances has been to provide a replacement modem.

Jump coverage and tower capacity is something that is changing all the time and while we are not permitted to connect new customers at addresses that fail the coverage check, we must give priority to existing customers in replacing faulty modems.

One partner raised a concern that the customer involved could have changed addresses since they were originally connected two years ago. We (DIAA) do not hold records of customer addresses in situations where modems have been issued by partners, so we have no way of checking. The other situation involved the transfer of a modem within the family at the same address.

Our recommended approach is to remind customers that they must always check with the Skinny Care Team (0800 475 4669) before relocating their modems to a new address, but if customers advise that they are at the same address as the one they used when originally connecting to Skinny Jump, then we have to take that at face value and provide whatever assistance we can to keep their connections active.

Customers should be advised that in areas that have reached capacity, the performance of their connections might not meet the standard expected of a broadband service and if they were unhappy with the performance of the replacement modem, they should return it (with packaging) and seek an alternative service.